Former
A4e boss Emma Harrison made millions out of the welfare-to-work scam
before retiring just as the company became mired in fraud allegations.
If there is one place that a culture of worklessness really does exist it’s in the offices of the companies running Iain Duncan Smith’s Work Programme. Some welfare-to-work advisors have been languishing on tax-payer funded salaries for years whilst barely lifting a finger.
Last week the DWP published an update of the Minimum Service Delivery standards for all of the main Work Programme providers. These are the very basic levels of service that everybody referred to these companies can expect to receive as promised in their contracts with the DWP. As the document reveals, you shouldn’t expect too much.
Appallingly a claimant on Employment Support Allowance can expect to wait eight weeks before Maximus will be bothered to help them produce a CV. Those placed with the notorious A4e will only have contact with a named advisor once a month, whilst the most other providers are offering is just fortnightly meetings. At these meetings participants are likely to be given a string of conditions they must meet, which might include workfare, or they will have their benefits stopped. Then they’ll be politely asked to fuck off for another fortnight. And that’s the Work Programme. That’s the wonderful, flexible, intensive, tailored to the individual, innovative, half-arsed piece of shit that bungling Iain Duncan Smith has so far wasted close to a billion pounds of our money on. And that’s why the performance of the scheme has been so dire and you are more likely to have your benefit sanctioned than find a job on the Work Programme...
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