From The Daily Mail:
The woman appointed by David Cameron to get problem families back into work pocketed £8.6million last year – [all] of it from the taxpayer.
Emma Harrison paid herself the huge dividend from her firm A4e, which makes all its UK income from state contracts. The payout is up 300 per cent on the year before even though MPs say the company’s record on job schemes is ‘abysmal’...
Both the absymal failure and the rewards therefore are pretty much par for the course and as to be expected.
The bleating from various Labour politicians in the Daily Mail article is particularly nauseating, because A4E already had their snout in the taxpayer trough when Labour were still in government(full archive of stories from 2009 onwards is over at the Watching A4E 'blog). Last but not least, A4E used to pay David Blunkett for 'consultancy' or 'advisory' or something...
Friday, 10 February 2012
Interesting facts on A4E
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12 comments:
Disgusting she will probably be in line for a knighthood in due course.
The whole thing about bonuses and Ks is focussed onn thye bankers because the politicians have been able to get away with claiming that the recession was nothing to do with those in charge, ie themselves, and must have been the fault of the bankers.
This is as dishonest as the post WW! German nationalists who successfully put round the story that they hadn't actually lost the war - it was all the fault of the socialists, bankers & Jews.
I deeply regret that there has been no part of the media which has spoken against these liars.
You'll enjoy this firm rebuttal by A4E of a scurrilous allegation levellled against them at the PAC hearing, as contained in an official statement released this afternoon.
A4e working with their charity partner Lifeline
Lifeline is a partner to A4e on the Work Programme in East London and are charged a 12.5% management fee per person referred to them by A4e (Lifeline receive £350 of £400 attachment fee per individual).
The claim made by Margaret Hodge MP during the Public Accounts Committee hearing on 8th February that A4e passed on only £300 of the £400 attachment fee to Lifeline is therefore incorrect.
NC, probably a damehood, actually :-)
Anon, that's splendid, but of course Lifeline are just another bunch of leeches, so it makes no difference who takes the money:
With a long history of staff provision to the public sector, today Lifeline companies are placing hundreds of people into public and third sector assignments each week.
In recent years areas of the private sector, in particular those who have close dealings with the public sector, have also benefitted from the quality and diligence of our service.
Anyone else think they smell a "we've made A4E too big to fail" odour emanting from the 'evidence' given by the DWP at the PAC - for example this exchange :-
The committee's chair, Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking, asked civil servants why welfare-to-work companies with a poor track record of fulfilling previous contracts had been given new work.
"It seemed rather surprising to me that you did not have to regard to the past performance of contractors. Why not?" she asked. "A4e … their performance on [Pathways to Work] was abysmal … Why didn't you look at past performance of contractors?"
Her fellow committee member Richard Bacon, Conservative MP for south Norfolk, added: "Are you seriously saying that you could not take into account that A4e had dreadful performance in one of the immediate predecessor programmes?"
He said that the company had successfully got 9% of clients into work in the Pathways to Work programme, a much lower figure than the 30% they were expected to deliver.
"Despite that seriously poor track record, are you seriously saying that is not something you could take into account?"
The permanent secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, Robert Devereux, replied: "I am saying that."
He explained that because other companies, which had not been involved in providing previous welfare-to-work contracts, were also tendering for contracts, it would not have been possible to look at the past performance of companies that had previously worked in this area. He also pointed out that most of the welfare-to-work providers had underperformed during the previous scheme.
Is that the "we've made them so big, by showering them with contracts in the past, well if we don't give them a "fair cut" of whatever new contracts come along, even if we do think they are useless, well they'll just shout "foul" and head to the courts on some pretext to argue we've done 'em wrong and been unfair, and we wouldn't want that - aside from the cost, who knows what nasty cans of worms will be opened up as various former Ministers and senior civil servants get dragooned in to give evidence on how A4E got contracts in the first place, what revolving door shenanigans have gone on ... and if taken too far and the other big players in the Welfare to Work Corporate Welfare Recipients Cartel got involved, and the public started to hear some real facts about what little these bodies actually do or have done .... no, it is too too horrible to even contemplate ... so once someone is on the gravy train, getting them off again, well best of luck matey !
Anon 22.38, thanks, but that makes you wonder how stupid the Lib-Cons are?
Surely, on coming into government, they should have shut down all the PFI and A4E and ASH and all the other nonsense which Labour signed us up to, not go along with it for so long that they are now guilty-by-association.
Unless the country is just run by civil servants and the government doesn't matter, of course.
"Unless the country is just run by civil servants and the government doesn't matter, of course."
Did you not watch "Yes, Minister"? It was all gospel truth, I tell you!
"He explained that because other companies, ..."
This is, of course, a Big Fat Lie and shame on Ms Hodge and Mr Bacon for letting him get away with it. (Or is it Just Not Done to seriously embarrass a senior civil servant at a PAC meeting?)
re Bayard 15:21
Or is it Just Not Done to seriously embarrass a senior civil servant at a PAC meeting?
Well, according to at least one former Sir, not only is it not done, they shouldn't reallly be able to put them in the position of having to obfuscate and dissemble, because that is what Ministers do !
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/05/civil-servants-sir-humphrey-not-funny
But just before Christmas, the outgoing head of the civil service, Sir Gus (now Lord) O'Donnell, threw the first grenade.
He aimed it at the public accounts committee, whose robust inquiries into government spending disasters have made headlines. But civil service anger about a new steeliness among MPs is not limited to the PAC. Since the rules changed to allow select committee chairs to be elected by MPs rather than chosen by the powers that be, several committees have been making waves. This confrontation goes to the heart of parliament's role and authority.
****
O'Donnell accused the PAC of being "a theatrical exercise in public humiliation" and argued that civil servants were not accountable to parliament, but only to ministers. This goes back to Whitehall conventions, most recently asserted by one of O'Donnell's predecessors, Lord Armstrong. The PAC, because it investigates how public money is spent, rather than policy issues – which clearly are for ministers – has always been an exception. O'Donnell argues that this only affects the person at the top, the "accounting officer", not advisers such as Inglese. The committee wonders, in that case, how they are possibly supposed to get to the bottom of failures in an organisation like HMRC.
****
Mandarins feel aggrieved. They are not used to being challenged, sometimes rudely, in public by MPs. That, they have always been told, is what ministers are for. That is the principle O'Donnell fought to protect. Other senior mandarins are now calling for the PAC to be broken up and reconstituted as a tamer body. They are going to war.
oh and MW at 08:37
Well I took that "surely, on coming to government ..." as some gentle sarcasm - we have all seen exactly how two major critics of PFI (when in opposition) have on gaining office embraced it eagerly, plus of course there was the oft promised bonfire of the Quango's etc. And to be fair, they did stop the direct "nice big grants" to Alcohol Concern - prompting the illustrious Don to find something else to do ... but in general, the bigger the noises made about "cleaning things up, bringing in transparency, stopping the reveolving doors" made in opposition the more likely it just signals "nothing of the sort" when the "new brooms" get into office (got to think about life post [arliament etc.) although sometimes it has signalled "a greater effort to make it appear to smell slightly less rank than it actually does ..."
B, Anon has answered your question.
Anon, that's a good point about PAC, they were always head and shoulders above the rest and good entertainment value. I always liked Edward Leigh (Chairman 2001-10) as well, he did a fine job highlighting all this waste and crap.
Anon 17.11, our comments are in the wrong order now, but never mind.
No, it wasn't gentle sarcasm. We know for a fact that the gravy train merrily continues, a few Labour luvvies get booted out and a few Tory luvvies get given tasty quangos to run, but by and large (PFI, A4E, ASH, windmills, banks) it's the same people being subsidised as under Labour. Therefore we can only assume that they are either totally corrupt or totally irrational.
what! and no outrage from Peston or Liberal Conspiracy! How is that possible? (no need to reply)
"Therefore we can only assume that they are either totally corrupt..."
No need to give an alternative, 'tis the truth.
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