Clawing back

Chris Grayling "slams" Flexible New Deal in a piece in the Express and Star, a Midlands paper. It was "chronically mismanaged", he says. "The Flexible New Deal programme helped 16,200 people find work, working out at a “staggering” £31,284 per job, said employment minister Chris Grayling. More than £500 million was spent in a year, mainly for service fees under which providers were paid for every person the government thought would go through the scheme, regardless of the outcome, the minister said. Mr Grayling cancelled the contracts on taking office in June and revealed that £100 million worth of service fees had been “clawed back”." He goes on to insist that by paying only for outcomes the Work Programme will be completely different. Naturally, he's blaming the Labour government. But the prime contractors in the new scheme will probably be the very companies which, he says, failed so badly on FND (and on Pathways). Was it just the contracts which were wrong, or were the companies at fault? Apparently not. And what does that bit about "clawing back" £100 million in service fees mean? Have A4e and the others had to pay that money back?

The Reforms

There's no getting away from it today, but some of the interviewers are beginning to ask the right questions. At this moment Steve Webb is waffling in reply to what happens when someone with a family has their benefits stopped. One thing that's emerging that should frighten people; there'll be no appeal if you are sanctioned. That's what IDS said, although Webb has just denied it. It seems to be the case that you could be forced to sign up to casual work with an agency, or be deemed to have refused a job. No one has asked whether that gives the power to the likes of A4e to decide that you've turned down a job. Right now the BBC is talking to people in Easterhouse who fit the stereotype, as if that's all there is to unemployment. In all the chatter and propaganda, no one is addressing the issue of the lack of jobs.

More thoughts on The Politics Show

You can see the piece on A4e Brixton on the BBC news website. It's headlined "How firms like A4e help unemployed people back to work".

What disturbs me about The Daily Politics today is how little challenge there is to what is said. Andrew Neil didn't know that people are not referred to A4e etc. until they've been unemployed for a year, so when he asked what A4e could provide that the state couldn't, Harrison was free to talk about wanting to get to people earlier. It was the perfect opportunity to bring up the fact of the failure of the Pathways programme, the rare example of when a direct comparison is possible between the private companies and the Jobcentres. But he didn't. There was no challenge about the record of A4e (and the other providers) on New Deal. And her assertion that anyone who "fully engages" with them can get one of those "hidden jobs" should have been pounced on, but it wasn't. They were too anxious to get to the ructions in the Labour Party. But they wouldn't have challenged it anyway, because the media are too lazy. They had one tiny idea - that A4e is set to make money from the Work Programme - and didn't do any research.

Emma on The Daily Politics

A4e's Emma Harrison popped up today as the guest on The Daily Politics. Weirdly, she was asked her opinion of George Bush's memoirs. But then the programme focussed on the housing benefit changes. There were contributions from the House of commons from Caroline Flint and Simon Hughes, then David Freud, minister for welfare reform, was introduced, sitting on the sofa next to Emma. He said that he expects rents to go down and no significant increase in homelessness. Harrison said that the changes had to come, that benefits had been too generous, meaning people couldn't afford to take jobs. But she worries, she said, that vulnerable people will panic at this. Freud said that there's a lot of misunderstanding about it.

Anita Anand, the interviewer, said that the new Work Programme would mean a lot more business for Harrison's company. There was a short film report from an A4e office in Brixton, showing decent facilities, but mostly low-wage jobs on offer. The office was said to secure 50 jobs a month, but many of these were short-term. Figures were quoted for A4e's income, which I didn't manage to write down. The reporter pointed to other areas of A4e's business, pushing how much the company stands to gain. Andrew Neil then asked Harrison what she provides that the state can't. She said that she would like to get people earlier than at present; she can tell when people are going to become long-term unemployed. Jack Dromey, the Labour MP, took Freud's place. He forecast that unemployment would rise to over 3 million. He said that he doesn't doubt that A4e does some good work, but he doesn't want to see big companies getting more work out of this. Harrison retorted that they use the voluntary organisations. A4e can find jobs for anyone who "fully engages" with them; they can find the "hidden jobs" that never get advertised.

I'm not sure what this programme achieved, beyond again presenting Emma Harrison as the face of welfare-to-work and avoiding the hard questions.

Workfare - nothing new

The news today is full of headlines like "Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits" from the Guardian. In several papers, of course, the epithet "work-shy" is used. And as always the media ignore the fact that this is not new. Under Flexible New Deal claimants are supposed to do a 4-week placement, and the requirement goes way back to old contracts. There are all sorts of problems; small employers don't want the hassle, and the voluntary sector has been stuffed with non-volunteers doing "placements". If anything is different this time, it's that they're talking specifically about "manual labour" and allowing it to be seen as punitive. I suspect that little will actually change. With so many public sector jobs being axed, the unions are not going to stand for street cleaners and the like being replaced by unpaid work gangs.

Publicity and gaps

A posting from Emma Harrison on A4e's site says that she now has a daily column in Express newspapers. I can't find it in any paper today so perhaps that's a treat to look forward to tomorrow. You are invited to contribute to "Emmas [sic] Top Employment Tips". It's a great bit of advertising, if not of punctuation.

The Financial Times has pointed out that there will be a gap of several months between when the current contracts end in half the country and the Work Programme begins. About 50,000 people who would have been placed on these programmes will not be - and that's assuming that the new contracts start on time. Labour says that this will mean people staying on benefits for longer, while the DWP says that people will get "enhanced support" from Jobcentre Plus. The ERSA, the trade body for the providers, wants the contracts extended to fill the gap. I suugest that this is an ideal opportunity to judge the value of the whole welfare-to-work industry. Will the DWP have the bottle to compile the stats to show whether it makes any difference to whether people get jobs? I doubt it.

Richard Johnson of Serco has been philosophising again, on the Indus Delta site, on how wrong we are to think that there are limits to the number of jobs available.

From A4e to stardom

Who is A4e's most famous former employee? Yes, it's Hayley Taylor. Plucked from deserved obscurity by the Benefit Busters programme, where her reward was to be invited to tea with Emma Harrison, she went on to star in "The Fairy Jobmother" in Britain. Those three programmes were greeted with much cynicism here, but they are obviously more open to her message and style in America. The press coverage of the start of her series there is rarely critical. She's described as an "international career specialist" amongst other things, and I've seen only one review, on Media Life, which sees through the hype. But Hayley has everything going for her, and now has her own Facebook fan page. Nowhere in all this publicity is A4e mentioned. I can't help wondering what Emma makes of all this.