Ignorance is bliss

Have you ever wondered why so few people know what's going on in "welfare" these days?  Ever shouted at the radio or TV when someone pontificated on, say, the Work Programme without appearing to have any knowledge of the subject?  Ever despaired at the sheer ignorance of most people about unemployment?  Then you might have been cheering this morning when the Today programme on Radio 4 decided to look at whether all that self-employment in the latest job figures is genuine.  Two experts were asked; one was a woman whose name I forget, the other Professor Roy Sainsbury.  I'd never heard of him, which is a pity because he's head of the Social Policy Research Unit at York University - and he knows what he's talking about.  Speaking lucidly and quickly (important if you want to get your point across without being interrupted) he pointed out that Work Programme providers were pushing people into spurious self-employment because it enabled them, the companies, to claim for a job outcome under PbR.  Cue astonishment from John Humphrys, who was doing the interview.  "You mean they get paid for it?" he gasped.  And well he might.  When did you last hear a clear and honest examination of anything this government is doing in the name of "welfare reform" on the BBC?  Oh, I know they've looked at food banks, the bedroom tax etc., but always with a timid eye on "balance" for fear of IDS launching another complaint.  At least Humphrys learned something new this morning.

However, the government's apparent ignorance about sanctions cannot be excused.  They have repeatedly been confronted with real cases of people being punished for trivial or non-existent offences, by Labour MPs and others, but have insisted that it's not true.  That has become more difficult since the Mirror published revelations on Tuesday.  Iain Duncan Smith, along with Esther McVey and Neil Couling, head of Jobcentre Plus, attended a meeting last week with a whistle-blower who has worked for the DWP for more than 20 years.  The man told them, "“The pressure to sanction customers was constant.  It led to people being stitched-up on a daily basis.”  He went on "“We were constantly told ‘agitate the customer’ and that ‘any engagement with the customer is an opportunity to ­sanction’.”  The targets, he said, are sometimes referred to as "expectations".  And this led to managers stitching up claimants by altering their appointments without telling them so that they missed the appointment and were sanctioned.  They were told to "inconvenience" the clients and to regard them as scroungers.  It's a horrific account.  And now the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams is agitating for an independent enquiry into sanctions.  It won't happen, of course.  

There's one area of outsourcing on which most of us prefer to remain ignorant.  Read Polly Toynbee's Guardian piece headed "Now troubled children are an investment opportunity".

 

Lessons in outsourcing and bias

The last few days have seen a graphic example of the perils of outsourcing.  As the NHS is gradually auctioned off, one of the pieces up for grabs was the GP out-of-hours contracts.  Serco got the job in Cornwall, and were recently slammed for providing a substandard service.  Next came the 111 helpline.  The bidders had to work on assumptions about call volumes and length, since they were going to be paid per call.  NHS Direct, which won a lot of the contracts, has given one back shortly after starting it, and the rest before even starting.  The assumptions were wrong, and they can't make them viable.  For a minor player like NHS Direct, this is terminal.  They can't exist while making big losses.  But the major players can carry on regardless.
The journalist John Harris wrote a long article in the Guardian on Monday about Serco in particular and outsourcing in general.  He's got all the main points, and writes clearly and passionately.  But he misses one serious issue.  Contracts handed out by one government run for a lot longer than the government itself.  An incoming government in 2015 cannot cancel existing contracts except at immense cost.  So our fragile notion of democracy is further undermined.  We can get no further, because the politicians on all sides are not going to back away from outsourcing.  More local councils are looking at hiving off many of their services.  Government will flog off anything it can.  There are vast amounts of money to be made, and that's all that matters.

There was a hilarious article in the Telegraph yesterday.  Back in November 2011 the BBC's John Humphrys presented a radio programme called The Future of the Welfare State.  It was a personal view, from his Welsh home town.  But there were complaints that it was not based on evidence, and was politically biassed.  The BBC Trust has just ruled that it failed to back the views presented with figures, and breached the rules on impartiality and accuracy.  Cue outrage from Iain Duncan Smith, who obviously loved the original programme, and sees the Trust's verdict as typical left-wing bias.  Ironically, he felt the same about Humphrys interview of him about the benefits cap recently; and he professes himself "staggered" about the way the BBC reported the High Court's judgement on the bedroom tax yesterday.  Yes, IDS is ridiculous.  But he's also very dangerous.  The only acceptable stance, as far as he's concerned, is for the BBC to parrot the government's line uncritically.  Yet another chip out of the structure of democracy.

Iain Duncan Smith - true to form

I thought we might get an IDS-free day today, but still the media keep coming up with depressing pieces.  I've bookmarked so many that I can't possibly post links to them, and you wouldn't want to read them anyway.  When I listened to the interview yesterday on the Today programme, I was hoping that John Humphrys would challenge him over his misuse of figures - and he did.  But that brought the extraordinary conversation, recorded in the Huffington Post: 

  '"What they said was you can't absolutely prove that those two things are connected."  Challenged over the fact his statement was not supported by officials statistics published by his own department, Duncan Smith said: "Yes, but by the way, you can't disprove what I said either.  I believe that this to be right, I believe that we are already seeing people going back to work who were not going to go back to work," he said.  "I believe that this will show, as we move forward, that people who were not seeking work are now seeking work."'

Of course, lots of people picked that up and mocked it.  Another assertion, quickly picked up by the New Statesman, was that homelessness figures had "hardly moved".  Actually, homelessness in England is up by 27% since 2010.  The New Statesman published an excellent piece, "Five things Iain Duncan Smith doesn't want you to know about the benefit cap" - essential reading.
Something which went unchallenged was the assertion, or implication, that people can go out and get a job if they want one.
It was inevitable that the interview would result in a complaint from IDS about the BBC.  He said to Humphrys, "This is absurd. What you are doing, as always happens in the BBC, is seeking out lots of little cases from people who are politically motivated to say this is wrong.”
My final link is to a Steve Bell cartoon in the Guardian.

Labour had little to say.  And that's because they support the benefit cap, and know that a large majority of the electorate support it too.  No minds were changed yesterday, but what I found most worrying was that so many people on the ideological right were content to churn out statements which they know to be untrue or highly misleading.  
And the Tories feel that they're on a roll, and can put forward further "reforms".  We're hearing today about a reduction in the cap to £20k, if it's shown to "work"; stopping housing benefit to the under-25s; and denying housing to teenage single mothers.

  

The Welfare State

The BBC2 programme on the Welfare State tonight is being so well promoted that we don't have to watch it. I'm listening to part of it now on the Today programme. And Left Foot Forward has already analysed why Humphrys is wrong. I don't intend to watch, but feel free to comment if you do. "The age of entitlement", he says, "must be brought to an end."

I reported that Emma Harrison's Family Champions scheme was to consist entirely of volunteers. But Poole council in Dorset "has obtained funding to become part of the Working Families Everywhere Programme which provides one to one support to help families overcome unemployment and return to work." Three of these people will have contracts running to March 2013. How will that fit with the ESF contract, which is being run down there by something called Paragon Concord International?