Two verdicts on Universal Credit

Two programmes looked at UC last night (I had to catch up on both online this morning).

The first was a Channel 4 Dispatches programme.  Now, Channel 4 brought you Benefits Street, and the producers of that pernicious propaganda recently insisted that they wouldn't be "censored" and will go ahead with the next rotten slice; so could we trust the channel to do something truthful on UC?  Amazingly, yes.  Liz MacKean, a real journalist, went to Warrington earlier this year to look at how it was working.  They found four claimants, who could never be describes as scroungers, who had suffered problems and hardship because of mistakes, delays, confusion and poor staff training.  There were tales of the system not being able to cope with a change in circumstances; of the huge hike in rent arrears and debt.  A whistle-blower from a DWP service centre spoke of staff being overwhelmed by the workload.  Significantly, perhaps, it was Mark Harper, the newish minister for the disabled, who was put up to answer for all this.  He seems to be the new face of the DWP; Iain Duncan Smith and McVey are both, perhaps, seen as liabilities.  Harper talked blandly, of course; but there seemed no recognition that real people are suffering real harm as they "learn from their mistakes" at the DWP.

The second programme was a Radio 4 Analysis episode.  Most of it is summarised in the presenter's own piece in yesterday's Guardian.  Jonathan Portes used to work at the DWP so has an insider's view of what has gone on.  The radio programme was striving for "balance".  We got Kwasi Kwarteng, a Tory MP, making excuses for Duncan Smith.  Worse, we got a sizeable contribution from Fraser Nelson.  He's the editor of the Spectator, a small circulation right-wing magazine, and he also writes for the Telegraph, for which he has produced the most deluded tosh about "welfare reform".  He repeated it on the radio.  (For balance, Margaret Hodge told the truth.)  We got a damning description of the failures of IDS, in UC and in the Atos fiasco.  There was no mention of the dreadful damage that's been done to real people because of IDS's delusions, just a description of the financial costs.

Everyone except IDS seems now to agree that UC is a write-off, and will be ditched whoever is in power after May.

Harking back to yesterday's post, A4e have tweeted an apology.

Failing Work Programme and dodgy statistics

A report from the DWP itself makes fascinating reading, according to an article in the Guardian online.  The private companies given the contracts say that they can't afford to provide what they contracted to provide.  They can't give the one-to-one support except "where necessary".  They can't provide even things like basic skills "to the level that would really make a difference to the customer".  And it's all because of the "high level of demand" - too many people being referred.
The government response is limp and misleading.  It claims that 207,000 long-term unemployed have been put into work, and the scheme is providing value to tax-payers.  Nonsense.  These companies bid for the contracts with their eyes wide open.  In some cases their bids seemed unrealistic even to the DWP.  But the government can't pull the plug now.  To end the contracts prematurely would cost a great deal more money. And what do they do then?  It would be an admission that the whole model was deeply flawed from the start.  There's nothing to put in its place unless they're prepared to go back to the drawing board.  And so to save face they will probably renegotiate the contracts.  The people who will continue to lose out are the "customers" (who, we insist, are not actually the customers at all).

Iain Duncan Smith will cling to his pet projects as long as he can, and once again he's under fire for "manipulating" statistics to suit his case.  First there was the claim that vast numbers of people had rushed to sign on to sickness and disability benefits to forestall the new assessment regime.  Then we heard that even before the benefits cap came in, loads of people had decided to get work - a puzzling interpretation of the facts.  That annoyed Jonathan Portes, who used to be the chief economist at the DWP and is now director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.  He told the Radio 4 Today programme that it showed a consistent pattern of ministers manipulating statistics for their own political ends.  Maybe it's true, he said, but the analysis hadn't been done so you simply shouldn't say it.  (See an article in the Independent.)  It's probably the case that IDS doesn't see the point here.  He wants it to be true, so it is.  And, of course, the right-wing press is only too eager to snap up these highly dubious figures to bolster their own case.