Welfare-to-Work Business “a massive cesspit” says Vince Cable.
Cable Shows What’s What.
“The Government was under growing pressure last night to call a public inquiry into the behaviour of Britain’s Welfare-to-Work Industry as the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, admitted the sector was a “massive cesspit” that needed cleaning up.
Companies are “serially corrupt” he added.
The Liberal Democrat Minister criticised the systematic ”culture of bullying”, people left penniless by unwarranted sanctions, and the misuse of public money by firms making false claims.
Noting the extravagant life-styles of ‘social entrepreneurs’ such as A4E’s Emma Harrison, he concluded that this is not “all the fault of a few colourful rogues”.
Outlining steps to address “the mess”, he said that welfare programmes need to be “made safe”; that steps to ring-fence benefits and raise their levels, needed to be implemented; and that there needed to be “accountability”.
With a clear eye on his Cabinet colleagues, Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling, Mr Cable said “No one at the top of the Welfare-to-Work Industry will take responsibility for systemic abuse. “The time has come to do so.”
Er…….no Cable did not say this….
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As if he’ll be taken seriously.
Cable is just the pet dog they keep around the office.
Vince Cable is apparently quoted as saying: “no one at the top of the Welfare to Work Industry will take responsibility for systemic abuse”. “The time has come to do so”.
It appears he meant IDS and Grayling.
But a senior auditor who has extensive experience with Working Links and A4E has already spoken out in detail to the Public Accounts Committee about systemic fraud. See the following link:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28639
It is not only the Socialist Worker who report! Have a look at the following link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9285799/Document-Allegations-of-fraud-at-A4e-in-evidence-given-to-the-Public-Accounts-Committee.html
This is what Tories really think about the unemployed
“THE controversial right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes has caused outrage by making light of the Birmingham Mail’s story about a desperate jobseeker in Selly Oak who set himself alight outside a jobcentre.
Headlined ‘Man douses himself with petrol, lefties explode’, the blogger admits the details of the incident are horrible, but adds: “Given the price of petrol, this was obviously a well thought-out plan”.
Fawkes, real name Paul Staines, says that “the usual suspects, plus others who should know better, have been quick to scream that this is the consequence of “austerity”,” which he calls “a particularly unedifying spin”.
He says there is no reason to believe the incident had anything to do with the lack of jobs, but was a protest about “a screw up in receiving his benefits”.
Fawkes concludes by saying: “If only Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth had been in place, he would have been fine, right?”
The story is tagged with the words “looney left” and “spin”.”
http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories/2012/06/29/blogger-guido-fawkes-jokes-about-birmingham-jobseeker-who-set-himself-alight-97319-31289464/#ixzz1zCHsnYI4
ffs Coates, don’t you read your own blog?? Your contributors have been complaining about fraud and corruption in the welfare-to-work sector since way back in the days of New Deal!! It in onlt now you are beginning to sit up and take notice!!
Nope, never read it. Is it interesting?
Eh? What? Cable said what? Or nothing? Eh?
Not that it matters, he has no input, he’s not a tory.
Lazy jobseekers to lose benefits for up to three years
Unemployed people who do not try hard enough to find a job could lose their benefits for three years
The ‘three strikes’ scheme is the latest Government attempt to crack down on the spiralling benefits bill and get more job seekers into work
Unemployed people currently have to demonstrate that they are regularly trying to find a job, either through searches or by attending ‘job-focused’ interviews with advisers.
If they do not, they can lose benefits for anything between one week and 26 weeks, although the wide range means that compliance with the rules is low.
The new sanctions regime, which come into force this Autumn. will see a claimant losing their benefit for 13 weeks for a first failure to comply with the rules.
This will be expanded to 26 weeks for a second breach and three years for a third breach if it occurs in the same 12 month period as the second.
Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, said the new rules, which will be explained to job seekers at the start of their claim, were part of a “deal” between the Government and the unemployed.
He said: “We will pay their benefits and they will in turn prove that they are doing all they can to return to the job market.
“People will now know without a doubt that if they don’t comply with the rules, they will not get their benefit. We need a sanctions regime that is clear and robust.”
Officials said the changes would align the sanctions around Jobseekers’ Allowance with the new rules that will come in from October 2013.
Research by the Department for Work and Pensions has found that 40 per cent of claimants say they are more likely to look for work due to a threat of a sanction.
The vast majority of these receive just one sanction during their claim and most say they would not repeat the behaviour which led them to being sanctioned.
here.
George-Osbornes-plans-to-use-billions-of-pounds-from-British-pension-funds-cash-to-pay-for-roads-fail-to-get-going?!
It doesn’t matter how hard they look for work, or how much they’re sanctioned, there’s STILL 10+ times the number of jobseekers than there are vacancies.
This cruel welfare system is steadily crushing lives – where is the anger?
No one seems to be concerned that hugely profitable private firms are forcing thousands into borderline destitution
If you want a sobering flavour of where Britain is heading, set aside banking, the Leveson inquiry, our relationship with Europe and whatever else – and consider a Guardian story by Patrick Butler that appeared last week. It was about food banks, the charitable set-ups that supply emergency parcels to people who have fallen between society’s cracks. FareShare, a charity that sits at the heart of all this, says it is experiencing “ridiculous growth” in demand, and expects that trend to continue for at least five years; over the last 12 months, it claims to have sent out 8.6m meals.
Spend any time around a food bank – and I have, in Inverness and Liverpool – and it quickly becomes clear that their core constituency is based around two groups of people: refugees who have either recently arrived in the UK or opted to go underground; and people who have suddenly had their benefits stopped.
Thanks to the increasingly cruel regime that now applies to benefits – which, we now know, David Cameron wants to make yet crueller – the latter seem to be increasing in number by the week, pushed into their predicament by a system that can summarily ruin lives, but offer only the most sluggish remedies by way of appeal. By and large, they remain invisible, but their fate is starting to intrude on the news media: last week, a man set himself alight outside a Birmingham jobcentre, reportedly thanks to a “dispute over benefit payments”, an episode that occurred just as the Guardian was revealing rising concerns about suicides among people faced with so-called benefits “sanctions”. For an intimate picture of the misery and anxiety that lies behind all this, have a look at this film by my colleague John Domokos, partly centred on a family reduced to fretting over their last dregs of electricity, and apparently surviving on a diet founded on budget baked beans. The benefits system refuses to understand that one of them is a carer, whose obligations to his ill wife mean that he cannot always make his appointments at the jobcentre.
Which brings us to revelations that appeared over the weekend, and the latest news about the government’s increasingly brutal welfare-to-work drive. Thanks to research by Corporate Watch and an article in the Observer, we know that the private companies involved in the government’s Work Programme have been pushing for unbelievable numbers of people to have their benefits cut, aiming at figures that even the ever-more stringent Jobcentre Plus regime has refused to sign off. Meanwhile, there’s a clear sense that in the context of a flatlining economy, the Work Programme’s targets – indeed, its entire logic – are proving impossible: the scheme’s core presumptions were based on economic growth of over 2%, and a revived job market. Given their non-appearance, the companies involved look they’re getting desperate, and in the absence of any convincing carrot, frantically reaching for the stick.
In the context of the firms’ returns, all this leaves an impossibly nasty taste. The best example is the welfare-to-work outfit A4e. This year, it has been blitzed with all those allegations of fraud; I’ve also reported on allegations of a “champagne culture”, company events held in upscale foreign locations, and the dizzying lifestyle led by its former chair and public face, Emma Harrison, who last year paid herself a dividend of £8.6m. And what apparently lies at the heart of all this opulence, and the activities of a firm that claims to be “social purpose company” with “one sole aim, to improve people’s lives around the world”? Over six months, 10,000 requests were made for its “customers” to have their benefits cut, of which only 3,000 were granted by Jobcentre Plus. Similar statistics for other companies abound: Working Links referred nearly 12,000 cases for sanctions, Serco managed just over 9,000, and G4s came in at 7,780. Such is the upshot of the stock warning that appears on most of the correspondence sent to Work Programme participants: “If you do not attend this appointment, your benefits could be affected.” And how.
This is yet another one of those stories that come with a head-spinning sense of how much Britain has changed, under this government and its predecessor. Rewind 15 years, and imagine the spectacle of hugely profitable private firms pushing for thousands of people to be propelled into borderline destitution: the result would have been acres of coverage, and molten anger. And now? Even backbench Lib Dems are predictably silent, and Labour restricts its criticisms of a system it invented to technocratic hand-wringing, focused not on any kind of moral outrage, but whether everything’s working, and how much it all might cost (“Chaos at DWP is stalling the government’s reforms … the welfare bill is going through the roof” was the response to Cameron’s welfare proposals of Liam Byrne, a man for whom the adjective “blank” might have been invented). Even the trade unions are bizarrely quiet. The reality is something to which mainstream politics cannot admit, and which bumps up against a cross-party accent on welfare being the last resort of malingerers: that people are living in fear and going hungry, and a cold state machine seems to have been designed to put them there.
Now, incidentally, we hear word that plenty of police officers are of the opinion that last year’s riots could easily be repeated. One hesitates, of course, to be alarmist. But as more and more people feel the cruelties of a policy that makes no sense – that people must be kicked into work, even if jobs don’t exist – has anyone considered that the two things might be connected?
Article + comments + pic of Emma “Troutface” Harrison’s ugly mughere.
Cable is an ineffectual lickspittle running poodle dog,neutered by The Claggeron ConDems running round making little woofy noises to keep his supine brain-dead constituents gurgling happily.
The man is a flipflopper of the lowest order and needs to disappear quetly onto one of ReichsArbeitMinister Schmidt’s Work Experience Fun Camps before he waffles on any further from his gilded ivory tower with his goldplated pension secured for the harsh UKplc winter of discontent that is on its way.
Centrelink begin welfare ban on booze, tobacco
RENT, bills and food are in but alcohol, cigarettes and gambling are out.
A federal government trial in which Centrelink manages the money of welfare recipients began yesterday amid an angry protest.
Bankstown, in Sydney’s southwest, is one of five areas where the trial is being conducted.
It is designed to help allocate Centrelink benefits so that expenses are paid.
Under the government’s Stronger Futures legislation, the trials will direct money from some welfare recipients to pay for “priority items” such as food, housing, clothing and utilities.
The remainder of the money can be used as they wish – but with strict exclusions.
Recipients are forbidden to spend their welfare on alcohol, tobacco, pornography and gambling.
Those who take part in the scheme may also be given a BasicsCard, which allows them to shop at Centrelink-approved stores, including Coles and Woolworths in some places.
The BasicsCard is a PIN-operated Eftpos card which can be used to buy most goods and services at the registered stores.
The scheme is voluntary, but it can be made compulsory for people who are falling behind in rent and bill payments or because of child protection issues.
Volunteers are eligible for an incentive payment of $250 for every 26 consecutive weeks they stay on the program, which covers those receiving benefits including Newstart and the pension.
Centrelink social workers will decide on the compulsory income-managed cases.
A vocal group of Bankstown protesters reacted angrily to the start of yesterday’s trial.
The Say No to Government Income Management coalition claims there is no evidence that income management works.
But the government said the trial was based on the West Australian model, which has been successfully running since 2008.
Coalition spokeswoman Pam Batkin said the trial could result in people having up to 70 per cent of their welfare payments quarantined through a BasicsCard.
“It is bad social policy because it further stigmatises and marginalises people who are really struggling,” Ms Batkin said.
Arab Council Australia chief executive Randa Kattan said she was appalled by the legislation, which she said discriminated against vulnerable welfare recipients.
The coalition members plan to boycott the trial, with support workers refusing to refer people on to the system.
Bankstown resident Carol Carter said the legislation did not allow welfare recipients to have a say in where they shopped or what they bought.
The other trial locations are Logan and Rockhampton in Queensland, Playford in South Australia and Greater Shepparton in Victoria.
Article here.
What’s the betting that the people who introduce this scheme will be lobbying to have it in the UK? (and no doubt cream off money for their advice, not to mention the extra profits the shops involved will get for this captive market).
‘I was looking for some action, but all I found was (I couldn’t buy) cigarettes and alcohol’.
They always trial these ‘initiiatives’ on the most vulnerable it seems. Apparently they have been doing this or similar with the indigenous aboriginals in Australia. One cannot easily confirm this, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Now being further rolled out?
It’s called Stronger Futures legislation? More like Stranger Futures! Nasty stuff.
Telling us how to spend our subsistence living allowance is a step too far.
Maybe only just acceptable in extreme circumstances? For the vulnerable, mentally ill, extreme cases where people are neglecting themselves perhaps? And even then only if any assessments were fair and well administered. But the authorities aren’t too good at that are they?
Centrelink social workers? Hmmm? Who are Centrelink? Private company given free reign?
It is a very dubious and draconian scheme. And needs to be resisted. To state the obvious.