What next?

The dust has settled on the Work Programme publicity.  Amazingly, the spin failed and the right information got the headlines.  The government had delayed as long as it dared so that it could put out 14 months of figures rather than 12.  The 12-month outcome figure was around 2%.  But even the 14-month figure came out well below the dead-weight figure.  Who would have guessed that the media would actually be talking about the dead-weight figure?

But this blog is supposed to be about A4e.  So what has all this meant for them?  Their results were not outstandingly bad or good, so they weren't singled out.  Channel 4 News were able to resurrect that Emma Harrison interview to show how wrong she was.  And A4e could really have done without that.  After the crisis of February, when she had to step down from her government post and from the chairmanship of A4e, George Bridges of Quiller Consultants was called in to use his connections to get the company through the mess.  Harrison's appearance will surely have set back those efforts.  But more important in the long run is that the company itself cannot hide behind platitudes.  The failure of the Work Programme puts it under scrutiny.  Andrew Dutton writes: ".... our current performance is materially better than the first year data shows".  Like all the other providers, the claim is that more outcomes are in the pipeline and will show up in the next release of data.  But that was always going to be the case.  He adds that "A4e has invested £50m in the past 18 months into our services, people and offices."  This is what Harrison said was her own money.  However, other providers claim to have broken even in the first year of the WP, so we can assume that that investment has been recouped.  They have a curious set of graphics on their website.  The figures include a claim that they saved the taxpayer £24m in benefits paid to people who now have jobs.  They do not indicate whether this figure takes account of in-work benefits which people still have to claim.  And does it take into account the amount the government has paid A4e?  Anyway, figures like these mean little; it's the experience people have of the company, and its performance in doing the work it's contracted to do which count.

How A4e did

Those good folks at the Guardian have published the WP performance data by provider.
A4e have 5 areas.  Their best performance was in South Yorkshire, with 3.55%.  Their worst was in the Thames Valley, with 2.78%.  The average for all 5 areas is 3.28%.  A4e isn't the worst but it's far from the best.
Krishnan Guru-Murty has tweeted: "A4e founder Emma Harrison not available to explain why her claim #c4news figures were wrong turned out to be, er, wrong."

The Work Programme - what we now know

Two quotes from that grisly Emma Harrison interview on Channel 4 News:
1.  (about the leaked A4e figures) "They're wrong."
They were right.
2.  "The Work Programme is the most successful programme we've ever run."
It isn't. 
The one thing that's missing from the data released so far is the comparative figures for the providers, at least in a form that means something.  So we don't yet know how A4e compares with the others.
Everything else is out there.  The dead weight figure for the first year was 5%, the number expected to get jobs without the WP or any other intervention.  So the target of 5.5% was very low.  The actual figure achieved is 3.5%.  There were 200,000 breaks in claiming, which the ERSA (the providers' trade body) wants to spin as 200k jobs.  Mark Hoban on the Daily Politics claimed that one in four have found work.  Iain Duncan Smith says that more than 50% have come off benefits.  Yeah, right.
The best summary, surprisingly, comes from the Daily Mail.  What a pity they spoil it by referring to people "returning to claim handouts".  Hoban intends to write to the worst-performing providers telling them to produce an action plan.  A far cry from the original promise to "sack" them.
There's a fair bit more talk to come today, much of it trying to prove that black is white.

The press we deserve?

It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep, so I'm checking the news feeds ahead of the release of the performance data at 9.30 am.  There's plenty of interpretation already.  But the prize must go to the Express: "Jobs scheme 'helps 20,000 a month'".  Yes, they've taken the ERSA's spin and published it as the facts, ignoring deliberately the reality that this is people who've found any sort of work, temporary, part-time, which got them off the books for a little while.  "Almost a third of those who started the Work Programme in June 2011 have been supported into a job so far, said the ERSA. More than 64,000 people found work under the programme in the three months to September, it was reported."  (The words "helps" and "supported" will startle many people who know that the providers had nothing to do with it.)  But this is what Mark Hoban and the government wanted, of course.  Don't bother with the facts - that the figures for sustained jobs are appalling - just spin dizzily so that Express readers get the propaganda.
The Independent goes with "Government's Work Programme only helps one person in three find a job".  They do report the ERSA's figures, but understand the spin.
The Guardian has published the full data which the private companies have put out and asked readers if they can do anything with it.  Good for them.
The Financial Times yesterday had access to the actual figures and reported that the best-performing company, Serco, earned nearly double what the worst-performing, Prospects, earned.
So as as we await the actual figures (and I hope I can get some sleep in before then) we can already see what the press are going to make of it.  Accurate reporting?  Some papers don't know what that means.

Don't expect much

The release of the Work Programme performance figures tomorrow will probably be something of an anticlimax.  We know what they amount to - performance targets, which were very low anyway, have been missed.  But there won't be any fuss.  The media are obsessed with Leveson, whose report is due out on Thursday, and this is just not interesting.  We can expect something in the Guardian, and probably in the Independent and on Channel 4 News.  But the excuses are already in, and who cares anyway?
Just in case, Mark Hoban has already written to coalition MPs telling them how to respond.  The New Statesman has the letter, and it's pathetic.  It's too early for the results to mean much, he says.  And in case anyone is looking too closely at the figures he's going to do a "data dump", throwing out there figures for previous programmes and various "ad hoc statistics".  This might serve to confuse the issue.  The letter concludes: “The Work Programme is designed to be a major improvement to welfare to work support, my goal is to drive forward its effective implementation. I hope you will join me in supporting the programme on the day.”
The Express, with its usual inability to join the dots, has a story today about a report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust describing the millions of workers living in poverty.  Job insecurity, short-term work, part-time working, all contribute to this.  The Independent goes for a report by three homelessness charities about what damage the Work Programme has done to the homeless.  One in five homeless people on the WP have been sanctioned, i.e. made even more destitute than they already are.  Yet 60% of the homeless had not even been asked about the problems they faced.  Charities continue to do for nothing what the WP providers are supposed to be doing for payment.
Yet we're being told that the failure of the WP is due to the double-dip recession.  The Indus Delta site covers a report by Inclusion on the effects of the government getting its forecasts wrong.  They expected growth of 2% but ended up with minus 0.4%.  That would reduce job outcomes by 15% in the first year of the WP.  So it's not the fault of the providers.  That's all right, then.
The main reason for disinterest tomorrow, however, will be that there is a narrative about unemployment, encouraged by the media and the government and accepted by the majority of the public, and the WP is a mere detail.  The welfare system is bloated and has to be cut back drastically.  Benefit-dependency has people living comfortable life-styles with no incentive to work.  There is plenty of work out there if people were willing to do it.  The failure of the government's flagship programme to address long-term unemployment is a minor matter.

Cynical manipulation

There's something sinister going on.  The DWP has released new figures ahead of the WP performance data - the figures for those who have been "sanctioned" i.e. stripped of benefits.  The papers seem to understand that they're being manipulated but fall for it anyway.  The Mail headlines it "More than 150,000 forced off benefits after refusing to participate in Iain Duncan Smith's back-to-work scheme".  So already they don't grasp what people are being sanctioned for.  Turning up late for an appointment is hardly "refusing to participate".  But they then go on to talk of, "Suspicions that figures will be used to distract from report that fewer than one in 20 on scheme have found a permanent job".  Yes.  Apparently sanctions are running at 15,000 a month.  Do the papers seriously think that these are all people who are "determined to avoid getting a job at all", in the words of Mark Hoban?
The Telegraph has spotted that "More people who take part in a flagship government jobs programme end up being stripped of their benefit payments than finding permanent work, new figures suggest."  This is a much better account of the situation; perhaps Patrick Hennessy, the author, has a better understanding of the subject.  But they still repeat the statement from Hoban: “Through the Work Programme we are offering the hardest-to-help claimants extensive support in order for them to take control of their own lives and return to work. They need to do their bit to find a job but we’ll be there to help them do that.”
The comments under both articles demonstrate both the entrenched attitudes, and the anger which is building up.

Preparing to admit failure

The Work Programme has failed.  We knew that, but Mark Hoban has admitted as much in advance of the performance data being released this coming Tuesday.  He has given an interview to the Telegraph revealing that fewer than 5% of clients have found sustained work, and that the companies have to "get their act together".  The best Hoban can say is, "I think we can see some positive signs."  Doesn't sound good, does it?  And the excuses are a bit lame.  The economic backdrop is different now, so it's harder to get back into work.  And "what work looks like is different as well".  I assume that means that there's more part-time and temporary work.  It's embarrassingly at odds with the spin put on the employment statistics.  There's no apology to the unemployed, of course, those who are the real victims of the failure.
Will Mark Hoban be forced to front the excuses on Tuesday, or will Iain Duncan Smith step up to the plate? And will the media understand the implications and ask the right questions?
An interesting sidelight to the story is the way in which the writer of the article, Robert Winnett, twice refers to A4e's record.