Keeping us in the dark

We've all been going on about media bias towards the Tories, particularly in the BBC, for ages now.  So it was no surprise that when Iain Duncan Smith appeared on Question Time last night there were no questions chosen about any of the "welfare" issues in the news - despite the fact that they also had the shadow minister for "welfare reform".  The internet was buzzing with excitement.  But no.  Iraq, Islam in schools ..... and we waited in vain.  The Salma Yaqoob, with whom I had disagreed on everything else, decided to have a go at IDS.  He hated it.  Chris Bryant joined in, refusing to be shouted down.  A middle-aged man in the audience (I can't remember whether this was before or after the spat) told IDS exactly what he thought of him and was cheered.  Dimbleby hastened to move on.  The cynics among us decided that assurances had been given to IDS that there would no no hard questions for him.  But his face, when he found himself under attack, was a sight to behold.  He really doesn't like it.
But there has been a small chink in the BBC's protective wall.  The appalling delays in processing PIP assessments have been well known for months.  Suddenly the media decided it was a story.  Mike Penning was on the Daily Politics yesterday, apologising and being very lightly grilled by Andrew Neil.  This morning the Today programme took it up.  A good journalistic report was aired and then a Labour MP (I'm sorry, I've forgotten her name) commented clearly and ably.  No DWP spokesman was available, apparently.  But what we didn't get was the background to this debacle; no discussion of the wider implications of outsourcing.
Another issue we wouldn't know about but for the internet is the report that the Trussell Trust had been threatened that the government might try to shut them down because the DWP wanted to discredit them.  It was an obscure website, civilsociety, which first reported this.  Strangely, I can't now get at the article.  But Channel 4 News took it up the following day (see Jackie Long's blog) and today the Independent weighs in, having done some digging.  Citing "sources" they say that the man who did the threatening was "Conservative MP Andrew Selous, parliamentary private secretary to Mr Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary."  He denies it vehemently, but the Indy is confident enough to do a profile of him.  It's an excellent article.  But where is it in the rest of the media?
And there's the row about the Oxfam cod film poster.  The Daily Mail got outraged about it; but there's been no debate on the BBC, and other papers have ignored it.
Until the mainstream media do their job properly the Tories will continue to get away with murder.

Bullied?

She was "bullied out of A4e".  That's the headline phrase in the Press Association piece on last night's Emma Harrison interview, and it's been taken up by many of the reports.  Harrison is a savvy enough media operator to know that if she used the word enough it would become the story.  But bullied by whom?  Did she say "political types"?  Does that mean the members of the Public Accounts Committee who objected to her £8.6m dividend?  Or were there people in government who told her to go?  I don't know, and don't particularly care.  To respond to questions on the failure of her company to fulfil its contract by claiming to have been bullied was only one bizarre aspect of this interview.  Of course, if her children were bullied after the revelations, that's regrettable.  And it was sad that innocent employees were caught up in it.  But most people would have struggled to work up any sympathy for Harrison herself.
Much else was odd.  She kept insisting that the figures Channel 4 had (from a "reliable source", said Jackie Long) were wrong, but said she didn't know what the right figures were.  If she'd said, correctly, that they were not allowed to disclose the true figures; or if she'd fudged it, as the company did; then that might have been the end of it.  But she went from saying that the figures were wrong to accusing the interviewer of bullying her and from there to saying that the programme was making up stories about her for political reasons.
Guru-Murthy kept bringing it back to the facts, but Harrison responded by virtually calling one of the clients a liar.  She had invested "£50m of her own money" in the Work Programme.  Jaws dropped at that point.  The design of the WP meant that providers had to be able to finance it before they got any money back.  Whatever bank account A4e's finance came out of, it is difficult to see it as Harrison's own money.  But that was the tone of her responses from then on.  She hadn't expected the interview to be so unsympathetic, it seems, and was angry.  The Work Programme was the most successful they'd ever run.  And she herself had helped tens of thousands into work.  People came up to her in the street to thank her.  She had just been "useful to have a go at".
This was about the failure of the Work Programme, and it could be thought that it became about Emma Harrison instead.  It was her name that was trending on Twitter late last night, and people were calling it a "car crash" for her.  Now we have to wait for the official figures.

More figures - and disagreement

As Channel 4 publishes more of the figures from that leaked report, so there is dispute about how meaningful they are.
The channel's news website details the outcome rates in different regions.  They are miserably low in some areas where the unemployment rate is also low; and better in areas where A4e are sub-contractors, suggesting to the writer that it's A4e's model which is at fault.  The reporter Jackie Long, on her Channel 4 blog, summarises this, and quotes the DWP's response that the interpretation of the stats was "ludicrous".  Long asks if A4e's figures would be better after 12 months instead of 10, and clearly doesn't think so.  
The Telegraph has carried the story, and expands on the DWP's response.  The spokes-person is quoted as saying that is "virtually impossible for any provider to have built up a significant number of job outcome payments by the end of March as most outcomes are only payable after someone has found a job and stayed in it for six months".  Hold on.  The stats revealed by Channel 4 are not about outcome payments.  They show the numbers of starters getting work and then staying in work for 13 weeks or more.  If they haven't been in a job for 13 weeks then they're not going to make it to 6 months.
Even more puzzling is the reaction of the FullFact website, which is normally very rigorous about stats.  They point to the premature judgement made by the Tories when in opposition on Flexible New Deal.  Figures show, they say, that "a significantly higher proportion of participants were finding sustainable work after 14 months than were after 11 months".  Well, if they say so.  We are to understand, then, that A4e's figures could look dramatically better in a few months' time.