Changing faces

So Mark Hoban has gone.  He made absolutely no impact at the DWP, but apparently thinks he did.  He told his local paper in Hampshire, "I have turned the Work Programme around and I have delivered on what I was asked to achieve."  He is replaced by Esther McVey, who has an interesting background.  Aged 46, she's from Liverpool; solidly middle class (a family business in demolition), a law degree, and a career in television before founding her own business.  She only came into Parliament in 2010.  No doubt Cameron thinks she will have the presentational skills which Iain Duncan Smith so conspicuously lacks.  Also joining thee DWP as Minister of State is Mike Penning, a 56-year-old with a similar background to McVey (except he chose the army rather than television).
More interesting, perhaps, is the reshuffle of the Shadow Cabinet, with the ineffectual Liam Byrne being replaced by Rachel Reeves as shadow work and pensions minister.  Reeves is not a great TV performer, but she knows her stuff and is a formidable intellect.  Don't expect IDS ever to debate with her publicly.
None of this makes any immediate difference to government policy, unfortunately.

STOP PRESS - contradictory figures

There has just been a confusing item on the BBC news.  It said that a third of people who have been on the Work Programme (I think they said for a year or more) have started a job.  But only one in ten of those with medical problems have started a job.  And the providers say that the money just isn't there in the scheme to help them.  Cue a brief clip of Labour's Liam Byrne saying that three quarters of people on the WP haven't even started a job.  And then Andrew Sells (who was captioned as a WP adviser but appears to be a businessman - see here) saying that the WP was more successful every month.  An employee of a WP provider (I didn't catch which one) was asked why the companies took the contracts if they knew there wasn't enough money in them, but he was otherwise treated sympathetically.

Now the item has appeared appeared on the BBC news website.  It has Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA (the providers' trade association) saying that money needs to be diverted from other budgets.  But I'm no clearer about the figures.

Thanks to the Eye

The latest Private Eye has some interesting sidelights on the Work Programme and attendant issues.

• The first concerns those sanctions targets which the government so strenuously denies. Labour's Liam Byrne and his colleague in the Lords, Lord McKenzie, have made much of this, wanting an investigation. But the Eye reveals that in 2006 Labour had an explicit target of 6% sanctions, and when this came out the excuses were “spookily similar” to those given recently. They also point out that Freud, who has masterminded much of the current “reform”, was also advisor on welfare to Labour. No wonder Labour's opposition is so lame.
  
  
• FoI requests made by the Eye have also revealed how the government tried to massage the Work Programme figures before their release last year. Mark Hoban, employment minister, met Kirsty McHugh who is head of the ERSA, the trade body for companies like A4e, involved in the WP. “She told Hoban, 'On performance overall, I think it is really important that both the industry and the department are robust in terms of defending the Work Programme as much as we can.'” Hoban's response was that he was keen to put the ERSA's own figure of “200,000 job entries” out there because it would be “much more understandable to the media / public than discussion around Job Outcomes”. This was, of course, deliberately misleading, since the 200,000 figure means nothing without knowing the percentage figure for actual job outcomes. But Hoban and his masters obviously didn't want that to come out. There was a lot of discussion with the ERSA, not, apparently, about why they were doing so badly and what measures were going to be taken to improve the situation, but about how to spin the failure. The emails suggest that the DWP even considered ignoring the contractors' minimum performance levels completely, but McHugh thought they needed to be prepared for questions on it. She was right. The DWP press release did ignore the minimum performance levels, but the media went with it anyway. This hardly inspires confidence that effective measures to tackle the dismal performance of the WP providers are being taken. Indeed, the apparent vow of silence on the whole subject might be a sign that they hope we'll all forget about it – except for those obliged to take part in it, of course.
  
  
• Finally, the much unloved Universal Jobmatch. The last edition of Private Eye showed that many of the vacancies for carers were being advertised on the site at well below minimum wage when travel time was taken into account, and that the DWP was not interested in doing anything about this. Now they've turned their attention to the non-jobs (which many of our readers know only too well). They found adverts which turned out to come from outfits which demanded personal data but then never responded; simple data mining, in other words. And they chased down adverts for what are not real jobs but “multi-level marketing”, particularly from Kleeneze reps. Again, people were using UJM simply to garner contact details and make money out of desperate people. This isn't new. Such “opportunities” have been a familiar feature of job sites for years. But now that people can be punished for not pursuing them, it's only a matter of time before someone loses their benefits for refusing to join one of these pyramid selling schemes.

Targets - what about the Work Programme?

The revelations about targets for punishing the unemployed were raised in Parliament yesterday, as the Guardian published more evidence.  They've been receiving information from Jobcentre staff around the country showing how widespread the practice is.  "It was also reported that staff in a jobcentre in the West Midlands were this week told that the team who submitted the most Stricter Benefit Regime 'Refusal of Employment' referrals would be rewarded with Easter eggs. The staff were told there was drive on this particular type of sanction."
Labour's Liam Byrne asked about all this in the Commons.  Now, Labour is in a difficult position.  They are refusing to oppose the retroactive legislation to legitimise the £130m wrongly taken from people in sanctions.  Apparently the DWP is setting up an independent enquiry into the use of sanctions in return for this co-operation.  But Byrne asked the question, and Iain Duncan Smith repeated that there are no targets; and the head of JCP has issued reminders.  The original leaked email came from Walthamstow, and the MP for that area, Stella Creasey, after reading it out, asked who was responsible?  IDS repeated that there are no targets.  Another Tory, David Gauke, congratulated IDS on cutting the benefits bill.
So far this has all been about Jobcentres.  No one has mentioned Work Programme providers.  There will be no official targets, of course.  But if staff at the DWP have been ignoring their ministerial bosses and issuing league tables and incentives to make people destitute, it seems unlikely that they've confined this practice to Jobcentres.

"Descending into chaos"

So says the Financial Times about the Work programme.  Mind you, they're quoting Labour's Liam Byrne.  But the verdict is based on a slump in the number of people being referred to the WP, down from 65,000 in February to 40,000 in August.  "Opinion is divided as to why," they say.  Some think that the pattern of employment is responsible, with fewer people being out of work for the 9 months stretch which would get them referred.  Certainly this would have an effect if there is a big increase in temporary jobs and unwanted part-time jobs.  Another view is that the Jobcentres have lost so many staff  that they are not able to keep up with the referrals.  Whatever the reason, it's "beginning to worry the market", says Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA.  Mark Hoban, the minister, isn't worried.  He says that referrals are higher than predicted when the companies bid for the contracts.  Byrne is pushing for publication of the performance data - and so are we all.

Going under

News has emerged that a sub-contractor of A4e has gone out of business, unable to keep going under the Work Programme.  The Guardian has the story of the demise of Eco Actif, a social enterprise in the chain of providers under A4e.  The boss of the company, Amanda Palmer-Roye, was a political supporter of the government, but found that the payment system for the WP was impossible to live with; the firm couldn't get finance from the banks, which regard the WP as too "high-risk" and, she said, "its association with A4e had been a matter of great concern to potential investors".  Eco Actif had other contracts; a specialist programme subcontracting to A4e, G4S and CDG for support to ex-offenders, which had not come up with a single referral; and one of those European Social Fund contracts for workless families.  But now they've gone into liquidation.  All this is of interest in the light of the Merlin assessment for A4e.  This is the DWP's arrangement for monitoring how the primes are treating their sub-contractors, and A4e had their inspection recently.  They scored an overall 70%.

All the optimism from Grayling about the Work Programme seems curious in light of new estimates for the number of people being put on it.  As the This is Money website puts it, "More than half a million potential recruits seem to have disappeared" from the scheme.  For Labour, this is an opportunity to shout about "chaos", and warn that jobs would be lost in the W2W industry.  It's very hard to give any credibility to Liam Byrne on this, when the WP is just an extension of Labour's own programmes.  But the ERSA, the trade body for the industry, is also very annoyed about the staffing difficulties that the wrong estimates create.

Is that it?

It's the best possible outcome for A4e.  We all knew that there was no chance of an investigation finding "systemic fraud" in the company.  But to have exonerated them completely would have been a mite suspicious.  So the DWP has taken away one small contract; one which A4e says employed just 5 people and made up just 0.5% of the company's revenues (Guardian) and where fraud has been admitted.  A4e bosses sound suitably contrite but vindicated.

The media have generally been content to report rather than comment.  Clearly we are meant to see this as drawing a line.  Whatever happens now, in Slough for instance, can be seen as an isolated incident and proof that the company has got its act together by reporting it to the police in the first place.  The two prison education contracts which had been put on hold can now get the go-ahead.  Business as usual.  Labour's Liam Byrne has blustered ineffectually.  But what about all those dossiers which MPs and journalists were compiling?  Margaret Hodge MP and Fiona Mactaggart MP, members of the Public Accounts Committee, said that they'd received hundreds of complaints.  Journalists were keen to hear from whistle-blowers, and I know of at least one TV producer anxious to get evidence.  Now, presumably, there's no story.  Move on.


But that will be a disservice to all those who have voiced their anger at their experiences.  We need to maintain our watch on this company.

Is this the end? Newsnight revelations

When Newsnight devotes nearly 20 minutes to the story you know it's serious.

We got a trailer in the news; and the Guardian published the details earlier tonight.  But the piece on Newsnight was pretty devastating.  A report has been leaked, an internal A4e audit, which found evidence of widespread fraud and irregularity.  Numerous job outcome claims could not be backed up by evidence.  If this was systemic management failure, asked Paul Mason, why have A4e still got contracts?  We were shown David Cameron at an A4e office and told that A4e are paid £170m a year.  Then we were told that 224 client  records were examined from 20 of the company's top performers.  4% of the claims were described as potentially fraudulent and 12% as risky.  These cases come from all over the country.  Employers complained of being given blank forms to sign.

A4e were said to be playing it down and wouldn't be interviewed.  Kirsty McHugh of the ERSA (the industry trade body) said that appropriate action had been taken.  But the DWP never saw the document.  Why not?  And what did A4e do about it?  Mason said that there were questions for the politicians.  The government has a duty of care to the unemployed who are being sent to A4e.  No one from the DWP would be interviewed.

That gave free rein to Margaret Hodge, who talked of a "shocking catalogue of incidents" and fraud being "erndemic in the company".  Any manager of moral integrity would have shared this evidence with the DWP.  Hodge is sure that it's a systemic issue throughout the company.  She has had over a hundred emails on the matter.  The company has been greedy, she said, and she wants their contracts suspended.  people will lose trust in the system as a whole.  She rejects the idea that this was all in the past and couldn't happen now.  She believes that the culture in A4e hasn't changed, and they are not an appropriate company to be getting all that money.

Liam Byrne was also interviewed.  He wants to know if ministers knew about this when A4e got the Work Programme contracts, and what checks are now in place.

The government is now in a difficult position.  Trying to bluff this out, when even the BBC have got their teeth into it, makes them look complicit in fraud.  But pulling the plug would be very messy.

If I had to bet on it?  I think it's the end for A4e.

Unanswered questions

Two Labour MPs have tried asking questions about A4e but have not received answers.

The first is Liam Byrne.  Yesterday he put in a written question to Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister, asking "when allegations of fraud at A4e were drawn to the attention of his Department's Propriety and Ethics team.  The answer was: "As has long been the practice, information relating to internal discussion and advice is not normally disclosed."  No joy there, then, but I don't suppose Byrne expected anything else.
Last Tuesday Fiona Mactaggart asked "the Secretary of State for Justice what contracts his Department has with A4e; and what the (a) purpose and (b) value is of each such contract."  Now, you would have thought that was straightforward.  But Kenneth Clarke replied: "The Ministry of Justice has no current contracts with A4e. However other departments do have contracts with A4e that deliver services to offenders."  What Mactaggart probably had in mind were the contracts for prison education, known as OLASS (Offender Learning and Skills Service).  Helpfully, back in 2008 A4e submitted a memorandum to the Public Accounts Committee trumpeting its involvement in these contracts.  On their own website A4e talk about working in 20 prisons with 400 staff on OLASS and providing careers guidance in 7 prisons.  It's big business.  And apparently these contracts don't come from the Ministry of Justice.  So, do they come from the Department for Education?  It would seem so. 
If even MPs have trouble getting information, no wonder the rest of us struggle.

Questions

Inevitably the publicity has died down.  Liam Byrne has sought to revive it - he's Labour's shadow Work and Pensions Secretary - by claiming that Cameron and the government knew about the fraud investigations at least 10 days before Emma Harrison was appointed, in a blaze of publicity, as Cameron's "families champion".  The Independent reports this, along with Margaret Hodge's plans to submit a dossier of whistle-blowers' allegations to the DWP.  They get a statement out of the DWP:  "We have been clear that if there is any evidence of systematic fraud at A4E... we will terminate existing contracts. We welcome A4E's decision to have a full independent audit. These cases all relate to previous back-to-work schemes. None of these apply to the Work Programme."  So define "systematic".  But Liam Byrne is on sticky ground rather than the moral high ground, and he knows it.  A4e's rise and rise was down to his government.
The Telegraph has the same story, but it also reports A4e's response to the "claims that its staff stole vouchers intended to help the unemployed buy clothes to prepare for job interviews."  A4e says that it's the company which buys these vouchers.  "'It’s our profit margin that is affected by buying them, not the taxpayer.' He said that A4e was not aware of the alleged thefts and had any such action come to light a “robust” internal investigation would have been carried out."  This is a remarkable example of not getting the point. 
If you didn't read newspapers or the internet, and depended entirely on the BBC for your knowledge of what was going on, you'd still be largely ignorant of the A4e story.  The Mail drew attention to this reticence on the part of the BBC, which ignored the growing chorus in the press following the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee and didn't mention the company until the news broke that four employees had been arrested.  Since then the coverage has been minimal.  They have had to report Harrison's resignation as "families champion" and then as chair of A4e, but with hardly any background.  The Daily Politics, which had Harrison as their guest of the day only a few days before, seems to have taken a vow of silence on the subject.  Newsnight mentioned it, but with a tinge of sympathy for Harrison and little background.  So why has the BBC been so reluctant to report this?  One of our correspondents suggests that it's because Chris Grayling used to work for the BBC.  How very cynical!  It's been obvious for the last few years that while Emma Harrison popped up on all sorts of BBC programmes, from The Moral Maze to Masterchef, there was a remarkable ignorance in the Corporation about her company.  We need some sort of explanation.