The latest fantasy from Iain Duncan Smith

Wearily we have to notice the speech IDS was due to make today, which was trailed so exhaustively that there's no need to read it.  Yesterday's Telegraph naturally had the most sympathetic coverage.  Apparently the government is "matching economic recovery with social recovery", but "the economy will never fully recover unless families on benefits return to work".  That's the big problem for Smith.  His big plans have failed to get well over 2 million people back into work (or into work for the first time) and he takes it personally.  How dare they remain unemployed?  He has stated that "the way our benefits system is constructed" is responsible for the number of immigrants, coming to take the jobs British people refuse to take.  The Guardian gives more detail on the figures IDS will cite and they quote him: 
"When we took office, there were nearly five million people on out-of-work benefits. It was clear to me that in large part this situation was the product of a dysfunctional welfare system that often trapped those it was supposed to help in cycles of worklessness and dependency.  My one aim as work and pensions secretary has been to change this culture – and everything we have done, every programme we have introduced, has been about supporting everyone who is able to into work.  The scale of the change has been enormous – but we are delivering, and it is changing our country for the better."
If that makes you want to scream and throw things, I'm sorry.  That's the make-believe world that IDS lives in.  All those lives he's ruined; the trail of misery and destitution he's left; the lies about sanctions - they are nothing to him.  He was asked by a BBC reporter recently if he worried about cases of people suffering.  He said they made him "sad" and he wanted to understand them.  It was actually revealing.  These cases, these people, are not real to him.  They are shadows he can dismiss.
Policy Exchange, the Tory "think tank", has come up with some ways of slashing the income of the poorest even further.  One idea is to reduce the benefit cap, currently £26,000 pa, still further outside the south-east corner of the country.  IDS said, "We're not working on that," which doesn't rule it out for the future.  It's an acknowledgement that the biggest driver of high household benefits is rent; but it ignores the fact that there are people needing benefits in some high-cost areas outside London.  PE also wants to limit child benefits to 4 children.  That might get a sympathetic hearing; but it would significantly increase child poverty.
This is the message which the Tories will take into the election.  The out-of-work are wilfully unemployed and they are the cause of all society's ills.  But by making them suffer ever greater deprivation the Tories will persuade them to get a job.
I read an interesting piece recently (I've lost the link) which said that the only conclusion to be drawn from the puzzling employment statistics was that lots of people were working without paying tax.  They must be in very casual work or notional self-employment, or the deliberate black economy.  Yes.

Changes at A4e

We knew that various directors of A4e had come and gone, having done their stints on the board.  However, separately from that, Mark Lovell has gone.  His job was terminated at the end of May (yes, I know it's July now, but I've only just picked it up.)  He had been with A4e since the start in 1991, and there were those who said that he was the brains behind the business rather than Emma Harrison.  Lovell kept a low profile, in contrast to Ms Harrison, and I only remember seeing him on TV once.  He was Executive Chairman of A4e for over 22 years, but in September last year he stepped down and became a non exec director.  He's now become the principal of something called The Social Assistance Partnership.   So all the old guard has gone.

There could be some new business for A4e if the Conservatives win in 2015.  The "think tank" Policy Exchange, which is actually a Tory brand, wants to privatise jobcentres.  There's a useful article in the Belfast Telegraph, and another on the Huffington Post site.  The service would be split and the "employment services arm" privatised while the rest would be renamed Citizen Support.  It's inevitable that any service still in the public sector will be outsourced sharpish if the Tories get in.

£10bn cuts

If you are unemployed you will be aware by now that it's your fault.  You lounge about at home in the lap of luxury while your neighbours go out early every morning to work for their living.  You need to be forced to work.  Ridiculous, isn't it?  But instead of having a rational debate about the reform of welfare, the Conservatives have decided to cut benefits piecemeal.  Having spent at least a decade in collusion with the right-wing press to demonise benefits claimants, they can now conduct polls and focus groups to show how popular it is to cut benefits.  Surprise, surprise.  There's no point in debating the rights and wrongs of this, because it's going to happen.  What is worth talking about is a radical rethink of the whole basis of welfare.  If you have any thoughts on this, please comment.

There have been a number of interesting reports in the last few days, both factual and speculative.  A piece in the Telegraph tells of the views of a group of Tory MPs.  They want to cut JSA by 10% after 6 months of unemployment and by another 10% after 12 months.  Another far right group, the think tank Policy Exchange, has come up with a report that shows that nearly a third of people leaving JSA are back "on the dole" (their words) within eight months.  Now, the conclusions they draw from this are bizarre.  Jobcentre Plus should have the same incentives as WP providers (despite the fact that there are as yet no published results for the WP).  Nasty things should happen to claimants of top-up benefits who are not doing all they can to find higher-paid or full-time work.  It seems to be about penalising people for the economic reality they can do nothing about.

Another interesting snippet comes from a BBC news piece about a disability rights campaigner at the Tory conference.  G4S has raised concerns about the number of referrals they are getting.  They have halved in recent months.  This is not contradicted by a DWP spokesman, who says that the number of referrals was always predicted to fall after the first year.  This is puzzling because it doesn't square with what we've heard about at least one A4e office, where the first appointment for someone referred was 7 weeks after the first phone call, and staff said they were overwhelmed by the numbers.  Was that unusual?

Volunteers and mandatory work

The voluntary sector continues to complain bitterly about being let down by the prime providers of the Work Programme. Organisations were assured that, as sub-contractors, they would get referrals, but haven't. But they now say that the primes are "passing clients to volunteer centres without payment". A briefing paper by volunteering england (they don't believe in capital letters) names A4e among a number of providers which have referred people to a volunteer centre "without any prior contact" and with no suggestion of payment. It's not at all clear what's going on; but the providers have always been used to sending clients off to charities to "volunteer" and have probably continued to do that without realising that things have changed.

There are numerous stories about the mandatory "community work" for people who have been unemployed for two years or more. There's a straightforward summary in the Yorkshire Post and the Guardian expands on the story. It's left to the Telegraph to give a platform to the ultra-right wing "think tank", the Policy Exchange, to crow about this "experiment with workfare". I seem to remember that when this was originally touted it was as 6 months of actual paid work. That was always going to be difficult. And there's no suggestion of payment now, just benefit. For those who wish to get to grips with the details, the DWP has helpfully published the provider guidance. The scheme is known, cheerfully, as CAP.

Britain's Secret Fat Cats

I managed to watch this Channel 4 Dispatches programme on 4OD - or rather, the first two thirds of it. It seems that if you pause a programme on 4OD you can't restart it, but have to go back to the beginning. I saw enough to applaud this exposure of the reality of outsourcing.

It focussed on the three biggest companies, Serco, Capita and G4S. We were reminded that David Cameron called in these and other companies to renegotiate some contracts, but the big 3 are totally unconcerned about taking a small hit now, because there's so much business in the pipeline. They are all buoyant about the vast amounts they will make in the near future. Capita's Paul Pindar reckoned they had 30 contract opportunities, worth £4.7bn, and Serco has a £16.5bn order book. The reporter tried to get at the details of these contracts but was told by the government that they were commercially confidential - giving the lie to Cameron's promise of "transparency" in government contracts. Bear in mind in what follows that A4e are in a rather different category to these 3; it isn't a publicly listed company with shareholders, so we can't get at figures for executive pay. Last year Chris Hyman of Serco got £5m, Nick Buckles of G4S got £4m and, in 2008, Paul Pindar of Capita got £10m. And half or more of their business comes from the privatisation of the public sector. We were treated to a fascinating explanation of the self-serving system which results in obscene levels of executive pay. The tax-payer who provides the dosh for the pay of the execs of the outsourcing companies has no say in how much they should get.

The programme then turned to the Work Programme. It looked at Liverpool, where a small local outfit had used the Future Jobs Fund to secure work and / or training fpr more than 400 people. Despite Cameron's talk of the Big Society, power devolving to local people, this organisation and all those like it will not be in the running for contracts under the WP; but in the North West both Serco and G4S are on the shortlist. It was clear, we were told, that even if small, local organisations start out as players in the Big Society, they will soon be swallowed up by the big fish.

The Financial Times has maintained its interest in the finances of the Work Programme. On 8 March they reported that some of the larger providers were privately dubious about whether the payment by results system was going to stack up. They can't afford not to be in it, but they are banking on the fact that the government can't let it fall over and will bail them out if necessary. Yesterday they quoted Chris Grayling's response. No provider will have more than "a limited number of contracts", in order to spread the load if anyone goes bust. And, he said, the providers can make "shedloads" of money if they get the hardest to help into work.

All in all, quite depressing.

PS. Emma Harrison was speaking at a meeting of the Policy Exchange, a Tory think tank, today about Working Families Everywhere.