Mencap Sponsor Workfare Award At Poverty Pimp Love In

Decent people everywhere will be appalled to learn that the charity Mencap recently sponsored an award at the first ever ERSA Employability Awards.

ERSA are the trade body who were formed in 2005 to lie on behalf of the money grabbing welfare-to-work industry .  They represent the companies such as A4e and G4S who are being paid billions to harass and bully benefit claimants on the Government’s Work Programme.

Despite a disastrous year for this sector, during which almost no-one has found work through the Work Programme,  ERSA seem to have plenty of cash to splash out on a back-slapping awards ceremony.  Even the skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban managed to drag himself off his tax-payer funded silk cushions to turn up for a free drink.

Mencap sponsored the Large Employer of the Year Award, at a cost of a cool £1000 according to advance publicity for the awards (pdf).  This award to went to B&M Stores, a company who have repeatedly been accused of using workfare and who work closely with poverty pimps Ingeus to recruit staff.

Mencap donors and supporters may be shocked to learn the charity is handing out money to cheer on the welfare-to-work sector, but sadly for those following welfare reform this is no surprise.  Whilst many large disability charities, including Mencap, have distanced themselves from workfare in their shops, they still have their snouts firmly in the welfare reform trough.  Scope, RNIB, Leonard Cheshire Disability and MIND are just some of the charities who, along with Mencap, are paid by the welfare-to-work sector to manage Work Programme sub-contracts.

And as this award ceremony shows, behind the scenes charity bosses are quite happy to stuff their faces with vol au vents and hand out money intended for disabled people to pay for glitzy love-ins with the worst of the corporate sector.

Another familiar face at the awards was Matthew Oakley, who was adding yet another lucrative string to his own personal welfare-to-work racket.  Oakley is a leading member of the right wing think-tank, the Policy Exchange, who recommended many of the current welfare reforms.  Oakley is also paid  £256.80 a day by the tax payer as a member of the Social Security Advisory Committee, the so called independent body of so called experts that scrutinise those welfare reforms.  And last week Oakley was a judge at an awards ceremony handing out prizes to the companieswho are paid to implement the reforms.

Over the last eighteen months, any involvement with forced unpaid labour has become a public relations nightmare for both private companies and charities alike.  These awards suggest the welfare-to-work sector is fighting back.  Companies using workfare may face boycotts and protests, but they might also get a shiny award, sponsored by a national charity to show how lovely they really are.  All those who object to Mencap acting as charitable cover for the crimes of the welfare-to-work sector can contact them on facebook or on twitter @mencap_charity.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Number of Claimants On New Sickness Benefit At All Time High Boasts Mark Hoban

It is a tribute to the hard campaigning carried out by disabled people, benefit claimants and supporters that the Government are now boasting that less people are being found ‘fit for work’ than at any point since the notorious Work Capability Assessment (WCA) began.

A revealing press release from the DWP makes the claim that the WCA is now ‘fairer’ stating that: “nearly three in ten people completing a Work Capability Assessment between June and August 2012 were awarded unconditional support through ESA. This compares to just one person in every ten completing an assessment three years ago.”

This refers to claimants placed in the Support Group part of Employment Support Allowance, in which there is no requirement to look for work.  It suggests that even the DWP admit that many of the initial assessments were ‘unfair’, despite internet con man Grant Shapps’ recent attempts to smear all those stripped of sickness benefits as fraudulent or fake.

The press release also contains  a timely acknowledgement that those placed in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG)  group – the majority of claimants now on sickness or disability benefits – are not ‘fit for work’ as has often been claimed.  According to the DWP:  “People who are placed in the work-related activity group (WRAG) for ESA are currently too ill to work, but with the right help will be able to move into work in the future”

Astonishingly people in this group can still be sent on workfare or face having their benefits stopped.  Grasping charities such as the Salvation Army have been only too happy to staff their charity shops with claimants who, in the opinion of their own doctors, Atos and even the DWP, are too ill to work.

And it is this that reveals the truth behind this apparent change of attitude,  which is little more than some cheap spin spewed out by skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban in a panic before the local elections.  As well as condemning sick and disabled people to unpaid labour, Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms are set to make a significant number of them homeless.  Despite minister’s lies that disabled people will not be affected by the bedroom tax or benefit cap, hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled claimants in the Work Related Activity Group will be hit by the changes.  Many will lose their homes.

The figures also contain details of appeals, and show that 37% of appeals against decisions made by Atos have been successful, a figure which has remained more or less stable since the introduction of the WCA.  This translates total to a shocking 15% of all ‘fit for work’ decisions in total.  And that just represents people who appealed.  The number of those wrongly stripped of benefits and now forced into the Jobseekers Allowance regime, or living on the charity of friends and family, will be far higher.

A couple of year’s ago this press release would have been littered with smears claiming to prove the number of ‘fit for work’ decisions shows how those on sickness or disability benefits are scroungers.  The new direction should not fool anyone.  It seems that the new DWP spin on the figures is intended to imply that the WCA they inherited -  shamefully introduced as it was by Labour – was terribly unfair, but now they’ve fixed it.  The persistent high rate of successful appeals reveals they have done little more than change the PR and tinker around the edges.

Hundreds of thousands of people with serious health conditions or disabilities are still being found ‘fit for work’.  The appeals figures show over 1 in 7 of those decisions are ‘officially’ wrong, whilst the Work Programme statistics show barely any of those thrown off sickness benefits are finding jobs.  The number of disabled people helped into work via the Government’s Access to Work scheme has slumped to an all time low over the last two years. 

There has been no time in living memory that those who are too sick or disabled to work have been treated so viciously. It has not been enough for this Government to impoverish people and now even drive them from their homes, but also to collaborate in callous smear campaigns in the press to abuse and discredit sick or disabled claimants.  This week’s figures show that those smears were based on lies so big that not even the DWP dare attempt to hide the truth any further.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Benefit Cap Means The Safety Net For London’s Poorest Children Has Disappeared

It is not hyperbole to say that yesterday’s introduction of the benefit cap effectively ends the safety net of social security for poor families in London.

Households in Enfield, Haringey, Croydon and Bromley from today will now face losing their homes should they become unemployed or too ill to work.  This social cleansing is to be extended to all London Boroughs and elsewhere in the UK from July.

It is true that the cap, set at £500 a week , is a lot of money.  It is not true however that it meant equivalent families receive more on benefit then they would in work.  A family earning £26,000 a year and living in the private sector in London would receive significant housing benefits.  Those who objected to people living in high rent areas whilst on benefits were perfectly free to do the same, and would have had some help with housing costs even if they were in full time work.

It is not the fault of claimants that rents have soared out of control in London, making often the most modest of properties unaffordable without some benefits.  Even in the very cheapest outskirts of the capital rents are soaring.  Most of the families struggling with rocketing private sector housing costs were born in London or have lived here for years.  Some have seen neighbourhoods previously regarded as poor like Notting Hill, Dalston or Brixton turn into playgrounds for the latte slurping middle classes around them, sometimes in the space of just a few years.  Others live in areas which were always poor, like Tottenham and Catford.  With the benefit cap pegged at £500 a week and housing benefit now frozen far below the rate of rent increases, very soon even these areas will be unaffordable for medium sized families on benefits.

The DWP went on the offensive yesterday in support of the cap, which is set to cost 40,000 people their homes over the next few months.  Skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban was even dragged off his silk cushions to lie that 8000 people had found jobs due to the cap.  The Government has revised down the number of people they think will be affected, but this is not down to people finding work as ministers claim.

The fall is almost certain to be due to the disregard from the cap announced late last year for the housing costs of  people in Supported Exempt Accommodation.  This means that people living in supported housing such as homelessness hostels and women’s refuges – where rents can be eye-watering – will still have those rents met by benefits, for now.  Far from London claimants living the high life in Chelsea mansions, the reality is that some of the poorest people, in the most difficult circumstances, are those paying the highest rents.

Anyone working enough hours to qualify for Working Tax Credits will be exempt from the cap, leading to a perverse situation where someone in work may now be eligible for more in benefit payments then someone unable to work due to sickness or unemployment.  To qualify for the exemption, a single parent must be working at least 16 hours a week.  Therefore a single mum working ten hours a week in term time may now be forced to give up her job and move hundreds of miles away, often to an area of high unemployment where rents are lower.

But even those who meet the threshold for Tax Credits will now face the threat of imminent homelessness should they become unemployed.  The same applies to anyone who has managed to find a job to escape the cap. With increasingly only casualised or temporary jobs available for low waged workers, almost all those at the bottom of the labour market may face the prospect of losing their homes at some point in the future.  Only those who have been in continuous work for 12 months when they lose their jobs will have a short term exemption of 39 weeks from the cap

Shelter recently released a report which showed that one in three people could not pay their rent for more than a month if they lost their job.  For those families living in London, the welfare state will no longer provide a safety net to help them keep their homes.  Some will be unable to pay the rent immediately leading to eviction in a matter of weeks.  Others will face a desperate scramble to find work within the exemption period – or get better in the case of sickness -  or they too will no longer be able to stay in their homes.

Whilst 40,000 people could be made homeless overnight due to yesterday’s changes, possibly hundreds of thousands more Londoners will now live in fear of the streets should they fall ill or are made redundant.

Above pic from: http://hackneyrenters.org/

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Iain Duncan Smith Is A Power Crazed Fool And Should Be Sacked

Even the skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban was forced to drag his lazy arse out of bed today to defend the workfare shambles which saw many of the government’s welfare to work schemes declared illegal.

Hoban claims that hastily rewritten regulations have been placed before Parliament which meet the requirements of today’s appeal court judgement.  It remains to be seen whether he has been successful.  In a truly shocking turn of events he has also insisted that no sanctioned benefits will be repaid despite today’s ruling declaring many workfare schemes illegal.

The pompous halfwit has only been in the job he does part time for five minutes and already thinks he’s above the law.

But it is the Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith who has been shown to be out of control by this judgement.  Hoban thinks he’s above the courts, but events have shown that IDS considers himself above the entire parliamentary democracy.

In his desperate rush to ram-raid mass workfare into law, Iain Duncan Smith neglected to develop the necessary regulations and instead assumed he could rewrite law on the hoof without any scrutiny from Parliament.

This breath-taking arrogance will come as no surprise to claimants and those fighting welfare reforms who have watched in astonishment as DWP Ministers have lied through their teeth about workfare, disappeared or re-written documents and attempted to dodge  freedom of information requests.

In short, Iain Duncan Smith, and his then lacky Chris Grayling made two significant bodges.  The first was in failing to provide adequate information about the nature of some workfare schemes to claimants and the consequences of failing to participate.

This means that any sanctions which were applied on those schemes were not legal and are likely to have to be repaid.

The second charge is far more serious.  It appears Iain Duncan Smith attempted to use poorly worded legislation in the Jobseekers Allowance regulations as a kind of ‘enabling act’ giving him powers to mandate claimants to any scheme or activity he dreamed up.  In a crude attempt to bypass Parliament, the Secretary of State failed to correctly set out regulations covering many workfare schemes instead relying on tricks of language to avoid scrutiny.*

In the words of one of the appeal judges:

“The Secretary of State cannot avoid the requirements of the Act in relation to schemes by calling them programmes. It would be absurd to conclude that a scheme is subject to the statutory requirements only if the Secretary of State decided to call it such.”

It seems that in Iain Duncan Smith’s rush to force claimants onto welfare he attempted to bend the law to the point it snapped.  The end result is not just a huge embarrassment for the Government, but could still lead to millions being paid out in backdated benefits to those sanctioned

In any other job in the world, someone who bent the rules, got caught out and cost their organisation millions would be fired.  It also raises the question of just how solid is the rest of the legislation on which welfare reform is based.

Iain Duncan Smith should be hounded from office.  Instead bungling ministers are hastily trying to rush yet more legislation into law with the same inept arrogance that caused this farce in the first place.

Join the National Week of Action Against Workfare beginning on 18th March and help bring an end to forced labour for good: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?p=1996

Visit consent.me.uk for the full ruling: http://consent.me.uk/2013/02/12/ruling/

* Basic summary  – Original Job Seekers Allowance regulations which gave powers of sanction backed training or ‘back to work’ type schemes etc were worded so they could also be applied to any future ‘prescribed’ schemes as devised by ministers – prescribed meaning (as was judged today) properly explained and legislated for.  IDS used this to assume he could set up any old scheme, including workfare, without legislating and just referring to the powers for ministers to set up future schemes as justification.  Judges said don’t take the piss, you cant just make up regulations as you see fit that have big impacts on peoples lives without them being placed before parliament.

Mandatory Work Activity is not included in today’s judgement as it is based on different legislation.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

Mark Hoban Begs For Help With Floundering Welfare Reform

Skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban resorted to begging the corporate sector for new ideas to harass benefit claimants in his speech to the Policy Exchange this week.

In a rare appearance,  Hoban tried to do butch and turned his attention to self employed and part time workers.  When Universal Credit is launched these workers will be forced to continually look for ‘more or better paid’ work as a condition of receiving in work benefits.  Over a million people are set to be affected by the change, which could mean part time workers forced to leave jobs to take up temporary positions, or self employed people forced to turn down work to attend workfare.

Single parents, sick and disabled people are also to be forced into endless job searching meaning already over-stretched Jobcentre staff could see workloads almost tripled.  With no large scale recruitment at the DWP on the cards, many have asked whether this kind of mass state intrusion is even possible.

Universal Jobmatch was one answer, the online job seeking site recently set up at the cost of millions.  Unfortunately Monster Jobs – who designed the site – pulled a fast one on bungling Iain Duncan Smith and it’s rubbish and probably illegal.

With computers proving too complicated for DWP Ministers, Hoban’s latest crazy scheme is to police the ‘toughest ever’ benefit conditionality regime by the medium of text.

Plans have been announced to taunt part time workers with texts, informing them of the astounding fact that if they got a full time job they’d have more money.   For the millions already desperate to increase hours this senseless provocation will be accompanied by a monthly letter, telling them the same thing.  There will even be an online calculator, just like there is now, so claimants can work out that if they earn more money then they will have more money.

Lord Fraud is even going round bull-shitting that these magical texts will somehow create 300,000 new jobs!

With Universal Credit descending into a shambles, the DWP are looking desperate for ideas.  So much so that Hoban and Lord Fraud have launched a consultation begging for help from charities and the welfare to work sector.

Hoban obviously isn’t interested in doing any actual work himself.  If this week’s speech is the best he can come up with, then it’s probably best for the entire country that he goes back to his bed and draws the curtains.

Follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid

More Money Likely For Workfare Parasites if DWP Reward Work Programme Failure

Even the skiving Employment Minister Mark Hoban, a man who makes Chris Grayling look busy, was dragged from his bed yesterday in an attempt to justify the floundering Work Programme.

As has been widely reported, the number of people finding sustained work through the Work Programme is a pitiful at just 2.3%.  It is hard to overstate just how dreadful these performance figures are.  Much of the media has pointed out that this misses the target of 5.5% and therefore the scheme is getting less people into work than simply doing nothing at all.  But 5.5% was not the target, it was the minimum acceptable level providers needed to reach to ensure they kept their contracts.

Mark Hoban has claimed the private sector poverty pimps running the Work Programme are ‘on notice‘.  Apparently warnings have been issued that if the figures do not improve then those companies performing poorly will lose contracts.  Yet all of the providers are performing poorly and all should have lost their contracts according to yesterday’s figures.

When the Work Programme was announced the DWP claimed that 36% of participants would be placed into long term, sustainable employment. Whilst this percentage covered the full two years of the scheme, plus a year’s tracking period, it is clear that providers are nowhere near the real Work Programme target.

Even these targets are derisory.  Ever since welfare-to-work parasites like A4e took over providing any help for unemployed people, the performance standards in the sector have been deliberately eroded.

Around the turn of the century Employment Service Programme Centres, many of which were run by charities, local authorities and community organisations, were expected to place 45% of participants into employment.  This was a twelve week scheme which provided basic training and job search facilities and was a mix of both mandatory and non-mandatory contracts.  The tracking period under which organisations could claim job outcomes after the provision ended was just 16 weeks.  In 2001 Programme Centre Providers were achieving a 45% job outcome rate in just six months.

Around the same time Off the Streets and Into Work – an organisation which bid for Jobcentre and European money and then subcontracted to homelessness charities – was providing training and jobsearch for street homeless people.  The target figures for those expected to find work was 10%, again in just six months.  The client group included people with literacy problems, heavy drug and alcohol users, people who hadn’t worked for decades and those living on the streets.  Four times as many homeless people were finding jobs under this scheme as the private sector are managing to place those without these difficulties into work on the Work Programme.

Many of the organisations who provided these services closed down when big money moved into the sector and muscled out the competition.  As the welfare-to-work cartel gained control of ever increasing government funding, targets were steadily lowered, workfare and sanctions replaced genuine training and long time unemployment began a relentless climb upwards.

Now there is nowhere left for the DWP to go except leeches like A4e, G4S, Ingeus, Reed and Manpower.  With government ministers now held firmly over a barrel by the welfare-to-work industry the most likely outcome of yesterday’s dismal news is that yet more tax payers cash is set to be shovelled in their direction.

ERSA, the body which represents the welfare-to-work racket, published their own figures yesterday claiming that 200,000 people had found work on the Work Programme.  What the trade body didn’t make clear is that most of these jobs were short term.  Some could even have represented just a couple of days work.  There was a time when these would be considered job outcomes, a situation the welfare-to-work sector rather liked.  Simply put, it’s far easier to cook the books by bullying someone off benefits (under threat of sanctions) into a couple of days agency work than it is to demonstrate sustained employment.

It is plain to see that ERSA are attempting to re-establish payments for any old job outcome, even if it means that the participants will be back on benefits within a fortnight.

By dangling these figures on the day of the Work Programme embarrassment they simply baited a trap that the inept Mark Hoban walked right into.  The DWP is cheering ERSA’s figures in a crude attempt to hide the truth about the Work Programme.  Expect more money for welfare-to-work parasites to be announced soon.

Not that Iain Duncan Smith will mind.  His stupid Christian think tank, which came up with the Work Programme, is funded by the welfare-to-work sector after all. 

Yesterday’s long awaited Work Programme figures were swiftly followed by today’s news that sick and disabled claimants are now to face workfare. This comes of top of the launch last week of the new Universal Jobmatch snooping system which is to be used to police how claimants look for jobs.  It appears that the DWP is using the headlines generated by the Work Programme disaster to bury some of the most brutal and insidious aspects of welfare reform.  They know doubt hope that tomorrow’s Leveson report will further keep welfare off the front pages whilst the Christmas break will dampen any ongoing resistance to the reforms.  We must not let this happen.

Mark Homophoban – The Most Homophobic Minister in 15 Years

David Cameron has made much of his support for gay rights in an attempt to ditch the blustering old bigot image which had dogged the Tory Party under Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.

Even after he wasn’t elected, Cameron promised to introduce same sex marriage in an effort to show the Tory Party’s commitment to equality.  When William Hague was caught bunking up with his foxy younger male assistant Cameron brushed the matter aside, keen to show just how much the Tories had changed.

The promotion of Mark Hoban to Employment Minister shows that the mask has slipped and the nasty party are emerging from under their stones once more.  Hoban joins Ministry of Defence goons, Andrew Robatham and Mark Francois, as three of the most homophobic politicians to serve in ministerial positions for over 15 years.

The Public Whip website reveals that Hoban has voted against every piece of gay rights legislation since becoming an MP in 2001.  Hoban voted against scrapping the notorious Clause 28 – the nasty little policy introduced under Thatcher which banned schools and local authorities from displaying ‘acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’.

Hoban voted against Civil Partnerships  and is opposed to gay and lesbian couples having equal adoption rights.  Whilst his boss, and devout Catholic Iain Duncan Smith has recently signalled his support for gay marriage – presumably having decided that God got it wrong – Mark Hoban has remained silent on the issue.

As recently as 2007, Mark Hoban voted against LGBT people being given protection from discrimination under the Equalities Act.  In the same year he also voted against gay women being permitted fertility treatment.

Hoban, who has no children, has never spoken about his quiet contempt for those in same sex relationships.  But his voting record speaks for itself.  Hoban is opposed to equal rights for LGBT people, and believes that it should be illegal to portray same sex relationships as acceptable.

Mark Homophoban is far from alone in the Tory Party, who never really changed in their desire to drag the UK back into the Victorian era.  But he is the only Minister with a responsibility for millions of young, and often vulnerable people on benefits.  With Housing Benefits cuts expected for the young – meaning people who face abuse at home will be unable to flee – it seems young people can no longer except the welfare state to be a safe refuge from homophobia and prejudice.

Blogging may be light until next week.

Atos Victims To Blame For Appeals Shambles Claims Mark Hoban

For over a month now there’s been barely a peep from the newly appointed Employment Minister Mark Hoban.  Unlike his bungling predecessor Chris Grayling, he was too lazy too give a speech at the Tory Party Conference and doesn’t appear to have done anything at all during his first month in the job.

Radio 4 however have finally managed to drag the lazy bastard out of his bed and it’s clear he would have been better staying where he was.  In a debate about the growing scandal of successful appeals brought against benefit slashing decisions made by Atos ‘Healthcare’ he attempted to blame sick and disabled people for the shambles.

Atos carry out the Work Capability Assessment which has been used to strip benefits from hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled benefit claimants.  40% of appeals against the company’s decisions are upheld at tribunals, and it is this shocking statistic that Hoban attempts to blame on sick and disabled people themselves.  Speaking this afternoon Hoban said:

“What’s happening too often is people are suggesting to claimants ‘oh, just leave the medical evidence until the appeal’ – there’s a shared responsibility here.”

This shocking statement does not bode well for the future of those with cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, MS or any number of other serious and life threatening conditions about to be forced into the humiliating Atos assessment regime.  The reality is that many claimants are terrified by the assessment process with an increasing number of people tragically taking their own lives.

The notion that people would gamble on losing vital benefits because they couldn’t be bothered to provide the necessary evidence of their condition is an astonishing new low for the DWP.  If this is the best we can expect from the skiving Employment Minister then he should fuck off back to sleep.

Workfare Must Not Lead to a Job Say Guidelines

The guidelines for Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship Work Programme warn that participants mandated to community workfare must not be promised a job on successful completion of the placement.

The Work Programme Provider Guidance (PDF), which was re-written yet again over the Summer, warns that any community placement lasting over 6 weeks and which comes with a job offer at the end will breach the minimum wage laws.

Astonishingly the DWP don’t even seem sure whether other workfare style schemes are legal, potentially leaving workfare exploiting charities exposed to backdated wage claims running to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The good news is that the latest guidelines are straight forward – work experience for private companies is voluntary and claimants can leave at any point without the threat of benefit sanctions.  The only exception to this is when participants have been judged to have committed gross misconduct.  It is yet to be seen whether this clause will be misused in practice by exploitative employers and over-zealous welfare to work companies.

The bad news is that those who refuse workfare at private companies can be mandated to a Community Benefit Work Placement.  This can mean Work Programme participants face unlimited forced labour for charities, local authorities or even private companies who claim to offer a ‘community benefit’.

It is these unpaid positions which the DWP warn must not lead to a job, however it is quite possible that the same rules apply to all workfare placements:

“Even if they are not paid by the employer, participants will qualify for the NMW (National Minimum Wage) if they are regarded as employees of the employer AND are participating in a trial period of work with that employer, in which the employer has agreed to offer a job to the participant if they successfully complete the trial, in cases where the trial is in excess of six weeks.”

The DWP warn that: “Employment” has a wide meaning, and participants are likely to be regarded as employees if they agree voluntarily to take up the placement with a particular employer.”

It is clear, workfare must not be voluntary, and must not come with the promise of a job.

Elsewhere the guidance is not so clear.  The DWP warn that: “As a general rule, persons participating in a relevant Government Scheme – which includes the Work Programme – designed to provide training, work experience or temporary work, or to assist in seeking or obtaining work, do not qualify for the National Minimum Wage (NMW) in respect of work done for an employer as part of that scheme.”

However they also point out: “The NMW is very unlikely to apply to participants mandated to participate in unpaid work experience or an unpaid community benefit work placement through the Work Programme, or to Participants who volunteer to take part in an unpaid placement of either type which is not a work trial exceeding 6 weeks.”

Clearly the department is winging it in the hope that any future legal cases don’t rule against them.  Some charities, like the British Heart Foundation, have employed hundreds of unpaid workers on the various workfare schemes and will no doubt be re-assured that it is ‘very unlikely’ they will end up facing a backdated wage bill of over a million pounds.

The Work Programme, established to help long term unemployed people find work is fast becoming a joke.  The DWP themselves don’t seem to know what the ever changing rules are, or even whether the whole racket is legal.  Despite hundreds of millions of pounds being handed over to welfare to work parasites like A4e and G4S, long term unemployment is soaring.

The new minister in charge, Mark Hoban, in his brief appearances yesterday, appeared to think everything is wonderful at the DWP.  Soaring long term unemployment, rising youth unemployment and a pitiful fall in unemployment overall is apparently good news.

It seems that despite the appointment of a new minister, the shambles at the DWP is far from over.  The clown ultimately in charge, Iain Duncan Smith is, as usual, nowhere to be seen whilst bungling ex-Employment Minister Chris Grayling was only too happy to scramble off the sinking ship.  Unfortunately for those trapped on endless workfare or in desperate poverty due to benefit sanctions, there is no such escape from the brutal incompetence which has become the hallmark of the DWP.

Who the fuck is Mark Hoban?

Mark Hoban, the non-entity brought in to take over from bungling Employment Minister Chris Grayling at the DWP, is likely to prove a disastrous appointment as Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms start to crumble.

Mark Hoban is the archetypal Tory nobody, a boring middle aged man with a background in accountancy and who’s only significant political achievement is getting elected in a safe Tory seat.  Hoban will leave his post as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and may well have been appointed as Cameron and Osborne’s mole as the DWP descends into increasing chaos.

Hoban does have some dubious links to the banking sector and previously worked for accountancy firm Price Waterhouse, but still doesn’t even manage to have a decent financial scandal to his name – well apart from him accepting a donation of services worth £150,ooo from Oliver Wyman Ltd, whose partner Davide Taliente was later given a role on the committee overseeing the break up of the FSA.  But even that’s quite boring.   Even his name is boring.

His voting record is equally dull, having rarely rebelled against the Government on anything, except for his ruthless opposition to LGBT rights.  Hoban has voted against every piece of LGBT equality legislation, including Civil Partnerships, since he entered Parliament.  Despite this, rumours just started on the internet suggest he is widely believed to be a closet homosexual by many members of his constituency.

Whilst Iain Duncan Smith will welcome some help from an accountant to cook the books, Hoban will be of little or no use when the shit hits the fan.  Welfare reform is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster and the last thing the quiet man needed was another grey man at the DWP.

Anyone, who can find anything at all remotely interesting about Mark Hoban please get in touch.

UPDATE:  Disabled People Against Cuts have some information on Esther McVeigh, the new Minister for Disabled people: http://www.dpac.uk.net/2012/09/more-about-esther-mcveigh-new-minister-for-disabled-people/

ANOTHER UPDATE: latest from google is that Hoban can’t even run a fucking website: