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”
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Anyone interested in a lot of reading and detail on the Work Programme, the relevant DWP page is here: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/supplying-dwp/what-we-buy/welfare-to-work-services/work-programme/
Anon E Mouse
Mason Dixon, Autistic – Of course I selectively choose which bit’s I post online – so do you. Everyone does.
So when I say Ed Miliband is a useless tax avoiding property millionaire who’s never done a single days work in his life and is going to lead Labour to election defeat after election defeat that’s true.
He may have some good qualities – certainly he seems like a misguided but decent chap in comparison to the backstabbing Ed Balls but why would I say that? That last statement was also true.
So now onto your main post – @10 and @11.
So now you have realised that the main point I make regarding the brunt of the payment is correct and all you can do is opine as to why it MAY go wrong – your assessment only Mason Dixon, Autistic not a fact.
You also say: “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.”.
So again we have another Labour activist who agrees with me again and I agree with you about the private contractors being the problem.
But guess what Mason Dixon, Autistic. Labour had 13 years in power with a majority political parties can only dream of and they did nothing at all to reverse it….
Mason Dixon, Autistic
Ok Mouse, obviously you didn’t read my post because I never said you ‘selectively choose which bit’s I post online’. I said you’re a bullshitter: you make claims without references and then just hope no one actually knows about the subject. Unfortunately you did this in a thread on Welfare to Work. You’re indifferent to facts.
I am not giving you my opinion: I am reading out to you what is there on the DWP site in the Pricing Proposal and guidance sheets. I never said anything about Ed Milliband, what are you on about? Nor am I a ‘Labour activist’. I’m talking about this claim you made:
“These companies don’t get paid until the individual has been working for at least two years.”
It’s wrong and not just wrong, certainly not ‘may’ be wrong but *flat-out factually wrong* as in ‘completely different to the pricing model published by the DWP’. You either made it up or read it on a website where you get your vacant talking points and they made it up. To pretend now that you are a critic of private companies on public contracts doesn’t wash, you said this:
“There have been enough deaths and mistreatment already in the dirty stinking hospitals run by the NHS – I don’t see how this can’t help plus unless it does they don’t get paid…”
This is not you criticising contractors. It’s you criticising the NHS and defending contractors on the basis that they will supposedly ‘not get paid’ if they fail. They do fail and they still get paid. You’ve been caught out and now you’re trying to claim you’ve said the opposite of what you have said. No I do not agree with anything you’ve said and no amount of deliberate misreading and non sequiters will change that.
Anon E Mouse
Mason Dixon, Autistic – You are just being awkward and rude just for the sake of it. I mentioned the hopeless Miliband as a means of illustrating that.
I said I selectively choose what I post – I do – what I post has nothing to do with you – except where obviously you are making things up as you are here.
On the dirty stinking NHS hospitals I care about people getting MRSA and dying from infections. You may be terrified of saying anything bad about the incompetent manner in which the NHS is run but I’m not.
I don’t care if it is the contractors or the hospital that is responsible; all you are doing is excusing the pathetic way in which it is run instead of addressing the problem. You seem to enjoy moaning and groaning about the system instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting involved with positive advice (if you have any which I admit seems unlikely).
Finally on your assertion that companies like Serco involved in the work program will get paid upfront please link directly to where you got that from. I understood they had to keep people in jobs for 18 months minimum to get 90% of their costs.
Unless of course you’re making things up as usual…
Mason Dixon, Autistic
I linked it Mouse. It’s in the Pricing Proposal and the Pricing Proposal Guide. You’d know this if you had actually read my posts rather than making stuff up.