Reasonable

It always sounds completely reasonable.  The government wants to "reform" welfare in some way, and the aim is fine.  But when they try to put it into practice it becomes spiteful, inefficient and unreasonable.  

Take the aim of getting people off sickness benefits.  We all know that a problem stems from the fact that sickness benefit has always been higher than unemployment benefit.  We all know that there are many people claiming these benefits who could work.  So what do you do?  Well, this government employs a private company, Atos, to assess whether claimants are genuinely unable to work, and pays it £3.1bn.  Both the company and the government deny that there are any targets, although it's hard to see how there could not be.  For a summary of just how wrong this can go, see the Independent's article.  But when you want to do another exercise in reassessing disability allowances, you hire the same company.  What could possibly go wrong?

Or take the fact that large numbers of young people are not in education, employment or training.  It's entirely reasonable that they should be given something useful to do.  It might be reasonable to look back at what Gordon Brown did as Chancellor in the early days of the last government.  "New Deal" started as a scheme to help NEETs.  Some might see it as sensible to create jobs.  But this government has decided to make young people do 3 months unpaid work or lose their benefits.  Again, this could be seen as reasonable.  Another article in the Independent describes the scheme, which sounds familiar to anyone who remembers New Deal.  But this scheme will put people into placements with "charities and social enterprises".  It assumes that there are enough of such organisations ready to take them (there aren't).  And it will certainly be organised by a private company, for profit.

The payment by results model seemed a great idea to a government obsessed with profit.  Take off all the restraints and inspections, tell companies they can do what they like, and they will pull out all the stops.  Well, no.  An interesting piece on the Guardian's website by Su Maddock claims that innovation in the Work programme can only come through local commissioning, not through prime contractors and financial incentives.  Again, anybody who remembers New Deal, before David Blunkett privatised it, will recognise this model.  (For those who don't remember, the Jobcentre Plus regional offices held the budgets and contracted with a variety of organisations, including very local ones.)  

This government continues to confuse the reasonable with the ideological.

Gordon Brown and the unemployed

"But they shouldn’t be doing that, there is no life on the dole anymore for people, if you’re unemployed you’ve got to go back to work. At six months…" That's a quote from Gordon Brown's run-in with an elderly lady today. And, of course, it's gone unremarked. He didn't finish the sentence, but clearly the intention, if a Labour government is returned, is to copy the Tories' idea of Workfare - compulsory "training" or work-for-your-benefits, or even a cut-off point for benefits. There's nothing to distinguish Labour and the Conservatives, then, and whoever gets in we're going to see an increase in the resentment that so many unemployed people feel at being stigmatised. I see a growing number of posts and blogs on the internet from JSA claimants venting their anger. That is going to get worse.

There's a relevant article on CFE News saying that "Charity claims NEETs view employability courses with contempt".

"Barnardo’s Scotland director Martin Crewe claimed that young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) view courses designed to improve their job prospects with contempt. Mr Crewe stated that that was not what they wanted, and said: "What they want are real jobs and programmes that will get them employed - not a short-term placement which will leave them more or less back where they started. Sitting around in classrooms for long periods working on their CVs is not going to provide a major boost to the employability prospects of the young people we work with. They know it from day one and regard such schemes with contempt." He went on to say that the Barnardo's Works programme had got 80% of its young participants into sustained employment.

The Panorama Programme

The BBC having sorted out iplayer, I've now watched last night's programme about NEETs.

Back in 2007 four unemployed young men in Swindon, where there were plenty of jobs, were challenged to get work. This was a follow-up to see what has happened to them in the last three years. Digby Jones, former head of the CBI, had only a small role in the programme, but there were questions which could have been asked of him. We were told that he is "passionate about improving employment skills". But there was no mention of the fact that businesses have long since ceased to train their own employees. They decided a couple of decades ago that they would only take on people, ready qualified and experienced, off the shelf; the tax-payer has had to pick up the bill for training. Of the 4 young men, 2 got work through a work placement while on New Deal. Both are low-paid, low skills jobs; but no one would argue that this isn't a good outcome for them. Both had been employed in other jobs since 2007, but one lost his job when the company he worked for went out of business in the crash; the other resigned after 7 months. They are now seen as New Deal successes and are still in work.

The other two are still out of work. Tim had a job in a juice bar but lost it after 3 months for bad time-keeping. Ben got agency work at BMW and loved it, but was a casualty of the recession. He also had the prospect of a job through a New Deal placement, as a night porter in a hotel, but turned it down. The job went to another New Deal client after a work placement. At the end of the programme Ben was being interviewed by an FE college for an apprenticeship. Tim is doing a 3-month voluntary course to improve his employability. Both talked about the demoralisation of being unemployed. Jones had no sympathy. They were eminently employable, he said, telling them to get their hair cut, and trying to fire them up by humiliating them. Both Ben's parents and Jones said they were in favour of Workfare - force NEETs on to training or similar schemes or they forfeit their benefits. The punch line to the programme was the statement that each NEET will cost the tax-payer over £100k.

How you react to this programme will depend on your personal experience. What it highlighted for me was the lack of real skills training for young people. Schools have not engaged with vocational training enough, and the government has been concerned with getting 50% of kids to go to university and has ignored the rest.

Don't mention New Deal - again

Unemployment has fallen. But there's more evidence of the perceived irrelevance of New Deal, FND etc. Long-term unemployment has actually risen in some areas, and there has also been a significant rise in some places in those who are "economically inactive", i.e. not working or claiming benefit. On Monday a group called the Centre for Cities published a report looking at the varying fortunes of British cities in the recession. It has copious statistics on unemployment and on the skill levels in different areas. The cities with the largest increase in people claiming JSA are Swindon, Grimsby and Hull. Those with the highest youth unemployment are Birmingham, Grimsby and Hull. Those with the lowest percentage of high skills are Grimsby, Ipswich and Hull. (Poor old Hull and Grimsby, where unemployment has continued to rise.) The report sees the solution in a changed organisation of local government to attract business, and in funding FE colleges to provide skills training. This in part echoes the government's own recent report, "Building Britain's Recovery", which recognised the need for skills and qualifications if unemployed people are to find work. But, unlike the Centre for Cities report, the DWP can only think in terms of a one-size-fits-all approach.

BBC's PM Programme on Tuesday was talking to NEETs. There are almost a million NEETs, the majority of them male. The lads the programme is following have been unemployed for upwards of 6 months, and are doing everything they can to find work. There was no mention of any training programme, but perhaps they had not been out of work long enough. PM is going to follow these lads, so it will be interesting to see what happens to them. However, BBC2's "Working Lunch" today reported on a "scheme" to help the unemployed in Sheffield, run by Working Links (yes, that surprised me, too). This was undoubtedly FND, but the words "New Deal" were not uttered. The impression was given that this was a local scheme, and if mention was made of its national coverage, I missed it. We were not told how FND is financed and run. The emphasis was indeed on skills training, but it was very much the sort of training we saw under the old contracts. A woman was enthusing over the one-day courses such as Basic Food Hygiene which may well improve her CV but are unlikely to get her a job. We were told about SIA and construction training - worthy but not applicable to many unemployed people. The item was too short to be informative.

FND may well be doing some good in some places. But clearly what is needed now is proper, wide-ranging skills training, with qualifications to suit the capabilities of the job-seekers as well as the needs of employers. A lot of money and effort is being put in by councils and voluntary groups. If private companies can help, fine. But they should be under the direction of JCP on a regional basis; in other words, we should revert to what happened before the system was privatised.