Keep up, Private Eye

It's good to see that Private Eye is still on A4e's case in the latest edition. But I'm beginning to think that the magazine is following this blog! In a piece entitled "A4E, B for balls" they point out, following Cameron citing Emma Harrison as the answer to all our problems, that A4e's record is far from good. They cite the less-than-brilliant Ofsted reports and the dreadful Pathways results. But the Eye is slipping. They say that Cameron was "wildly overstating Harrison's role" in the Working Families Everywhere scheme, which aims to find jobs for just 500 parents in the three areas, rather than the 120,000 families that Cameron talked about. Like Cameron, the Eye isn't aware of the contracts on the table using ESF money. And they talk about the 5 new contracts A4e has just won to deliver the "New Enterprise Allowance", querying the qualifications of providers like A4e and Avanta to do this when their experience is in dealing with employment rather than self-employment. Well yes, but what about all the other things that A4e do, in health and education?

The Guardian got into trouble for calling A4e a "social enterprise" and had to apologise. But they've done it again, in a comment piece by Merrick Cockell on Tuesday. The vast majority of people don't know the difference, but those who do are concerned that the reality of A4e as a private, profit-making company is being eroded by the ignorance of journalists.

The Work Programme is getting a lot of attention at the moment, with Chris Grayling telling us how it's going to save the country. But there's a surprisingly sympathetic piece in the Sun about the difficulty facing women with children trying to get back into work. There's a rather different attitude in the Express. The newsfeeds this morning led to a piece headlined "Workshy Britain" and starting "Britain's workshy culture was shown in all its glory today after the number of homes where no one is working held at nearly 4 million." Strangely, by late afternoon the link led to a revised article headed "Four million households live just on benefits". The invective has been toned down considerably, although we still read that "The figures will serve to place added pressure on Employment minister Chris Grayling to get Britain's workshy back into employment."

The bandwagon

Lots of people are leaping aboard the bandwagon of solutions to unemployed trouble-makers, and displaying the usual ignorance, arrogance or naivete. All three are evident in a piece on supplymanagement.com by Rebecca Ellinor, who reports that the DWP believes it has "struck what it calls a ground-breaking commercial deal, with minimum cost to the tax-payer, and says this work is now an exemplar of procurement" with the Work Programme. It describes the speed and efficiency of the process; but neglects to mention that it's a procument process which ignores past failures by providers. Does any commercial enterprise operate like this?

The Financial Times takes a more intelligent stance in a piece by Chris Tighe. It highlights the way in which smaller, especially voluntary, organisations have been squeezed out of the Work Programme.

Then there are Social Impact Bonds. We reported on these some time ago, because A4e's Mark Lovell is very keen on them; and someone who is promoting these was on the Today programme a few days ago. The Cabinet Office describes them thus: "A major trial of an innovative new way to fund intensive help for families blighted by anti-social behaviour, crime, addiction and poor education was announced by Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society today. Social Impact Bonds lets people invest in social projects to address these issues and be paid a return if the projects are successful. Up to £40million could be raised by four Social Impact Bond pilots launched in Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster, Birmingham and Leicestershire."

The Express, of course, shows its customary thoughtfulness with the headline "War on the Scroungers". It's actually commenting on a report by a think-tank, the IPPR, which has been out for some. And it's not quite what the Express portrays it as. The report says that those who have been unemployed for a year should have to take minimum-wage jobs; but these would be created by the government. And that's an admission that the jobs are not there unless the government creates them. The same IPPR report gets a very different treatment in the Telegraph, which focusses on the prediction that "around 100,000 people over 50 who lost their jobs at the start of Britain's economic crisis are now at risk of being forced to retire earlier than they planned. That will leave them living in retirement with a lower pension than they had hoped for."

It's left to the Guardian to strike a cynical note, with Alex Clark's piece inspired by Emma Harrison's publicity drive on family champions: "Be careful how you preach the benefits of the work ethic". It's a thoughtful critique of Harrison and her admirers, and, as always, the comments posted under the article are well worth reading.

The same can't be said for a piece in the Sheffield Telegraph, which is always sycophantic towards Harrison and A4e. Its article, "It’s not because they don’t want a job - it’s that they haven’t got a clue what to do next", is pure PR, and repeats the stuff she has said in her radio interviews.

I expect this bandwagon to roll on for a while yet.

Today Programme interview

You're having your breakfast calmly when up pops Emma Harrison. There was a disgraceful interview on the Today programme this morning, Justin Webb completely without research or knowledge and pretty much fawning on the woman. The clichés were all there. "Poking" came up again. When Webb seemed about to murmur a challenge she talked over him. Webb said it was a "fantastic idea" but what happens when some members of families don't co-operate? She didn't tackle that, unsurprisingly, just talked about the benefits of working with whole families rather than individuals. She said that she had a cross-party parliamentary group advising her, and that all of them were going to be told that they had to volunteer to do help. Webb said she was a persuasive person - she said she was heading up a campaign.

It was as bad as it gets. Lovely free publicity. When are we going to get real journalism backed by real research?

Guardian piece by John Harris

There's a comment piece in the Guardian by John Harris which will appeal to many of our readers. Of interest, too, are the comments which follow it, showing how the public is generally unsympathetic unless they have personal experience.

We can see clearly the confusion in the government's thinking over the unemployed, particularly over Mandatory Work Activity. On the one hand, it is supposed to help people back into the discipline of work and give them experience useful in securing a job. On the other hand, it is ensuring that people don't get benefits without having to work for them. Is this work experience or community service?

The piece also highlights the inevitability of employer exploitation. With a pool of free labour to draw on, some employers who want only unskilled labour will happily cut their wage bill even further.

Questions and doubts

The papers are mostly cynical this morning about Emma Harrison's scheme, going with the "gimmick" line. The Yorkshire Post reports this but is slightly confused, saying that the initiative "will be" piloted in Hull, Blackpool and Westminster (it's already up an running in at least two of those areas). They have a quote from Harrison: “The thought scares a lot of politicians [who are asked to take part] because they don’t know how to do it but I have said ‘I’ll show you once and for all how this is done’. And they are very enthusiastic.” But the headline on the article is "Middle class in Hull urged to ‘adopt’ a jobless family". The only person from the Hull City Council they could find to comment was the deputy leader of the Lib Dems, who "cautiously" welcomed the initiative.

The next time anyone interviews Emma Harrison there are three questions I would like them to ask her:

1. Has A4e bid for the contracts the DWP is putting out, to use European Social Fund money to pay private companies to run the same scheme that you're promoting? Are you trying to pre-empt these contracts by getting your scheme up and running first?
2. You have argued in the past for "super-contracts" in which a private company would run all the services in a local authority area. Is this scheme a step on the way to that?
3. Given your company's record of missing targets by some distance in previous welfare-to-work contracts, why do you believe you will be any more successful with this?

There's a report out today by the Social Market Foundation, claiming that the Work Programme is at risk of financial collapse. They use the performance of the providers in Flexible New Deal to forecast that the DWP's expectations for the WP are over-optimistic. If the providers can't meet the minimum targets they will lose the contracts. They seem to be arguing for a better deal for the providers. But in an interview on the Today programme this morning Chris Grayling claimed that the WP was different from FND because providers have much greater freedom "to do what works". (This is disingenuous. They had the freedom under FND, and indeed under New Deal, to pay for such things as skills training.) Grayling said that the providers knew what they were doing when they bid for the contracts, and that there will be no re-negotiation. One interesting point was his statement that the minimum performance standard must be greater than the "dead weight" figure, those who would be expected to get jobs without any input from contractors.

That interview

Okay, I wasted half an hour of my life listening to the Radio 5 Live interview [see a comment on the previous post for the link]. I agree with those who commented on it after my previous post.

Anita Anand was the right person to do the interview; Harrison has been on The Daily Politics twice so she knows what to ask. Anand was as sceptical as she could be without being downright hostile. The 19-year-old Tottenham man interviewing other young people was a good idea; most of them put the trouble down to the cuts rather than to "broken families". It was such a shame that, at the end of the piece, Harrison was allowed to interrupt and talk over the lad when he raised the point that, although she came across as having good intentions, her people didn't know how his communities lived, and again when he challenged her on "broken families" and being non-political.

Harrison insisted several times to Anand that she was "non-political". It was pointed out that she had dealt with politicians of both governments and she was asked if she had seen a difference. Yes, Brown's government was limited by what his people thought that they could do in practice. Now, she said, all ministers and advisers are going to take on a family. Who came up with the figure of 120,000 workless families? Government, she insisted, and then tried to bring it back to the personal. Anand queried why she was distancing herself from the politics of it. Again, Harrison said she was non-political and just improves people's lives around the world. How? The word "poking" was used three times. It's what happens to families when a lot of different agencies are working with them. Pushed by Anand on the how, Harrison told of the family she had spent an hour and a half with then suggested they go and help a charity down the road. This had been the start of an amazing transformation.

Anand was sceptical to the point of sarcasm, bringing it back to how exactly she, Anand, or someone like her, could get someone a job. There was a silly, but revealing, exchange in which Harrison wanted to show that there are jobs at the BBC (there aren't) and then suggested going into the shop down the road. It wasn't exactly convincing. anand turned to the money. Was harrison doing this for free. He company had made £200 million pounds. That was turnover, said Harrison, not profit, and local authorities were employing the family champions. Then we got the attempt by the young Tottenham man to question her, which she didn't allow. She said that she thought that people who had wrecked their communities should have to put it right.

Of the two text messages I heard quoted at the end of the piece (perhaps there were more at the end of the programme) one criticised Anand's negativity, the other said that Harrison was living in cloud-cuckoo land. I think this demonstrates the difficulty for TV and radio journalists. They are not allowed to go on the attack (unless they're called Andrew Neil) and so their subjects get away with it. Print journalists could do so much better, but don't bother.

The press coverage today is majoring on the fact that the scheme has been attacked as "gimmicky" and that "there appeared to be some confusion in Whitehall over the plan with employment minister Chris Grayling - who was also named among the volunteers - saying that he was not involved. 'I was rather surprised when I read this one. It was news to me that I was going to be in there,' he told Sky News." Still, Tim Loughton MP, a minister in the Department for Education, is signed up. And, gimmicky or not, it's great publicity.

PS: Anita Anand returned to the subject of family champions on The Westminster Hour, but the Tory MP wouldn't actually endorse the idea.

A genius for publicity

I missed it; Emma Harrison was on Radio 5 Live this morning. "This week, David Cameron's said he's going to fastrack the scheme to help 120,000 'broken families'. Double Take speaks to Emma Harrison who runs the project." And it's not available on iplayer. But the publicity machine rolls on. According to a papers review on BBC News 24, Harrison is proposing that government ministers each take on the mentoring of a "troubled family". I can't find the newspaper article, but the female journalist who brought it up (I didn't catch her name) described Harrison as "inspirational". She certainly has a genius for keeping her name in the public eye - and for making contacts with government. And no one says, "Hang on a minute. Why have the results been so bad on the contracts you've had?"