Observer: Purnell's welfare reforms now in total disarray!

[treelover]

Key Labour employment plan close to collapse

* Toby Helm and Rajeev Syal
* The Observer, Sunday 8 February 2009

The government's flagship policy to revolutionise welfare by paying private companies to find jobs for the unemployed was in crisis last night as firms said there were too many people out of work - and too few vacancies - to make it viable. News that Labour's radical plan is in turmoil and facing possible legal challenges comes as unemployment is about to pass the two million mark for the first time in more than a decade. Analysts believe it will hit three million before the end of this year.

Responding to warnings that his reforms will not work without major changes, James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, has abandoned plans to announce the preferred bidders for the multi-million-pound contracts this week. This follows demands from the firms involved for hundreds of millions more in "up-front" cash. A crisis meeting between top department officials and the bidding companies was cancelled on Friday after Whitehall announced a "short pause" in the tendering process.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it had been called off "because of the snow", but one company manager involved remarked: "The most telling thing is that no new date was set."

The difficulties besetting Gordon Brown's core welfare policy present a severe headache to ministers, who vowed last year - when jobs were abundant and unemployment low - to bring more private-sector rigour into the welfare system by paying employment firms and the voluntary sector "by results". This meant they would receive a sum for each person for whom they found a job, with extra cash when workers stayed in their new posts for more than 26 weeks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/feb/08/labour-welfare-jobs-plan

Think this merits a new thread:
,
The Govt's draconian welfare reforms are apparently in disarray, the Slump has meant there are now too few jobs and the money to pay the parasitical job agencies is just not there. There have been crisis meetings and the once seemingly unstoppable Purnell is certainly damaged. however, they have not been stopped or postphoned because of ethical considerations and may come back in some form.


However, as i have said ad nauseum,with the exception of McDonnell and the LRC, the response from the left, GP, civil society to these brutal reforms has been minimal, but surely this now gives them/us the opportunity to reorientate toward issues that affect millions. Some of the people I know who will be affected by these changes, have described them as having 'the sword of damoscles'(sic) hanging over them: time for people of goodwill to remove it forever?

 

[DotCommunist]

encouraging news. Let's hope the fucker has a heart attack as well.

 

[treelover]

He is not yet in the slap gallery, why?

 

[treelover]

I know its a bit early to celebrate, who knows what may yet happen, but I'm off to get a little whisky from the kitchen!

btw, A4E will lose millions

 

[DotCommunist]

These reforms were suggested in before the current economic nosedive and you can bet they would have gone into practise if happy boom-time had continued.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Well, it's probably to early to tell what will happen to the strategy, but I am not encouraged by this -

In a submission to ministers sent on Friday, before the cancelled meeting, and leaked to the Observer, the representative body for the industry - the Employment Related Service Association - suggested the entire bidding process may have to start again.

An industry whose trade body will known by an acronym made up of the letters E R S and A surely deserves to have a dim future.

 

[Fedayn]

Good.

 

[dynamicbaddog]

ha ha
best news I've heard all day

 

[_angel_]

Good.

I hope I'm not being previous in being optimistic on this one.

 

[treelover]

Its not just the economic crisis that may have holed this policy: the whole scheme/defice was flawed from the beginning. Its not surpising it has collapsed it was cobbled together in thirteen weeks, yes thirteen weeks, by a banker, Matthew Freud, who admitted he knew nothing about welfare. If anything it showed the hubris at the heart of Brown's regime, I do hope McDonnell and Co go for the jugular with Purnell.

what is also shameful is that the BBC has been one of the main cheerleaders for these reforms.

 

[treelover]

David Freud:-
"I didn't know anything about welfare at all when I started, but that may have been an advantage. I was genuinely shocked that the analysis was such a blob, nobody had come up with anything clear. In a funny way the solution was obvious."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...fare-is-a-mess,-says-adviser-David-Freud.html

 

[Fedayn]

I hope I'm not being previous in being optimistic on this one.

Me too, but I sent a link to a few mates who are PCS reps in the DWP.

 

[treelover]

Fed, perhaps time for the SP to assemble a coalition, a genuine one, not a front like the SWP ones, to challenge these reforms, the SP's stock is high post Lindsey, etc, and will I expect find lots of allies.

 

[scott_forester]

The bloke in that piece has 'swimming in mens' pond' as a hobby - how odd.

 

[Fedayn]

Fed, perhaps time for the SP to assemble a coalition, a genuine one, not a front like the SWP ones, to challenge these reforms, the SP's stock is high post Lindsey, etc, and will I expect find lots of allies.

There's a fair few of them in the PCS NEC and the PCS DWP group exec. committee too. Hopefully they'll be able to do something around those groups/wider civil service.

 

[Steve Booth]

Back in the 1930s they had labour camps for the Unemployed. Purnell may well be doomed, however. Remember Lord Andrew Adonis, Blair's Minister for Academies? - He is now Minister for Rocksalting the Roads. Kiss of death or what?

 

[SpookyFrank]

btw, A4E will lose millions

Oh how my heart bleeds. Interesting that the govt was apparently going to sign contracts with these private sector scumbags and hand them loads of money before the reforms were even finalised. Interesting, but not surprising. Just goes to show how democratic our society is when not even parliament gets a say any more.

The quote in the OP mentions legal challenges, anybody know any details about what these might be? I expect there's plenty of human rights violations in Purnells master plan but I wasn't aware anyone had thought to call him on any of them...

 

[SpookyFrank]

Back in the 1930s they had labour camps for the Unemployed. Purnell may well be doomed, however. Remember Lord Andrew Adonis, Blair's Minister for Academies? - He is now Minister for Rocksalting the Roads. Kiss of death or what?

Well it appears he's not very good at that either

 

[dynamicbaddog]

The quote in the OP mentions legal challenges, anybody know any details about what these might be? I expect there's plenty of human rights violations in Purnells master plan but I wasn't aware anyone had thought to call him on any of them...

I thought the plan to make people full time for their dole money would contradict the minimum wage legislation - I wrote to my MP to ask her about this, but she avoided answering my question directly

 

[Awesome Wells]

even in the midst of the worst weather for decades there is a silver lining.

god loves us.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Think this merits a new thread:
,
The Govt's draconian welfare reforms are apparently in disarray, the Slump has meant there are now too few jobs and the money to pay the parasitical job agencies is just not there. There have been crisis meetings and the once seemingly unstoppable Purnell is certainly damaged. however, they have not been stopped or postphoned because of ethical considerations and may come back in some form.

Purnell on the dole!!!

Please God, make it happen!

 

[dynamicbaddog]

Purnell on the dole!!!

Please God, make it happen!

yeah, make him sweep the streets for his giro

 

[shagnasty]

From what i can gleem from it so far is that they get 20 percent for placing someone in work then eighty percent after twenty six weeks .the legal challenge would be that if they move the goal posts to help the vulture firms .losing bidders will make a legal challenge because the rules have been change since their bids.dog eat dog what an unseemily bunch of cretins they are

 

[Urbanblues]

The bloke in that piece has 'swimming in mens' pond' as a hobby - how odd.

Sure it didn't read 'drowning in mensa pond'?

 

[Awesome Wells]

David Freud:-
"I didn't know anything about welfare at all when I started, but that may have been an advantage. I was genuinely shocked that the analysis was such a blob, nobody had come up with anything clear. In a funny way the solution was obvious."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...fare-is-a-mess,-says-adviser-David-Freud.html

it's been obvious for a long time, just not the way he thinks.

 

[dennisr]

Purnell on the dole!!!

Please God, make it happen!

 

[treelover]

A4e, Europe's largest provider of welfare to work programmes, and a
provider of a variety of front line public services, responds to the
Department for Work and Pensions's (DWP's) commissioning strategy'

`A4e is a business with a social mission. Running front line public
services in a number of countries, A4e is focused on joining up
skills, employment, welfare and a range of other services to drive
economic and social development. A4e input into David Freud's `In
Work Better Off' consultation making the following recommendations in
the context of commissioning modern welfare services:

Look at this bit from the A4E submission on the white paper, its very revealing aong how they see thenselves as some sort of quasi public sector organisation. They are not, like Serco, formerly Securicor, they are private profit making business which have made many many millions from NL Govt contracts, indeed making their owners multi-millionaires many times over, often under very little scrutint and where customer satisafction is so low that in any other sector they would have been booted out. Groups like A4E are now global having took advantage of the shift to neo-liberal ideas on welfare

The question is though why have the Left from the New Statesman, Guardian, the progessive element of the churches, the unions, apart from PCS, left liberals, to the far left given them such an easy time?

 

[glenquagmire]

No, that's not the question. That's your question on every single subject.

"Why haven't the Left issued a statement on Gareth Barry deciding to stay at Aston Villa? What is the Left doing about sorting out the residents parking problem in Plymouth?"

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

From what i can gleem from it so far is that they get 20 percent for placing someone in work then eighty percent after twenty six weeks .the legal challenge would be that if they move the goal posts to help the vulture firms .losing bidders will make a legal challenge because the rules have been change since their bids.dog eat dog what an unseemily bunch of cretins they are

Well, that's the crux of the matter - the providers want 50% up front, not 20%.

Tbf, I don't see this story as having any dramatic effect on the way that Purnell and cronies proceed, there is a welfare reform bill speeding its way through Parliament, both Lab and Tories are intent on privatisation of employment support services as far as possible, and whilst this may be a fly in the ointment, it will get resolved behind closed doors in Whitehall.

 

[treelover]

I did say something similar above, the WRB's swift procession through parliament, a very brutal and authoritarian bill indeed, speaks volumes about the current nature and make up of the houses of parliament.