Intensive and uncompromising

You're coming to the end of your two years on the Work Programme.  What now?  After all that "tailored support" (don't laugh) you still can't get a job.  Perhaps now they'll get off your back for a while.  But no.  According to a government press release, "Work Programme leavers will be targeted by a hit squad of specialist advisers as part of a tough approach to get them into a job."
You see, it's your fault.  You've had all that help but you remain stubbornly unemployed, so clearly what you need is an "intensive and uncompromising regime ....... with rigorous monitoring to ensure they are doing everything they can to find work".  This will be delivered by the Jobcentres.  People will be put onto training schemes, Mandatory Work Activity placements or "intensive work preparation" as soon as they come off the WP.  An extra £30m is going on this, for extra training and specialist help such as counselling for drug or alcohol dependency.  Another requirement: "Every Work Programme returner will also be required to register with Universal Jobmatch to aid work search and job matching and to allow their adviser to check their work search activity online."  There has, apparently, been a pilot scheme (where?) which proved, said officials, that "claimants targeted by an intensive approach were much less likely to stay on benefit."  (Telegraph)  No figures, you notice, but we would have no reason to believe them if there were.
This is a tacit acknowledgement that the WP is a waste of money.  Two years in which all this stuff was supposed to be happening and obviously wasn't - so throw a bit more money at it, cutting out the WP providers.  But the attitude is ingrained in this government that people are out of work by choice, and if you just keep cranking up the pressure they'll get a job.  Or, at least, they will disappear from the lists of benefits claimants.  
Labour has said that WP leavers would be forced to accept a paid job, but we wait for them to fill in the details.  It surely has to be better than this government's clueless plan.

One bit of good news: the BBC reports that in 2012-2013, 708 employers have been fined for paying less than minimum wage, and affected workers have got an average of £300 in back pay.  One of the guilty employers is described as a "national retailer", but is not named.  Why not?

Update:  Today, Saturday, the odious Express tells the story in its own disgusting way.  "Hit squads to force workshy back into jobs" is the headline.  It goes on: "At the heart of the Government’s reforms is frustration at a generation of lifelong layabouts, immortalised by fictional Frank Gallagher from TVs Shameless", and there's a photo to illustrate these workshy people.  As we've said before, it suits the government to have its actions portrayed in this lying way, and no recourse for the long-term unemployed who are being traduced.

Giving the game away

Work experience - a voluntary scheme since last year, when employers decided that it wasn't good for their image if people could be punished for refusing to do it.  It's not the same as the Work Programme or Mandatory Work Activity.  So that's all right.  But now Homebase has been embarrassed by the leak of an internal document which shows the scheme being promoted among Homebase's store managers.  A photo of a dozen or so jobseekers at the Haringey branch is captioned: "Would 750 hours with no payroll costs benefit YOUR store?"  This was passed to Tom Pride and has now been given wider coverage by the Guardian.  The subheading on the document is "How the work experience scheme can benefit your store".  Apparently the Haringey Homebase took 25 unpaid jobseekers in February, each working 30 hours a week for up to 8 weeks.  The Boycott Workfare group claims to have an anonymous source which says that those taking part were threatened with sanctions if they refused.  In one of those tweets which rapidly get deleted, the Finsbury Park jobcentre claimed, 2 days before the Easter holiday, that it had placed 21 people on the scheme in the Haringey store.  The union Unite is outraged.
Homebase has said all the right things.  People on the scheme are not replacing paid workers, they can leave whenever they want to, etc.  And the DWP says that there are safeguards to ensure that people are not being exploited.  But the person who drew up the Homebase document clearly saw the scheme as useful free labour.
If this is happening with the supposedly voluntary scheme, what is going on with those programmes which make no pretence to being voluntary?  Remember that the government adamantly refuses to disclose which organisations are involved, so we don't know how many other companies are benefitting from "no payroll costs".

What outsourcing did to charities

We learned on Monday that another charity, Sue Ryder, has pulled out of the Mandatory Work Activity scheme.  See the article on the Civil Society website.  They've done so after a sustained attack by the Boycott Workfare campaign.  The PDSA has also withdrawn from the scheme.  The first comment under the article, by Linda Bush of Inspirit, is an excellent summary of what's wrong with the notion of compulsory volunteering.
Sue Ryder and the PDSA are both charities in the old sense of the word.  But many charities morphed into "the voluntary sector", which then became "the third sector".  The transformation happened as the Blair government began to outsource everything in sight, and many organisations which had been formed as groups of volunteers working on particular areas of need changed into professionally run outfits dependent on contracts from local or national government.  They were not, at first, competing with the private or public sectors, but that began to change.  The voluntary sector was involved with New Deal from the outset.  As that evolved into a wholly outsourced business and then became Flexible New Deal, there was nothing to distinguish these organisations from the private sector other than the fact that didn't have shareholders.
Meanwhile, other specialist organisations, dependent on funding from government or from councils, found that the money was being diverted to the Work Programme, and to keep going they had to sign up as sub-contractors of the primes, the private sector.  It has worked for some, but been disastrous for others.
And what of the remaining charities?  They still had to raise funds for their work from the general public, and that meant using volunteers.  But increasingly they have been used as a convenient place to put people who are being made to work.  They've taken people sentenced to community service.  They've taken people on "work placements" under welfare-to-work schemes.  And now they are taking people who are being compelled to work for their benefits.
Many charities and voluntary sector organisations need to take a long, hard look at what they are doing and why.  The whole outsourcing agenda has changed them.  Has it been a change for the better?

Weekend thoughts

As we await the Work Programme performance data, we can see that the excuses are already prepared.  The figures for the number of long-term unemployed show that, far from being reduced by the WP, they are going up.  In September there was a 2% increase on the previous month for those out of work for 12 months or more, and that's a 128% increase on the same time last year.  That is a huge indictment of the scheme that was going to solve everything.  Yet we read (in the Telegraph, for example) that providers are complaining that not enough "hard to help" claimants are being put on the programme.  Those on ESA are not being referred in the numbers expected, and that cuts the possible profits of the providers.  We often read that Jobcentres are not referring people in the expected numbers, but nobody seems to have asked the Jobcentre managers why that is.
Are the providers really concerned that they're not getting enough of the most difficult clients?  They appear to be doing little or nothing to help those they do get.  We know (from the whistle-blower on Channel 4 News) that A4e's advisers have huge caseloads and have to concentrate on those most likely to get work i.e. those who've been out of work for the shortest time.  Perhaps that's because so few people are getting work.  Instead of getting them off the books, providers have to maintain contact with all these clients.  It's a mess, and it will be very difficult to present it as anything else.
We are not to be allowed to know which organisations are taking part in "workfare" programmes.  The DWP has defied the verdict of the Information Commissioner, asserting that the hostile action which would follow that disclosure would make those organisations withdraw.  That would be particularly true, they say, of MWA, the mandatory work activity programme.  The quote (in the Guardian) is that it would collapse "with incalculable losses to the taxpayer and many thousands of persons in long-term unemployment who are supported by the scheme."  I don't get the "losses to the taxpayer" bit.  And as the article says, "The government's own research also showed that the scheme does not help the unemployed to get a job once they've finished the four weeks of work.  It also had no effect on getting people off benefits in the long term." It seems, though, that most of the organisations involved in MWA are in the voluntary sector.
The government is fast approaching a formal return to the age-old concept of deserving and undeserving poor.  It's going ahead with plans to give priority in council housing lists to "working families, ex-servicemen and people who volunteer".  (See another Guardian article.)  This may not work in Labour-controlled areas.  And what constitutes volunteering?  Everybody else who is homeless would be shoved into private rented accommodation, perhaps miles from where they've always lived.
Critics talk about a return to the workhouse.  No, there won't be workhouses.  But the mindset is very similar to that which produced the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.

War on the poor

If you're under 25 and unemployed you probably feel even more depressed and persecuted than usual today.  David Cameron feels the need to assert right-wing ideas, and that means a "welfare crackdown", with the young taking the brunt of it.  The report in the Telegraph says: "Ministers expect this 'next wave' of benefit cuts to include the axing of all housing benefit currently paid to around 380,000 people aged under 25. Such a move would force many to move back in with their parents rather than living independently."  
The Express says: "It could also mean stopping the £70-a-week dole payment for individuals who do not try hard enough to get work and forcing a hard core of unemployed to do community work after two years - or lose all their benefits."  Of course, that's just making the ritual noises to appease Tories, but it's another kick in the teeth for the unemployed.  Interestingly, the Express has another article entitled "Starving in Britain" which shows clearly the effect of cutting housing benefit, and the struggle of people, even those in work, to feed their children.
If you're not angry enough yet, read the piece in the Mail on Sunday based on an interview with the Dear Leader, from which all the other reports get their information.  The headline sets the tone: "Cameron to axe housing benefits for feckless under 25s as he declares war on welfare culture."
Figures in one city I know show that there are 44 unemployed people for every job vacancy.  Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) is already forcing people to do unpaid "community" work.  Under 25s already can only get housing benefit for shared housing.  Etc., etc.  There's no need to repeat it.  

Redefining failure

One of the great advantages to government of flogging off public services is that the politicians are then not accountable.  Information is refused because it is "commercially sensitive".  Even at local council level, the taxpayers and the service users (and even councillors) are told that the details of contracts are none of their business.  The debacle over A4e highlighted the problems with this situation.  But for this government the Work Programme leaves them nowhere to hide.


Iain Duncan Smith spent years in opposition developing his theories on welfare.  Being in government has brought him face to face with reality.  But he can't afford for his theories to be proved wrong.  So, along with the imperturbable Chris Grayling, he has to insist, against all the evidence, that the Work Programme is proving a rip-roaring success.  The government can't afford for it to fail; it is the model for all future privatisation.  And if that means redefining failure as success, they'll do it.  The contracts, we are told, are strictly "payment by results".  But that isn't true.  The companies insisted on "attachment fees", an upfront payment for each starter.  Someone on the MyLegal website has analysed the finances and shown that A4e must already have received £25.3 million in attachment fees alone.  And if they are achieving only 10% job outcomes they are likely to have been paid around £32.8 million for getting 6,300 people into work.  But the dead weight figure (those who would have got work without any intervention) is reckoned to be around 25%.  When the government is finally obliged to publish figures it will be interesting to see how they get round that.  Then there's the fact that the contracts were supposed to involve small, local and charity organisations; but 28 of these have already dropped out, unable to make it pay.


What does increased "Mandatory Work Activity" do to the availability of actual jobs?  Never mind, there are plenty of jobs out there.  IDS, Grayling and other ministers trot out figures for the number of vacancies which bear an increasingly tenuous relationship with reality.  On 14 June IDS claimed that 500,000 new jobs are being added to Jobcentres every week.  The FullFact website has shown that this is simply not true.  JCP reckons it's about 10,000 a day; but any jobseeker knows that this doesn't reflect genuine job vacancies.


So annoyed is Iain Duncan Smith by the refusal of the real world to conform to his theories that he is increasingly blaming the poor for their poverty.  There's nothing new in that for the right wing of politics.  

Mandatory Work Activity - a success?

There is plenty of comment on the news that the government plans to expand the Mandatory Work Activity scheme.  If you haven't read any of it, try the Guardian.  Essentially, the plan was was for 10,000 starts in the first year, but more than 49,000 have been referred in the first 10 months.  Only 16,790 have actually started MWA.  And 46% either signed off or didn't turn up.  (I don't know how they work that out - I make that 34% no-show.)  It's such a success that they are going to spend £5m on increasing the numbers by 9,000.  And the penalty for failing to comply could be loss of benefits for 3 years.


For the right wing press, of course, this means that nearly half of long-term unemployed people are in some way fraudulent.  But does it?  Certainly there are some who are working in the black economy, cash in hand, and will sign off.  Some others are claiming whilst being kept by someone else, and would rather sign off than go on the scheme.  But nobody knows how many there are in these categories.  Some have been trying to play the system by signing off for a week or two then signing on again, assuming that the clock is wound back to the start - but it isn't.  Others will simply have decided that they don't wish to comply with MWA.  But what they will then live on, who knows?  There is no evidence of increased numbers getting jobs because of MWA.


MWA was the contract which A4e lost in one region, you remember, because their processes were too "risky".  But another £5m is to be put into the scheme.  Presumably if enough people sign off, that's a bargain.  But one question which is never addressed is, where is all this "work activity" coming from?  Which employers are benefiting from this?  There are now nearly 17,000 people out there working for up to 30 hours a week, doing what?

New investigation

The Guardian has just reported that A4e faces a new fraud investigation.  It relates to a Mandatory Work Activity contract.  "A statement said: 'As a result of this new allegation, DWP has immediately commenced its own independent audit of all our commercial relationships with A4e.  We have required A4e to make available all documentation which our auditors may require and provide full access to interview any A4e employees. This is separate from the independent review of internal controls which A4e has previously announced.  The chief executive of A4e was informed of this at a meeting with a senior DWP official earlier today.  We have made it absolutely clear to A4e that we take this matter very seriously, and that if, at any point during the audit or thereafter, we find evidence of systemic fraud in DWP's contracts with A4e, we will not hesitate to immediately terminate our commercial relationship.' "
Serious stuff. 

Mandatory Work Activity

I don't know whether A4e bid for any of the Mandatory Work Activity (MWA) contracts, but they're not among the preferred bidders. Of the eleven areas, JHP has 3, Rehab, Seetec and Ingeus 2 each, and BEST and ESG one each.

It's going to be a controversial contract. It's meant to "encourage participants to gain a better understanding of the discipline and focus that is required for work and allow them to make a contribution to their community at the same time" (Indus Delta) and it's for those who haven't been co-operative with the system up to now.