Former A4e boss bungles interview on C4 news!

What a ghastly spectacle it was watching former A4e boss, Emma Harrison, trying to riddle off the hook as she was grilled by the channel 4 news presenter, Khrishnan Guru-Murthy, last week about A4e's abysmal performance running the government's Work Programme.

It seems that during the first year of the Work Programme, A4e have only been able to get four out of every one hundred (4.0%) of their clients into a job and have failed to meet their target of 5.5%. The government say that if no action was taken to help the unemployed into work, they would expect five out of every hundred (5.0%) to obtain a job.

Despite A4e's appalling performance, Emma Harrison, has become very wealthy due to her majority shareholding in the company. Earlier this year she was paid an £8m dividend and recently despite resigning as the Chairman and a Director of A4e, she received a further £250,000 payment. All the company's UK turnover is derived from government contracts and money from the British taxpayer. The government have given £46m to A4e to get people on the Work Programme back to work and are expected to publish their own figures on performance next month.

When questioned by Guru-Murthy about the figures which were obtained by Jackie Long, the social affairs editor for C4, Harrison could only say the figures were wrong but was unable to provide any figures herself. She did however, claim that she had been caught up in a 'political maelstrom' and had been used for political reasons. She also added: "I have been bullied, my staff have been bullied, and because of your reporting my children were bullied. Bullying entrepreneurs like me, is not good for the UK."

Despite her protestations, Emma is laughing all the way to the bank. As one former A4e employee once told me, company employees used to joke that A4e really stood for 'All 4 Emma'.

Welfare-to-Work Scandal - whistleblower tells MPs of 'systemic fraud' and 'fictitious jobs'!

A former chief auditor of the welfare-to-work company A4e, who alleges that an 'unethical culture' within the company led to 'systemic fraud', was forced to give evidence in private last Tuesday to the Commons public accounts committee - from which the public was excluded - after objections were raised by Conservative members of the committee.

Last week the government said that it had no evidence of fraud in contracts that were held by A4e but this has been questioned by the National Audit Office (NAO), who say that the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP), missed vital evidence during its asssessment of fraud. Though Employment Minister, Chris Grayling, told MPs that an internal inquiry had found no evidence of fraud involving A4e, the DWP withdrew one of its contracts from the company to provide 'work experience' placements, because of 'significant weaknesses in internal contracts.'

In his evidence Mr. Hutchinson says that inappropriate behaviour was driven by a bonus scheme paid by A4e and that staff acted in the belief that any irregularity, would go unpunished and that they could resign without further action being taken. He also says that when his concerns were brought to the attention of senior managers within A4e, little was done to address the widespread abuse of taxpayers money. He told MPs, 'In my professional view, it was systemic.'

In his evidence to the committee, Mr. Hutchinson, also referred to serious problems with another welfare-to-work provider known as 'Working Links' which runs three major contracts on the government's £5bn 'Work Programme'. As a former employee of Working Links, which is partly owned by the State, the private sector and a charity, he told MPs that the level of fraud at Working Links, had escalated to a "farcical situation" but at the time, he'd faced a 'stonewall' from management. In his evidence he says that in May 2008, he had compiled a list of 15 different frauds in excess of £250,000 relating to four different tax-payer funded programmes and had warned Working Links that fraud within the organisation was 'endemic'.

Although all of A4e's UK turnover is derived from government contracts, the company has been criticised for its 'abysmal' record of delivering government programmes. Earlier this year, it was also reported that the founder of A4e and majority shareholder, Emma Harrison, - who unlike many of her clients, enjoys a champagne lifestyle at the taxpayers expense - received an £8.6m dividend. Despite its 'abysmal' record and being subject of a police fraud investigation, in which eight of its employees have been arrested, A4e currently holds £438m of Work Programme government contracts.

A4e and Working Links deny the accusations of systemic fraud and say that many of the allegations relate to historic contracts and that any specific allegations that have been raised, have been addressed. Although A4e has been investigated nine times by the DWP and has repaid public funds on five separate occasions, after government inquiries into alleged fraud, the company says that it has a 'zero-tolerance approach to fraud.'

A4E 'All 4 Emma' - Money for Old Rope!

According to a recent update by A4E (aka 'Action4Employment') of the 30,000 long-term unemployed who have been press-ganged into attending their 'Flexible New Deal' course, only 2,630 jobless have been supported into work since the scheme was launched six months ago. In an interview with the Guardian on 30th April, Emma Harrison - the CEO of the company, told the paper:

"It`s too early to measure the scheme`s success but I`m excited about the fact that 90% of those in jobs are staying in them for 13 weeks or longer - around double the level on the previous scheme." 

Last year A4E secured a 5 year £800 million contract to help run New Labour`s Flexible New Deal Scheme.

Hi-De-Hi Jobseekers: New Deal Scam at A4E

Training and Work opportunities on the NEW DEAL - what a joke. We thought our readers might like to see this video taken from the channel 4 TV programme 'Benefit Busters'. This form of modern day slavery 'work for your dole' was thought up by James Purnell the MP for Stalybridge and Hyde. If the voters of Tameside have any sense then this is where they ought to send him and vote him out at the next election.