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.

The drip, drip of bad publicity

I've congratulated the Guardian on its coverage of the wreckage of welfare "reform"; and now we have to add the BBC to the roll of honour.  The TV news may not carry much, but its website has several items of interest.  The first was a story yesterday by the excellent Mark Easton, headlined "Foodbanks used by thousands of jobless, figures show".  The jobcentres have referred about 6,000 people to the foodbanks in the last year.  You would think that would be a matter of some shame for Iain Duncan Smith, but no.  "Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said directing people to food banks was a short-term method of alleviating their financial problems.  'I've said to Job Centres, sort their problem out. If it is a case of food banks, Job Centres are meant to help passport people through to that so they can get them stable, so they can deal with their problems.'"  He also said that he's proud of the fact that his government changed the law to allow the jobcentres to refer people to the foodbanks.  "What would you prefer?" he asked.
Also yesterday, the Guardian reported that an attempt to get the issue of targets for sanctions included in the forthcoming enquiry into the sanctions regime was defeated in the House of Lords.  The article is well worth reading for the peculiar argument of Lord Freud.
An even more worrying report in the Guardian says that "food stamps" will arrive in Britain next month.  Vouchers in the form of payment cards will replace emergency loans.  For those who don't know the history, there was once something called an emergency grant, for those on benefits who needed one-off items like a bed or a cooker.  They were replaced by loans, thus shattering the notion that there was a minimum income which people needed to live on.  Now even that is gone, replaced by these "vouchers" which will block their exchange for alcohol, cigarettes or gambling.  Perhaps this is why Alec Shelbrooke was persuaded to withdraw his private member's bill to pay all benefits via such cards.  "Don't worry, Alec," the minister might have said.  "We're bringing it in gradually."
The BBC reports a pronouncement by Frank Field MP.  He used to be a welfare minister in the Labour government, and came up with some pretty drastic ideas for welfare reform which were never implemented.  Now, he's advising social housing landlords to brick up doors and knock down walls to get rid of spare rooms, and so get round the "bedroom tax".  It's an interesting idea.
Today the BBC has published an excellent article on its website detailing all the new benefit changes.  Essential reading.  It also reports that a judicial review of the housing benefit changes is to go ahead after the government lost an attempt to stop it.
Finally, Iain Duncan Smith attended an event in Edinburgh hosted by Capita to deliver a speech on pensions reform.  He was heckled by a determined protester, Willie Black, who called him a "parasite" and a "ratbag".  You can read about it in the Guardian or watch it on the BBC's website.  Enjoy.
I wonder if the BBC's coverage has sparked more formal complaints from Mr Duncan Smith.

Sanctions - shocking story

I'm obliged to an anonymous comment which gives a link to an interview in a phone-in programme on Radio Merseyside.  It can be found 2.06.50 in.  A caller said that he is on the Work Programme with A4e and was supposed to be doing jobsearch today with them.  But he got a phone call from his son's school to say that the 10-year-old was ill, feverish.  As he collected his sick child from school he got a phone call from A4e to say that he would be sanctioned.  The interviewer established that this meant he would lose his JSA but he didn't know whether it would be for weeks or months.  The woman from A4e, said the client, was almost sympathetic, but said she had no choice.  This accords with the provider guidance issued by the DWP which says that a "sanction doubt" must be raised whenever someone fails to comply, e.g. misses an appointment, and cannot be rescinded if the explanation is accepted.  The interviewer, Roger Phillips, said that it was the responsibility of the DWP and the minister, and they would be following it up.  I hope we get to hear the response.

Earlier I had heard a short report on the BBC news by Mark Easton on the implications of Universal Credit. He spoke to a man in Glasgow who had been sanctioned (and is therefore destitute) because he failed to do jobsearch by computer; he can't use a computer.  Easton pointed out that under UC all clients will have to use a computer.  He put the problem to Iain Duncan Smith, who said that 90% of people can now use a computer.  A worker in the constituency (I didn't catch from what organisation) said that two thirds of the people there can't, and anyway using one in a public place like a library was not acceptable for such private business.  Cut back to IDS who said that they will discuss it with councils and if necessary "make adjustments".

Unemployment and privatisation

The unemployment figures which came out yesterday weren't over-hyped, even by the government.  For an excellent analysis of what they mean, read Mark Easton on the BBC news site.  Long-term unemployment is rising inexorably, which shows that the Work Programme isn't doing what it was supposed to do.  But no one is really asking why.

The G4S fiasco has opened up a debate about the whole privatisation project.  We're still not entirely clear what went wrong, but it was a disaster waiting to happen.  It must be galling for A4e that the company is routinely linked with G4S as an example of the dangers of outsourcing.  But will the lessons be learned?  There's a very thoughtful piece in the New Statesman by Rick Muir, and another in the Guardian by Seamus Milne.  Here are my observations, for what they're worth.

One of my earliest concerns when I started examining A4e was how quickly one company could drive out the competition.  The bigger the contract, the more likely this is to happen.  And when everything is privatised, where do you go when things go wrong?  When the public sector no longer exists, you can't take a service back in-house.  Olympic security now depends on the army and the police.  But my pension is now run by Capita.  What happens if they screw up?  Serco runs an out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall which has become so poor that they've been ordered to improve it.  What happens if they can't?  Three companies - Serco, G4S and Capita - now run vast  numbers of services in this country.  You and I have no control over them.  It is no longer a case of deciding that private profit is a better motivator than public service.  The politicians decided that long ago.  It's no coincidence that many of the politicians have connections with these companies.  Perhaps it takes a huge mess like that which G4S has put us in to focus minds.

Your thoughts, please.

One in seven

There was an interesting item on the BBC news today about the Work Programme.  Mark Easton went to Liverpool, to A4e's office there, after meeting Cheryl, a 21-year-old who has been out of work for a year and is willing to do anything.  He follows her as she goes to A4e for the first time.  And then we learn that only one in seven of their clients there have found work after seven months.  That's just over 14%.  And it must be around the "dead weight" figure, of those who would have found work anyway.  We meet Dave, middle-aged, long-term unemployed and very worried.  It's a buyer's market out there, with only the prospect of shift work at the Jacobs biscuit factory if he's lucky.  A4e's Steve Wright, looking nervous, says that it's a competitive market, and he can't control the labour market.  Back to Cheryl, who is doing the rounds with her CV.  But employers say they get hundreds of them.  Finally, A4e admits that they can't create jobs.  (What about those "hidden jobs" Emma Harrison is always on about?)


This wasn't a hatchet job on A4e.  But it's good to see the BBC looking carefully at the Work Programme and sympathetically at the unemployed.

Inspirational

The CBI's Annual Conference recently held a panel debate with the title "Good for Britain, good for business, good for growth". A4e's Emma Harrison was on the panel. Two other members are also bosses of outsourcing companies (Circle Health and Apetito, which provides catering services to hospitals). So you can see why the word "good" was being stressed. The Yorkshire Post described Harrison as "chairman of Sheffield social purpose firm A4e, which gets people into work", and reports that "Ms Harrison urged firms to 'do well by doing good'." This is a familiar mantra of Harrison. It doesn't seem to have been her only contribution. Michael Gillick, boss of a company called Paritas Ltd, tweeted to her, "A colleague said your speech at the CBI conference was inspirational. Is it published anywhere?" Emma replied that they were filming so it could be on the CBI's website.

BBC cameras were in the Liverpool A4e office for a news item about the Work Programme shown on 7 November. A4e say that the two young people filmed are being followed by the reporter, Mark Easton. So can we expect that all the stops will be pulled out to get these two into jobs? I hope so, for their sakes. Meanwhile, another contract enables A4e to say that it is "assisting in helping service heroes start their own business". This involves money from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills awarded to the Royal British Legion to help service leavers start their own businesses. The RBL have naturally sub-contracted this to firms like A4e.

Work Programme failure - and mutuals

A4e appeared in the news yesterday on BBC as reporter Mark Easton went to Liverpool to look at how the Work Programme is working there. It was a frustratingly short piece, but got the essence of the problem. There are far too many people chasing far too few jobs. Two clients appeared; a young man with a criminal conviction, and a woman with qualifications. The only work available for the young man was shift work via an agency in a factory where conditions are notoriously bad. Easton put the point to the A4e manager that providers would inevitably cherry-pick, ignoring the hardest-to-help. All credit to the chap, he said that they didn't do that because it wouldn't be fair.

Patrick Butler of the Guardian keeps on the case with a piece about the failure of the WP to involve the voluntary sector as it's supposed to. A charity called New Deal of the Mind has a very good track record of getting young people into work in the arts and media. It is now signed up as a sub-contractor of A4e. But it hasn't had a single referral from A4e. Butler hasn't managed to get to the bottom of this situation, but there's some evidence that JCP isn't referring many young people onto the WP. The voluntary sector is caught in the trap of not being able to invoke the Merlin rules (which is supposed to ensure that primes treat their supply chain fairly) because they don't want to destroy the relationship they have, or want to have, with those primes.

There's an interesting piece on the Public Finance website. One of this government's big ideas was to push groups of public sector workers into forming "mutuals" - companies owned by their workers - and bidding for contracts. That last bit was rarely mentioned. But now the predictions of many people are starting to come true. A health sector mutual has lost out in bidding for a contract to a private company. This does not please Patrick Burns, director of something called the Employee Ownership Association. "If you don’t do something with the commissioning environment, then in five or ten years time you will not be dealing with mutuals, you will be dealing with (outsourcing companies) Serco, Capita and Virgin. Not that they are bad companies, but it’s not the point." Someone from the Cabinet Office pointed out that there are "expert mentors" in place to help "pathfinder mutuals". These mentors include A4e. At some point this is going to bring about another interesting situation.