Two verdicts on Universal Credit

Two programmes looked at UC last night (I had to catch up on both online this morning).

The first was a Channel 4 Dispatches programme.  Now, Channel 4 brought you Benefits Street, and the producers of that pernicious propaganda recently insisted that they wouldn't be "censored" and will go ahead with the next rotten slice; so could we trust the channel to do something truthful on UC?  Amazingly, yes.  Liz MacKean, a real journalist, went to Warrington earlier this year to look at how it was working.  They found four claimants, who could never be describes as scroungers, who had suffered problems and hardship because of mistakes, delays, confusion and poor staff training.  There were tales of the system not being able to cope with a change in circumstances; of the huge hike in rent arrears and debt.  A whistle-blower from a DWP service centre spoke of staff being overwhelmed by the workload.  Significantly, perhaps, it was Mark Harper, the newish minister for the disabled, who was put up to answer for all this.  He seems to be the new face of the DWP; Iain Duncan Smith and McVey are both, perhaps, seen as liabilities.  Harper talked blandly, of course; but there seemed no recognition that real people are suffering real harm as they "learn from their mistakes" at the DWP.

The second programme was a Radio 4 Analysis episode.  Most of it is summarised in the presenter's own piece in yesterday's Guardian.  Jonathan Portes used to work at the DWP so has an insider's view of what has gone on.  The radio programme was striving for "balance".  We got Kwasi Kwarteng, a Tory MP, making excuses for Duncan Smith.  Worse, we got a sizeable contribution from Fraser Nelson.  He's the editor of the Spectator, a small circulation right-wing magazine, and he also writes for the Telegraph, for which he has produced the most deluded tosh about "welfare reform".  He repeated it on the radio.  (For balance, Margaret Hodge told the truth.)  We got a damning description of the failures of IDS, in UC and in the Atos fiasco.  There was no mention of the dreadful damage that's been done to real people because of IDS's delusions, just a description of the financial costs.

Everyone except IDS seems now to agree that UC is a write-off, and will be ditched whoever is in power after May.

Harking back to yesterday's post, A4e have tweeted an apology.

No news, good news and questions

It's all quiet at the moment. As always, a subject is in the news for a while then drops out as if it had never been. G4S is advertising for an ESF Project Manager for the new contracts and has published its plans for the different regions. They don't seem to include Families Unlimited. Meanwhile the Working Families Everywhere website carries news, dated 13 September, of the Advisory Board meeting on 6 September, and promises to publish the minutes of the meeting when they're available. Should be interesting. But are we to assume that Emma Harrison's pet project will go ahead even when the ESF contracts are awarded? Will it just be volunteers, the paid people having been sacked or sent over to the contractors; and where will those volunteers stand in relation to the contractors?

A4e's Roy Newey has been getting excited about business prospects in Saudi Arabia and Latvia. But back in Britain the Radio 4 "Report" on the Work Programme brought out the fact that we can have no figures and no real idea of what's going on. It seems that the contractors are being deluged with clients and don't have time to do anything constructive with them. But they can still earn money. Some of those clients will get jobs - what Chris Grayling called the dead weight figure - owing nothing whatever to the private companies, but those companies will still get the payment.

Business as usual

Anyone who thought that A4e's embarrassment over the workless families contracts would prove a turning point in the company's fortunes is probably guilty of wishful thinking. It's business as usual. Roy Newey is in India with a trade delegation of training organisations, including some FE colleges, and he is quoted as saying, "eastern India provides exciting opportunities to further strengthen India-UK cooperation in skills and education sector." Mark Lovell has been in the US. I suspect that Emma Harrison will not be giving interviews for a while; but there's a piece in the Sun, (dated 1 September) which is straightforward PR for her; and the Sun, sadly, has a bigger circulation than the Guardian. And now the BBC is running an item about research into "problem families" which reminds us that Cameron "appointed Emma Harrison as a 'family champion' to lead a drive to get workless families back into employment" with not even a nod to the Guardian revelations. We won't get to know whether Harrison's cosy relationship with MPs has been damaged, but it won't affect the company's ability to win contracts in the future.

The Financial Times previews the Radio 4 programme on the Work Programme (Thursday 15 September, 8.00 pm). Chris Grayling denies that there will be any renegotiation of the contracts, although "providers now say privately that they intend to make cost savings if they are unable to meet targets, raising the spectre that very little will be spent on helping those going through the scheme." And with the sort of irony which leaves one shaking one's head in disbelief, the programme quotes Hayley Taylor as saying that the WP is "crude and often ineffective". " “Grouping people together is just not going to work because what someone who has been long term unemployed needs and what someone who has been newly made redundant needs are two totally different things,' she said." If that's the level of insight of the programme, with all those staff and clients whose views were solicited ignored, then it won't be worth listening to.

Libel and an appeal

If I was still a jobseeker (and thank God I'm not) I would be trying to instigate legal action against the Daily Express for libel. Yesterday they had to tone down a vicious piece about "workshy Britain". Today they've come back with two vile little pieces instead of one. One headed "4m Scrounging Families in Britain" reports the latest figures, with nothing whatever to justify the "scroungers" label. They quote their pals the Taxpayers' Alliance (which is simply a Tory-funded lobby group) on the subject of "over-generous benefits". Not content with that, there's an equally nasty piece headed "400 jobs up for grabs .... but nobody wants them". Apparently it's in Penzance. "A spokesman at the town’s Jobcentre blamed our soft-touch welfare state which has taken away the incentive to find work." This chap is not named, unsurprisingly. There's no analysis of what these vacancies are actually for - how many are not real jobs, for instance, or whether they require skills or experience which no one in the area has. No, it's just another way to traduce the unemployed. Just what is the editor's motive in this maniacal campaign?

I've been contacted by a Radio 4 journalist who is working on a programme about the government’s Work Programme, and wants to hear from people who are currently doing courses run by private providers such as A4E, Ingeus, Reed in Partnership, Seetec etc., or have recently been on FND. She would be interested to hear about the experiences of both clients and current or former staff of all the providers. Her email address is anna.meisel@bbc.co.uk and her telephone number is 07706154283. She assures me that all contacts will be treated in strict confidence.

Not entirely unrelated is a request from me to a few people who have posted comments on this blog in April, May and July this year which I have not published. Doncaster and Nottingham were mentioned. Please get in touch with me via a comment I will NOT publish.

The house she grew up in

If you're interested in Emma Harrison's childhood, this BBC Radio 4 programme is for you. But you won't learn anything about A4e. The programme starts at Thornbridge Hall, with its 100 acres of land. Emma describes it as a "mini Versailles" and enthuses over how big everything is. They then move to her childhood home in Belgrave Road, Sheffield, where she talks about her father, her largely absent mother, and the influences on her. Next it's to her secondary school, where she turned into an entrepreneur. And they finish up back at Thornbridge Hall, which she describes as a community of friends. All quite interesting. She is "one of the UK's wealthiest self-made women". But the only mention of A4e is as having government contracts for welfare to work. No other contracts are listed. The scope of the company's interests is ignored.

Okay, this wasn't a programme about the business. But that's the problem. All this publicity for Emma Harrison takes the place of any scrutiny of her company.

Emma on Radio 4

Emma Harrison is the star of BBC Radio 4's "The House I grew up in", at 9.00 am today and repeated at 9.00 pm tonight. She's talking about her childhood and the formation of A4e etc. Enjoy.

In Search of the British Work Ethic, episode 2

This was a confused and rather annoying programme (Radio 4, 11 January 2010). Melanie Phillips joined immigrant workers in the catering and cleaning industries and came face to face with the reality of their lives. With the help of an academic she concluded that their dignity and work ethic were admirable, and were driven by the fact that there was no welfare state in the countries they come from. But they were undeniably exploited. Phillips is floundering by the end of the programme. She knows that when Jim Knight MP waffles about tax credits and joining trade unions he is not addressing the reality. But the work ethic has been destroyed in this country because there's no incentive to work hard and no penalty for not working. Frank Field MP pointed out that for many the rewards of working are too small. The head of the Low Pay Commission says that they can't make moral judgements, but Phillips has grasped that it is a moral issue. She ends by saying that compassion has to be reconciled with personal responsibility. The issues raised by this programme, and the first episode, are very important, and at least Phillips has challenged her own attitudes. Unfortunately, those attitudes haven't changed.

Don't mention New Deal

Two things struck me most about tonight's Radio 4 programme in which right-wing journalist Melanie Phillips looked at unemployment. The first was that there was no mention of New Deal. Earlier in the evening there had been an item on the Today programme about NEETs, which featured an apparently successful 12-week course run by Barking Council. Then Phillips went to Blythe in Northumbria and looked at a similar course run by the Prince's Trust; and at a project for the long-term unemployed run by South Tyneside local authority. Finally Phillips spoke to Jim Knight MP about the benefits system. But nobody mentioned New Deal. Vast amounts of money have been spent, and continue to be spent, on New Deal in its various incarnations, but whenever people write, or make programmes about, unemployment it seems to be regarded as irrelevant. Why?

The second thing that struck me was that although Phillips was trying to understand, and said that she felt "chastened" after meeting a couple on IB, she showed the great gulf in the realities of people like her and those of the poor. Several of the lads she talked to in Blythe spoke of the restrictions of lack of mobility; the expense of bus travel, the lack of transport in some cases. One young man had just passed his driving test and had got a job because of that. To Phillips this showed the lads' lack of mental and emotional "equipment" to get themselves out of the trap. It didn't occur to her that it costs a great deal of money to learn to drive, and that the lack, or expense, of public transport is a very real barrier. This incomprehension means that very little of her thesis is credible. Still, she tried.

Melanie Phillips on unemployment

Anyone interested in the issue of unemployment will want to listen to a Radio 4 programme at 8.00 pm next Monday and the following Monday. "Journalist Melanie Phillips embarks on a personal journey to explore what work means to some of the most vulnerable and socially-excluded people in Britain. Melanie is known for her uncompromising views on the 'workshy' beneficiaries of the welfare state but will her theories stand up in the face of the complex and difficult lives of the people she meets?" So says the BBC website. Phillips' "uncompromising views" are, in fact, increasingly common among those with no first-hand experience. "In this first programme," we read, "Melanie travels to the north-east of England to meet unemployed young people who are struggling to find their way into the labour market and a married couple who are desperate to move themselves into work and away from dependency." It will be interesting to see if there is any mention of New Deal and the various private companies involved. In episode 2 "Melanie spends time with cleaners and catering staff working on the minimum wage and asks what motivates them to work. Would Melanie's own assiduous work ethic survive night shifts, low pay and cleaning lavatories?" Good question, but I suspect the answer is yes.