"The Report" revisits the Work Programme

Six months after it first looked at the Work Programme, The Report on BBC Radio 4 revisited it.  Helpfully, the BBC published a piece on its website which could have avoided the need to listen to it at all.  But it was interesting.  The main focus was on those charities and voluntary organisations which are struggling, finding the WP not financially viable.  Despite gagging clauses in the contracts which forbid sub-contractors from doing anything to "damage the reputation" of the primes or "attract adverse publicity, one charity, the Single Homeless Project, has pulled out of its contract with Seetec and has been the first organisation willing to talk to the media.  What it boils down to is that the primes, the big companies, are not passing down the money to the charities to enable them to deliver the support necessary to the clients; they are only passing down the risk.

The Boston Consulting Group has produced a report pointing out that the DWP itself says that the "dead weight figure" - the proportion expected to get work if there was no WP - is 28%, and the assumption in the WP is that between a half and three quarters of the money paid out will be on those dead weight numbers, i.e. unnecessarily.  Chris Grayling and the DWP say that this is a misunderstanding of the figures.  Richard Johnson, who used to be with Serco and was involved in the contract negotiations, says that the model is wrong and is encoraging "creaming and parking", as so many said it would.

So what of the clients, asked the reporter.  Of the several clients who were interviewed six months ago, none have found work.  One, an A4e client, has had two interviews but there were 170 applicants for one of the jobs.  He said he had had no support from A4e, but the local office disputes this.
Back to the voluntary organisations, which the primes were obliged to include in their tender for the contracts.  They were called "bid candy" by some, and there are those which were not even aware that they had been put into a bid document.  Others have not signed a contract and have had no involvement with the WP.  Grayling had said that he would crack down on this, but now says that he hasn't received a single complaint about it. 

The Financial Times revealed the other day that the DWP has contingency plans in case A4e is stripped of its contracts.