Emma Harrison, former head of poverty pimps A4e, was mauled on Channel 4 News this week after figures were released suggesting less than 4% of people have found work after being sentenced to the Work Programme with the company.
The Work Programme is Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship scheme aimed at bullying long term unemployed people into low paid work or workfare.
Claimants on the Work Programme can be forced to undertake any activity that private sector spivs like Emma Harrison decide will help them find work. Brutal benefit sanction, which can lead to extreme poverty and even homelessness, are inflicted on those who do not comply. Despite this unprecedented power over people’s lives being handed to the likes of A4e and G4S, all the evidence suggests that the Work Programme is a dismal failure.
Emma Harrison, who is still the largest share holder of the fraud ridden welfare to work firm – despite resigning last year after repeated fraud scandals – claimed that Channel 4’s figures were wrong. Despite this denial, she refused to offer any alternative numbers and complained she was being bullied – a mealy mouthed claim given that allegations of A4e bullying benefit claimants are rife.
The Government have steadfastly refused to provide any performance figures for the Work Programme, despite repeatedly hailing it a huge success. Figures promised last Spring were postponed to November and it now appears the DWP may be trying to push back the date even further. The DWP statistical release calendar suggests only the numbers of people who have started on the Work Programme will be released next month – not the number of those who have actually found work. Channel 4’s Factcheck blog states that the release date for performance figures is now ‘not confirmed’.
Long term unemployment has risen month on month throughout the alleged fall in overall unemployment. Despite this A4e’s figures, if true, represent a new low for the welfare to work sector which has already squandered almost billion pounds of tax payers cash on the Work Programme.
The DWP have previously published what they claimed were preliminary figures on the scheme which showed that 24% of early participants left benefits for at least 13 weeks during the programme. This derisory figure does not necessarily mean that people got jobs. Many participants will have retired, started full time education or training, or moved onto another benefit due to pregnancy or illness.
Curiously the Channel 4 factcheckers appear to have bought DWP spin that only around 5% of people would be expected to find work without any help from the Work Programme. The true figures, as this report from the National Audit Office shows (PDF), is 28% as Channel 4’s Factcheck has previously reported.
The Government made wild claims that 35% of people on the Work Programme would find work due to the wonders of the payment by results system. In truth all welfare to work contracts have had an element of payment by results ever since the introduction of Tony Blair’s New Deal in 1997.
With the performance figures for the Work Programme so bad that the Government is terrified to even tell us what they are, payment by results seems to mean that we pay whilst the DWP hushes up the results.
You can watch Emma squirm at: http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/display/playlistref/241012
the void 
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The Work Programme is Britain’s modern day 21st century Inquisition and Iain Duncan Smith is the Grand Inquisitor.
Those found guilty of heresy – not believing in working for a living, proof of which, is being unable to find a job that doesn’t actually exist, are psychologically tortured by being labelled workshy benefit scrounging scum, forced to do unpaid labour, being humiliated and bullied by poverty pimps, being made to search for hours on end for jobs that don’t exist and being starved, made homeless and made destitute by having their meagre benefits sanctioned.
Hi Johnny – just to clarify. The deadweight figure is 5 per cent for this year only. After that it goes up. The 28 per cent figure is an average for the life of the programme. Thanks for posting the link.
All the best
Patrick Worrall (C4 News FactCheck)
Ah……so this is a finite programme, then? Thanks for clarifying that. I imagine once it has reached a finite point, then it will be time for the final solution.
These tricksy little Tories…they do like to have an ironic lahrf.
Coming in the wake of the highly disturbing report on disability hate crime the previous day (iirc), the self absorbed petulant whining of this baffling uninformed dwarf sickens me.
ah 8.6 reasons to get rid of these so called firms who donr deliver anything but wages for camerooons friends who are the winners i nthis jeff3
There is NO end to it all, another day, another scam…
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/10/deposit-insurance-who-is-it-for-really/
And do you know what will happen when the government finally do reveal the appalling performance figures??……Do you think they will pull the plug on the whole sorry mess??……No, they will just throw even more money at it.
Fuck this Nazi bastard!
You might be cold and mean
But you’ll control the workfare scheme
Get piles of cash
No questions asked
You’ve gotta help a pauper or two.
If they start questioning you
You will know just what to do
A compliance doubt
Will sort them out
You gotta help a pauper or two.
Reblogged this on kickingthecat.
Well. Here is my take on this –
I am member of the long term unemployed – in as much as I have been out of PAID work since 2006. However, at one point less than two years ago, I was doing five days a week UNPAID as a volunteer providing IT support to people in TWO different centres on behalf of a large metropolitan borough council. I am about to go back into voluntary work AGAIN. I also help to run one of the biggest gaming shows in the UK, on the basis of which, I have gained two excellent references. I HAVE tried to get work. Maybe not as hard as I could have done, because I am not prepared to just take ‘any’ job. I have a very specific set of skills, that I wish to use to ‘earn my corn’. I am not a beer swilling, cannabis smoking petty criminal. I am a capable, trustworthy and savvy individual. I too am on the work programme, and the provider I am with is about as much use as a glass hammer. I am able to repair/upgrade/service PC’s, and have 30 years experience as a photographer. I also do not need help with my English and Maths. In other words, UNLESS my provider can offer me training of a HIGHER level than that which I have already undertook, it is simply a waste of my time being there. These people are getting money for old rope. Literally. They are failing to deliver even on the miserable targets they have been set, and are STILL getting paid for it.
Remember Mikey, the beer swilling, cannabis smoking petty criminal is a straw man created by scum to push their evil policies on the weak and needy. Too many fucking morons have fallen for this bullshit (that’s not aimed at you).
Good for you for not just taking any job. It’s your life and you’re responsible for the quality of it, so fuck the cunts.
They say go for unskilled jobs, and when you do, the employer says you are too old/too disabled/too intelligent/too skilled/overqualified. They see in a second you’d be bored to death on your first day, and refuse to hire you. Then the DWP and the Work Programme punish you for not getting the non-job. Or, they deliberately make you apply for jobs in the middle of nowhere, knowing you have no transport and can’t drive. Or the ‘job’ is
(hidden in the small print) a ‘zero hour contract’, meaning weeks with no work, no employment rights/leave/benefits. Or it’s such a non-job you are much worse off, financially and health-wise, it has not enough hours to get enough money to live on, and too many hours to get benefits. The in work calculation never factors in bills, debts, credit cards, rent – or the fact that they take your housing benefit away for working, so you must pay it from your minimum wage, so you are financially worse off than on the dole. Plus if you have a mortgage they chase you again (see last night’s BBC1 programme about Food Banks). Most of these McJobs have no prospect of advancement, change or promotion, except possibly after years and years of mindless drudgery, promotion to being overseer or supervisor of your replacement. And it isn’t much of a good image if you then want to apply for more interesting/varied/skilled/responsible,
better-paid jobs. You’re probably too knackered and skint to ‘retrain at night school’, assuming the courses/college hasn’t been shut in the Cuts.
And the older you get, the less likely the employers are to want you.
Many McEmployers only hire younger people to whom they can pay the lowest possible NMW, before tax. They have unwritten policies of NOT hiring people over 21/25 etc., And don’t bother if you are sick or disabled,
big employers don’t care and can’t be bothered to let you be slower/have time off, small employers can’t afford it.
Quite a few are hiring 35-plus people on the NMW equivalent for a 16 year old school leaver with no GCSEs, by stating they are ‘allowed to be exempt from the NMW rules’. Surely this is illegal? Try renting accommodation on that sort of money and what can it buy you?
A more fancy grade of cardboard box? If you tell a landlord that is what you earn, expect to be refused the room/flat. No… try EATING on that money. If you are 16 you might be fed by parents you live with – but might have to pay them rent too and there’s no EMA any more. If you are 40 in a cold damp bedsit with TB and no token for the meter, no dole for your food, but to work would stop your HB (but not pay enough to live on), do you a) Wait for the dole and feed the meter, but go hungry b) Shiver in the cold and eat cold economy 20p baked beans from the tin, c) Pay some bills but starve and freeze, d) Get a McJob you’ll be so sick you get sacked, e) Sharpen a stake and go to visit Ian Duncan Smith? Answers on a postcard…
Committee launches inquiry into the Work Programme: the experience of different user groups http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/news/work-programme-user-groups/
Emma Harrison is bleeding filth. Now… where did I put me bleeding teef.
Not big, nor clever, but cathartic
She’s a CUNT
been on it and bullied by a4e thugs
Check this out:
Police move on campaigners for “criminal acts against DWP”
“Some of you may be aware that police invaded the home of a campaigner for Disabled People Against Cuts, living in Cardiff, just before midnight yesterday (October 26)
Apparently she had been accused of “Criminal acts against the Department for Work and Pensions” – being that she has been highlighting the deaths of sick and disabled people following reassessment by Atos and the DWP for Employment and Support Allowance.
No charges were brought against the lady concerned and it is generally considered that this was an act of intimidation. …”
It is a fucking disgrace, but this is how the filth operate using intimidation tactics to suppress those brave enough to speak out against their toff bosses in government and big business!
Individually they will pick us off one at a time, and they intend to.
Nothing new here; this has been going on for… like ever; standard police “operating procedure” – harassment, intimidation, surveillance, early morning/late night knocks on the door/door kicked in, searches, being pulled over constantly, friends/family being harassed.. And you wonder why people are put off protesting.
Ecomomic Motivators of Contractors to the State. In 2009 on WRA ESA. I appeared an easy candidate for “Creaming = contractor bonus”. I was ill, depressed, undergoing assessment for Aspergers Syndrome but obviously intelegent. I stood up to the repeated inquisitions knowing my rights and my smug face changed me into “a hard case”. I went from fending off support to being left in a room with pc’s – look for a job my instruction, staff saying nasty things to me, being given other clients log in details (data breach) as staff didn’t know how to set my use profile up, kept being asked to do basic number/literacy training. After 6 months my details were being review as my appeal was successful (0/15 to 17/15). I saw my details… My Batchelor of Education (primary) had been recorded as HNC Primary my, PGD Land Ecconomics had not been recorded as there was no HND tab on the database. For 6 months “the 3rd party people with near absolute power over me but less qualifications than me” thought I had been a classroom assisstant. I complained, got a meaningless 2 line reply from DWP and CAB advised me to take my issue no further as “I would get nowhere” with further complaint.
Typo —No PGD Tab on Database,,,, And a careers guidance officer advised me to sell my house.. Career officer offering financial advice but “transferrable skills” was a phrase often used, like having piles removed by a dentist!!!
The Jokecentre told a young woman she could only get benefits if she got pregnant! Punished for being a student, living on nothing, going to foodbanks. (BBC1 30/10/12, on Foodbanks programme)
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