Round-up of the week

It's been an interesting week. After Sunday's TV appearance by Emma Harrison we had to wait for statements from ministers Chris Grayling and David Freud to find out what she meant by her "whole families" claim and her assumption that A4e would be delivering the new contracts. On Thursday Freud spoke at the Queen's Speech Forum (reported on the Indus Delta site) and "reassured the audience that all providers currently performing well will take a full place in the new programme and as long as they worked hard, they had no need to worry." He also promised that "providers will have the freedom to carry out their work – with no meddling from government." The latter statement raises the spectre of unaccountable private companies whose clients have no right of appeal to their Jobcentre or MP, because government must foot the bill but not "meddle". No wonder Emma was happy.

There is still no sign of the latest Channel 4 programme featuring Ms Harrison, although it is thought to be scheduled for this month. But, like any other public performer, she has the services of an agency to promote her interests. "McLean-Williams Management is a theatrical agency set up to provide a first class service for actors, actresses and creatives" says their website, and Emma Harrison is listed as a client under "presenters". (Mind you, her CV page doesn't seem to have been updated for a while.) What is next for Emma as a presenter, one wonders. The GMTV sofa, perhaps; they seem to be losing presenters at the moment.

Ministerial statement

Chris Grayling has issued a written statement giving a bit more detail about the transition to the Work Programme. There are details on the Indus Delta site and on the CarleyConsult site. It contains nothing really new, but we now know that FND1 providers (Flexible New Deal phase 1) are being given 12 months' notice of the termination of their contracts. The worry now for those providers is whether they will be the preferred bidders for the new Work Programme contracts. A4e's Emma Harrison certainly gave the impression on Sunday that she expected that to be the case; and Graham Hoyle, Chief Executive of the Association of Learning Providers, has said that Freud has suggested as much, and wouldn't it be odd if they weren't, "unless of course any had not been able to cope with the current opportunities". It will be interesting to see whether a provider's record will be taken into account.

No decision has apparently been made about the future of Work for your Benefit.

The new buzzword is "framework". This appears to mean that a number of selected providers will do not only the basic WP stuff but also any other work-focussed services required by other "public service commissioners". How this framework will help to include smaller organisations, except as sub-contractors, is not clear.

Urgent questions

The basis of Emma Harrison's claim yesterday that A4e would be allowed to work with "whole families" appears in a speech to providers by David Freud:

"It will be designed to allow you, the people who work at the coalface, to run your own operations as you see fit and provide more personalised help where that works for the individual," he said, and went on, "If a jobseeker needs intensive support from day one and is referred to you, it will be up to you to decide what support they get. One programme also means you can tackle the collective issues of family members in a coherent way – rather than splitting them up into different programmes."

Harrison cited the IB claimant who is supported into getting a job and then goes home and is talked out of it.

This raises some urgent questions:

• What qualifications will A4e employees be required to have for this work?
• What constitutes a "family"? Is it only the dependants of the claimant, or does it include those who are not themselves on benefits? What about claimants who live with parents and / or siblings?
• If a family member declines to co-operate with A4e employees will the claimant be penalised?
• Will A4e employees be able to access personal information from professionals such as teachers, GPs and social workers?
• What rights to privacy will claimants have?
• Will claimants still have the right to appeal to Jobcentre Plus in the event of a dispute with A4e?

Emma Harrison called this a "massive breakthrough". It certainly has huge implications.

Jumping the Gun?

Anyone watching the BBC's Politics Show in the North today would have to assume that the Work Programme contracts are already done and dusted.

The introduction to the item talked about a "Sheffield company" which was going to do what is already done in Germany, work with whole families. They then looked at Orchard Park Estate in Hull, where unemployment is very high and women say there are no jobs for the majority who want to work.

Cut to Emma Harrison of A4e, even more ebullient than usual. Cities like Hull, she said, need more support. A4e are going to be allowed to work with whole families, isn't that wonderful? The new Work Programme will mean "a massive breakthrough" because of this working with entire families. Cut back to a Hull councillor. who said that the programme was about cutting benefits rather than creating jobs. Back to Emma, who talks about the trap of Incapacity Benefit, and how the "radical reforms" will stop this.

A brief studio discussion followed, in which a Labour MP said that the last government did focus on whole families, and this was just re-badging. A woman from the Taxpayers' Alliance talked about making work pay and the need to create jobs.

So what are we to make of this? The company have been pushing for this "whole families" concept for a long time, and it looks like all that lobbying of ministers which Harrison brags about has paid off. The new government's advisers are oblivious to the dangers of giving the employees of a private company the right to interfere in the lives of families. Presumably where A4e has the current FND contracts they will accept the new, "re-negotiated" WP contracts, and that's why Harrison appears to be jumping the gun. If their clients in Hull want to question the new approach they can always seek legal advise - from the CLAC run by A4e.

A new competitor

We've speculated that the new Work Programme contracts may prove so unattractive to the likes of A4e that they decide to leave them alone and concentrate on other areas of business and on foreign contracts. However, if they do it seems that there are companies waiting to take their place.

One fairly recent entrant is Serco, a British company with fingers in so many pies that one newspaper called it the company that runs Britain. And now another company with its roots in the security industry is advertising for Welfare to Work Senior Management Team and Supporting Roles. It's G4S which says it "delivers services in over 110 countries" and is "the largest private sector employer in the world" in their advert on the Indus Delta site. Rather worryingly, G4S is citing its work with offenders as the basis of its suitability for the welfare-to-work contracts. "G4S already work with over 100,000 offenders and young people each year - transforming their life chances through care, supervision, training and rehabilitation. We want to take that work further. G4S are investing heavily in creating the very best solutions to support the 5.5 million people of working age who are currently on benefits to move from dependency into self-sufficiency and a decent, lasting job."

It's worrying that any company should see those who are not in work as being in "dependency" and in need of the same sort of treatment as offenders. But that may well chime with the ideologues in the goevernment.

That meeting

Some news of the meeting between Chris Grayling (with David Freud, the designer of the Work Programme) and the New Deal providers, from the Carley Consult site. It looks like there will be a new tender process in the FND phase 2 areas, while in the phase 1 areas, where it's already operating, the existing contracts will be renegotiated. The government wants interim contracts to tide them over to the full roll-out next year. Each of the current providers will be able to put their views to the ministers in separate meetings.

One paragraph needs some decoding. "There was a strong preference shown for greater collaboration and partnership, with the inclusion of the third sector and smaller providers likely to be a minimum specification requirement, and effectively ending the notion of sole provider delivery models. The needs of an increasingly diverse customer group, with a growing emphasis on customers on health related benefits, underlined the drive to bring together a mixed economy of provider expertise. Indeed, the direction may see traditional prime provider rivals working on a true consortia basis for the first time." I don't see a great deal of difference between that and what exists at the moment; it just means that the prime contractors have to get more smaller organisations on board before they bid.

Apparently the ministers stressed their commitment to payment only for outcomes, and "some providers continue to seek reassurance that such a model will pay in practice".

"Providers of New Deal to voice concerns"

There's to be a meeting tomorrow, 2 June, between the "minister for work", Chris Grayling, and the body which represents the New Deal providers. That body, the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) is chaired by Rob Murdoch, who is an executive director of A4e. The Financial Times reports on this today, and says that the providers "have spent millions bidding for the second wave of Labour's Flexible New Deal contracts". It goes on: "Those contracts were put on hold just as they were about to be awarded when the general election was called. But the existing providers also hold contracts under the first wave of Flexible New Deal that run to 2014." Current stop-gap contracts are due to stop taking on new clients next month, and the government wants the Work Programme up and running by April next year. Given that the government wants to roll up all the various existing contracts into one provision and put people on it much earlier, it "implies larger scale contracts", says Murdoch. He points out that if providers are only going to get paid for outcomes, it "has big implications for cashflows". If an organisation has to wait longer for payment, only the biggest companies can afford to bid for the contracts and stump up the money. Murdoch also has a threat for the government. "If they breach contracts, that would be very negative for how the provider market looks at the changes."

This is something which, presumably, the government has thought about. They have suggested in the past that they want to get smaller organisations and the "third sector" involved, but that will only happen if they act as sub-contractors to the big companies.