Among those selected by the government to carry out its welare to work programme are Atos, G4S and Serco - all have dubious records carrying out public sector contracts.
Among those selected by the government to carry out its welare to work programme are Atos, G4S and Serco – companies that have dubious records carrying out public sector contracts.
For example, it was Atos’s healthcare arm that needed to pull out of a ten-year contract to run a GP surgery in London’s east end after three years, as it could not provide the services it promised and was suspended from providing ultrascans for the NHS, due to technical errors and recording patients information incorrectly. Up to 900 patients had to be rescanned.
G4S has a similarly chequered record.
Its security arm, in charge of deporting foreign nationals from the UK, has experienced controversy, as in one week last year when one of its detainees died while being held in custody, and another was found to have suffered:
“…multiple bruising or petechiae (purple skin spots caused by broken blood capillaries) on his torso, back and arms as well as tenderness over his lower abdomen.”
Meanwhile, Serco’s cleaning services at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital were found to be deficient after a Freedom of Investigation request by Australian union United Voice, worried about outsourcing to the multinational in its country.
Six out of eight wards failed to meet hygiene standards at Forth Valley.
A proponent of outsourcing could say that the way forward was obvious: do not renew the contracts involved and let Atos, G4S and Serco face the market consequences. Except this all does leave a puzzle. One reason why outsourcing is meant to work is that instead of government doing lots of jobs mediocrely, it should outsource services specialist companies that are experts in that particular service.
Yet these companies are not specialists in any type of service. Despite not mastering healthcare, detention or hygiene services, they offer dozens of services, that include welfare to work.
What does unite the different services is not what they actually involve, but that they require applying for public sector contracts. And for that, they hire lobbyists: lots of them.
So Serco have hired Bellenden, Fleishman-Hillard, Four Communications Group Plc and Weber Shandwick, thereby securing meetings with Home Office minister Nick Hurd, Tory party policy chief Oliver Letwin, and defence ministers Charles Hendry and Peter Luff. The circle is completed when a politician is hired by a contract-tenderer, for example when former defence secretary John Reid became a director at G4S.
We have seen recently how we still haven’t got it right on public services outsourcing. One part of the solution is about mkaing sure that those who offer the best services win contracts, not just who are best at the lobbying game.
43 Responses to “Welfare-to-work companies may be better at ‘playing the game’ than providing services”
Leon Wolfson
Lynn, on the contrary: I’d imagine that there are very few of those. They haven’t got the right connections to work in what are essentially government jobs…
chris star
Welfare-to-work companies may be better at ‘playing the game’ than providing services…
http://j.mp/ieRZxn
#workfare
Anon E Mouse
matthew fox – At least we agree on the state of the hospitals after Gordon Brown’s “Deep Clean” – what a waste of our money that was.
Anyway now that I’ve been proven right about Miliband as Labour tanks in the polls I’d have thought the last thing a party activist (although in your case I use the term lightly matthew fox) would want it to remind everyone of the last Deputy PM of the Labour Party.
Not the countess toff, Harriet Harman but the pie eater John Prescott. You remember him matthew fox – had two toilet seats repaired at our costs along with £5000 for food – despite, or perhaps of his bulimia. And of course the thousands paid for his 8 bedroom house even though he had Dorneywood and the place paid for by the unions.
You remember his house in Hull surely matthew fox – it’s where Pauline went nuts after his affair with Tracey Templeton, his secretary who he then smeared and they got rid of. Charming.
Oh and you remember Dorneywood where he liked to play croquet in the afternoon. What amazes me is the class warrior who is now in the House Of Lords – Lord Prescott.
Nick Clegg is cheap at twice the price and has attained a position in politics Ed Miliband can only dream of.
Anyway enjoy your weekend and remember no matter how rude you are to me in public forums I was right about Gordon Brown being a useless loser and I’m right about Ed Miliband being the same.
And I ask again matthew fox. Do you have nothing positive to say about the Labour Party?
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Anon E Mouse has not read the pricing proposal sheer available, I have. Mouse is wrong.
I’ve noticed this about you Mouse, that you’re not a liar but a bullshitter. You don’t deny the truth, you’re just not interested in it. Just so you know, those dirty stinking hospitals are cleaned by private companies. When the NHS had their own cleaners they tended to be spotless.
The model for the Work Programme is almost identical to the Flexible New Deal, it’s just scheduled to go on for longer and initially involves more contractors. I expect it will have a very high attrition rate as the primes rip-off the sub-contractors and the larger ones leverage themselves against the smaller ones. For the first year they are paid an attachment fee for every referral (same as FND). For the first year the fee is 100%, 75% the next year and 50% in the third year before being cut completely after that. The fee is different for each of the referral groups. They are paid when they get someone into a job for about four weeks: the Fixed Job Outcome fee. It’s between £1,200 and £840 for most claimants but £3,500 for former Incapacity Benefit Claimants who have been transferred to the ESA Work-Related Activity Group. The fee is paid once a client has clocked up a certain number of weeks and it doesn’t even have to be in continuous or with the same employer; it will be about four to six weeks and the provider gets the money. For every four weeks after that they receive additional payment.
They don’t receive payment after two years: they receive payment *for up to two years* while the client is in work. They will get further incentive payments which have not yet been decided.
Please link where you heard clients would have to be in work for two years before the providers are paid, otherwise you’re just making shit up as usual.
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Sorry just to clarify: a fee is paid on referral and that is the attachment fee. The second fee is the Fixed Job Outcome fee and that just requires the providers to get clients to clock up a few weeks in work over time. I noticed this wasn’t very water-tight and I expect that any work, even voluntary stuff or ‘mandatory work-related activity’ will be counted. Then the clients that are unlikely to actually be found real jobs will be dumped onto sub-contractors or certain players will announce they can no longer afford to take part and just bounce off with the money after the initial referral splurge bonanza.