A leaked internal A4e document has revealed evidence of “systemic fraud” at the company, BBC Newsnight’s Paul Mason revealed tonight.
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A leaked internal A4e document has revealed evidence of “systemic fraud” at the company. The document, obtained by the BBC, shows A4e staff “claiming for putting people into jobs which did not exist, jobs which did not qualify for payment and fabricating paperwork”.
Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the House of Commons public accounts committee, said of the audit:
“This appears to be devastating evidence of systemic fraud within A4e. Either A4e failed to act or to inform DWP, or they did inform DWP and the department failed to investigate properly. Whichever, it is completely unacceptable. Once again, I am urging the department to suspend all its contracts with A4e immediately.”
The document was obtained by BBC Newsnight’s Paul Mason, who will report fully the latest developments on tonight’s programme; earlier this evening, he said:
“We’ve obtained a draft internal audit report which suggests widespread potential fraud and irregular activity, activity among, across numerous offices, and, crucially, the report warns of quotes “systematic failure to mitigate risk in relation to fraud and irregularity”. It further warns that management’s knowledge of whether its controls against fraud were working were quotes “minimal”…
“The report surveyed just the work of the top 20 recruiters so these are people highly successful in placing unemployed people in jobs and therefore earning money for A4e.
“Now, the report said eight per cent of the claims surveyed were either potentially fraudulent or irregular, a further nine per cent were risky, 14 were uncheckable, often because the employer could not be contacted or indeed found, and as a result, only 70 per cent of all the claims could be verified.”
Watch his interview on BBC News 24:
Regular readers will recall that, earlier this month, A4e tried to prevent Left Foot Forward from publishing an internal document (pdf) that appeared to indicate poor performance on behalf of the scandal-hit welfare-to work company.
We reported that the document (pdf) showed:
…the job entry rate, i.e. the proportion of individuals A4e is responsible for at some level, manages to find a job for, is 8.4 per cent overall and 9.7 per cent if ‘specialists’ – those partners dealing with difficult cases – are excluded.
Meanwhile, the percentage of those who secure a job managing to hold on to that job for 26 weeks, appears to be denoted by the Outcome/Potential Outcome collumn, which has a total of 1.9%, including and excluding difficult cases. If this is the right reading of the table, then it represents a dramatic undershooting of the Department for Work and Pensions’ own targets.
As can be seen from this National Audit Office report (pdf) published in January 2012, the DWP expects 36 per cent of those referred to companies such as A4e to be secured a job for at least 26 weeks (page 4), and 28 per cent of those not on the Work programme to reach this milestone on their own (page 22).
The latest revelations from the BBC show A4e not just failing, abjectly, to hit their targets, but fraud on a massive scale: fully 30 per cent of their claims are unverifiable.
• The document A4E doesn’t want you to see 5 Mar 2012
• A4e: Corruption, fraud and the £200m failure to help the unemployed 2 Mar 2012
• A4e’s fall from grace has been in the pipeline for two years 2 Mar 2012
A4e may have threatened us that they “won’t hesitate to take the strongest legal action should you publish this data or make any of the inferences set out”, but something tells us they, in common with all bullies, didn’t quite have the cojones to take on someone bigger than them and menace the much mightier BBC…
44 Responses to “New report reveals “devastating evidence of systemic fraud within A4e””
Anonymous
Hence I keep saying they are all responsible.
However, borrowing is about 1/7 of the debt.
If we want people to be held accountable in botht eh public and private sector for their actions you need a well resourced and well funded regulating body, so how will you do that?
No you don’t. You need politicians to be held responsible, and that means giving the electorate control over politicians. This is different from the current set up where we have no control, just control over which politician.
Will you get the best people for the job in whcih case will you pay them very high salaries as their are in certain private sector professions?
Make it an irrelevance. Make it that people keep their money, rather than give it to incompetents.
Will you regulate it properly by ensuring their are enough people in place to carry out detailed investigations and checks which mean you will have to expand some areas such as care home inspectors etc?
Not needed. You just vote on the issue.
If you want control over which politician, introduce the right of recall after petition.
So we have less taxes because there is less spending.
For the question of how to get control, have referenda by proxy. Cost 20 million a year on top of the 100 million cost of voter registration. Funded by the 150 million a year spent on Peers.
Net saving 130 million a year.
Anonymous
Ah right, so make it so that the people don’t get services without paying up-front. America’s healthcare system, or worse.
And referendums, the tools of tyrants and dictators. No wonder you love them. Thatcher hated them. So did Atlee. But you? Nope, Corporatist all the way!
Anonymous
Yes, and? You’re demanding a 100% fail-safe system before you’ll let the NHs function.
Hence, you’re demanding the end of the NHS. And the NHS saves a lot of lives. Typical bloody-handed right wing propaganda.
Blarg1987
No you don’t. You need politicians to be held responsible, and that means giving the electorate control over politicians. This is different from the current set up where we have no control, just control over which politician.
– We do it is called an election, just people are not mercenary enough to vote they go down old party lines.
Make it an irrelevance. Make it that people keep their money, rather than give it to incompetents.
– How can you make it irrelevent? People need to be paid and its human nature to go for jobs that pay the highest salary, you need regulation no mater what your ideological belief otherwise we will end up with far more cases of Souther Cross etc.
Not needed. You just vote on the issue.
– So the electorate will vote on oprivate sector contracts etc? Not being funny I don;t know the first thing about care home services so I won;t know how well it is doing and if it is offering best value for money just because it may be cheap does not make it cost effective.
Blarg1987
If we are playing this game, one has to point out hospital infections increased after OUTSOURCING of cleaning services from in house NHS staff to reduce costs, so one can say that was a failure of the private sector, for being unable to provide a higher quality service for the same or less money.
Yes Shipman case was bad, however there have been cases in the USA, and Europe etc which are as bad so it is a universal problem.