A new government - the implications

As a coalition government forms and the cabinet appointments are announced, contractors like A4e may well feel both apprehensive and hopeful. Michael Gove is education secretary, so there's going to be scope for the private sector in schools. Theresa May is not, as we expected, Work & Pensions secretary; that job has apparently gone to Ian Duncan Smith. What that will mean for the Work Programme is anyone's guess at the moment. But IDS does understand the benefits system and, more importantly, its effects on real people, and he will probably stand up to the private sector.

Benefits claimants should be worried but not, I think, frightened. The worst Tory attitudes should be tempered by their coalition partners.

Limbo

First we note that Jim Knight, who had to defend the last government's actions on welfare-to-work, lost his seat at the general election. He is no longer an MP but it's fascinating that he is still a minister, because they all remain in office until a new government is in place.

The private companies which profit from government contracts are in limbo, like the rest of us. If, as seems likely, Conservative Theresa May becomes Work & Pensions secretary, contracts for phase 2 of FND will not be signed. Work for Your Benefit, Community Task Force Phase 2, Invest to Save, and the Personalised Employment Programme are also under threat if a Tory government carries out its promise / threat to implement the Work Programme. The problem with that is that it means asking bidders for FND phase 2 to revise their bids, and that could result in legal challenges. We can only wait and see.

The Guardian interview - a response

Perhaps even the Guardian editor realised that the recent interview with Emma Harrison was somewhat one-sided. Today the paper has published a response by Carol Ann Lintern, who says that she "recently retired after 23 years working on employment service programmes designed to assist long-term jobless clients back to work." It's an intelligent and well-informed piece. "Most long-term unemployed people I came across," she says, "were male, over 45, living alone, unskilled or semi-skilled, computer illiterate and with poor literacy. These men had often worked in manufacturing or some form of manual labour. As well as there being a lack of jobs, they were also up against school-leavers who were paid less and were probably in a better physical condition. Not only this, but effective job searches now require the ability to complete an application online. And the current job search programme provides tuition which is online only – useless to people who have little knowledge of computers." She contradicts Harrison's assertion that the box-ticking culture of the old contracts has gone. It has been replaced, she says, by a focus on getting the paperwork right for the Ofsted inspection.

I could quibble with some of what Lintern says, but on the whole it's an excellent antidote to Emma Harrison.

CLACs - an update

CLACs - Community Legal Advice Centres - were dreamed up by the Legal Services Commission as a way of reducing the huge amounts spent on legal aid.

Local authorities which used to fund advice charities like CAB now had to put this service out to tender, seeking bids from partnerships between solicitors and advice organisations. When the second and third of these contracts, in Leicester and Hull, were won by A4e in partnership with Howells solicitors, it looked like the LSC was thinking that perhaps it wasn't such a good idea after all. A group called the Legal Action Group said that plans for more were to be delayed or abandoned. But the LSC was adamant that this was not the case. In a docment published last November it insisted that "although the LSC believes that joint commissioning with other funders is the best model for achieving truly integrated services, the LSC is only likely to commission further Community Legal Advice services, such as centres or networks, in a limited number of new areas between 2010 and 2013. That assumes the LSC is satisfied with the outcome of the 2010 tender."

There are now five CLACs (Derby and Portsmouth have been added, but A4e is not involved in either) as well as similar arrangements in the East Riding of Yorkshire and in West Sussex, where no information is available about which organisations are involved. Five more CLACs are planned, in Barking & Dagenham, Gloucestershire, Manchester, Sunderland and Wakefield,and the Gateshead CLAC is coming up for re-tendering. It will be interesting to see whether A4e, or any other private company, wants to get involved. Meanwhile, the A4e-run Hull CLAC reports advising more than 15,000 people in its 18 months of operation, and achieving positive outcomes for 75% of those people.

Spinning the figures

We reported earlier this month that A4e had published the results of its first 6 months of FND. There had been, it said, nearly 30,000 starters and 2,630 into work. It also said that the figure for "sustained" jobs was nearly 200.

Now look at how this is being spun by A4e in local papers around the country.

Hull Daily Mail: "Almost 170 long-term unemployed people in Hull have successfully secured local jobs thanks to support from welfare-to- work provider A4e."

Halesowen News: "A4e, a nationwide group with offices in Wolverhampton Street, has given support and advice to help 139 people find work in its Dudley area"

Birmingham Mail: "More than 400 long-term unemployed people in the Black Country have won jobs with local firms thanks to support and advice from welfare-to-work provider A4e"

The similarity of wording in these pieces show that they originated with A4e; none of them say how many people have taken part in this programme, nor how many of these jobs are "sustained". All genuine jobs are to be celebrated, but this is spin, not news.

Yet more publicity

As if the interview in the Guardian wasn't enough for one day, Emma Harrison appeared on the BBC news this evening. Stephanie Flanders did a report on the financial mess in the country, and pointed to A4e as one company which had "thrived under Labour" and had now "gone global". There was a brief appearance from Harrison, naturally chirpy, saying that they are bringing all the tax revenues back to the UK, and that has to be a good thing.

One would love to see Flanders, a genuine economics and business expert, do a proper interview with Ms Harrison. She could ask about the failure of the 2006-2009 contracts to deliver the goods; and she could probe the cost to the taxpayer of each job outcome under FND, and whether it could be done better and more cheaply. But that kind of scrutiny isn't on the agenda of the media at the moment.

Even the Guardian!

When even the Guardian joins the fan club one despairs of journalism altogether. Today it carries a long piece by its economics reporter, Katie Allen, entitled "Recruitment boss feels the benefits of getting unemployed back to work" which is flawed from the start, describing A4e as an employment agency.

It is a long interview with Emma Harrison, reporting uncritically her ideas and attitudes. FND is described, and the reporter tentatively raises the possibility that it "encourages agencies to work with the most promising cases". Not so, says Harrison, who "insists A4e will work with anyone who turns up and takes part, and that there is no cherry-picking. Rather it is about leaving behind the old government contractors' culture of box ticking and instead focusing on securing the right job – one that will last." We learn of a great idea from A4e. "One of A4e's ways of rebuilding battered self-esteem is through a new project called People Helping People. It came about when a disgruntled, degree-qualified customer wrote to Harrison to complain he had been asked to help another with their CV. Harrison replied: "Isn't it wonderful you are able to help other people." Then she asked her staff to get participants to help each other based on their talents. "In the very act of doing something your self-worth is boosted. You don't need self-esteem classes. It's really simple and not fanciful philosophies."" [Fact: all providers have always used clients to help other clients, partly because it gives the better-qualified clients something to do, and partly because it helps to make up for staff shortages.]

The interview continues in the same unquestioning way. Harrison is "not political" and has worked with Conservative and Labour governments. [Does Allen know about David Blunkett's role with A4e?] The scope of A4e's ambition is accepted as sensible. "She wants to be allowed to help whole families, as the company does in Germany. Currently, getting one member a job can cut payouts – such as housing benefit – to the rest of the family, so there is less incentive to take that work. "When you have got intergenerational unemployment, the whole family unemployed and you are working with just one person, everything you do can be undermined by the family when they get home that night," explains Harrison." What "helping whole families" actually implies is not examined. Nor are the implications of Harrison's final ambition - "earlier help for the unemployed."

Ms Allen's interview has resulted in an article which is unworthy of a left-wing newspaper. She has failed to scrutinise the claims of her interviewee and written what is essentially a PR triumph for A4e.