Category Archives: jobs

How a Whitehall mandarin wanted to add insult to injury for redundant steel apprentices

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Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary at Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, wanted to stop paying apprentices when they were sacked

Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary at Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, wanted to stop paying apprentices when they were sacked

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The appalling destruction of Britain’s steel industry with the loss of  4000 jobs  -a fifth of the workforce in just one month- has been bad enough.

Ministers have accepted that there appears to be little they can do against the Chinese dumping of steel – and that the steel industry will have to slim down to meet the drop in world wide demand. The trouble is that this decision will mean that it will be Britain that will be getting rid of its industry while governments in the rest of the world decided to keep their steelworks.

But if that was not appalling enough what has happened to a new generation of apprentice steel workers – hoping for a new career in manufacturing. They have been thrown on the scrapheap with other workers -just like the mineworkers.

So it is extraordinary as I reported in Tribune last week that Martin Donnelly, the permanent secretary at the department for business,innovation and skills, proposed that apprentices  should sacked on the spot and unlike other workers receive no more pay or even redundancy.

In a letter to his political boss, Sajid Javid,the business secretary, Mr Donnelly said the cost – some £1.7m of taxpayer’s money – was not justified in Redcar where the steel works closed.

Quoting Treasury rules he wrote: “The required appraisal process concludes that this would not offer value for money even after taking into account the very real economic challenges facing apprentices in the Tees Valley at this time.

“It is the case that apprenticeship training offers a value for money investment… I am also concerned that spending at this level would be repercussive, and might create an unhelpful precedent.”

In this case Sajid overruled him saying “I have to weigh that assessment against the broader objectives of government; including our commitments to localism, and our aim to build confidence in apprenticeships.

“Furthermore, the apprentices of Teesside face a very extreme situation and one which, in my judgement, requires an exceptional and urgent public sector response that is equivalent to the scale of the challenge.”

This struck me as a very mean view for a mandarin to take  – and obviously he was worried it would create similar requests in Scunthorpe, the Midlands and Scotland where other jobs have now been lost.

But it is certainly harsh just to cut off money to apprentices – and the minister was right to overrule him.

Bath Knight: redundant fitters launch own UK company after their bosses go bust

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A demonstration of the new Easy Bath product set up by redundant staff Pic Credit:www.easy-bath.co.uk

A demonstration of the new Easy Bath product set up by redundant staff
Pic Credit:www.easy-bath.co.uk

Disabled people who bought Bath Knight products and have been left with useless warranties have been offered a lifeline by the firm’s former fitters.

Nine of them who are also owed thousands of pounds by the bankruptcy of Bath Knight in Stoke on Trent have set up their own company to sell a new updated product and to service people who own Bath Knight aids but cannot get them repaired.

This should be good news for disabled people who have contacted me to say what can they do when their supplied equipment malfunctions or needs servicing. Some have been very desperate as it is the only way they can have a bath.

In addition, the fitters have found a new UK manufacturer in Leeds to make a new product which they can supply and fit at a much cheaper price than the old Bath Knight model.

Bicky Thandi, the fitter who is organising the new company,Easy-Bath said: ” We were worried about all those elderly  disabled people who were left with no service and no guarantee because the firm had gone bust owing us money as well. We got nothing from Care Knight when they went bankrupt owing us money so we thought that lets get together and form our own business.So we have set up a free phone line for inquiries and a fixed sum for repairs and servicing. We have also found a manufacturer in Leeds who can produce a new version of the Bath Knight.”

The  free phone number is 0800 0029182.   

The Website address is http://www.easy-bath.co.uk/ .

Prices he has quoted are: for a fixed price of £150.00 including parts and labour for a repair,  and a fitting for for £250.00.

In the meantime I am looking at exactly how Bath Knight, owned by Care Knight, went bust and why weeks after it collapsed owing over £428,000 to staff and suppliers it has suddenly been resurrected in Stoke in Trent as Bath-Lift with most of the same directors.
The  new company – according to people who have  been contacting me – has been demanding money from people who had not fully paid off their equipment – to be paid to the new firm.
I am rather surprised about this given the firm went into receivership and it is normally the receiver who chases up unpaid money so it can be redistributed to staff and suppliers it owed cash.
Any information will be gratefully received and you can use the contact me section of this website and be assured that it will be treated in confidence.

Lies, Damned Lies and Tory Jobless Statistics

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Misleading statistics for the dole queue.

Misleading statistics for the dole queue.

I see from the excellent Vox Political blog that a row has broken out over claims  by Conservative Central Office of big reductions in the number of jobless claiming benefit under the last coalition government.

The BBC reports a row over the way Essex Tory MPs are presenting falls in unemployment figures. The row concentrates on them using the claimant count. ( Jobseekers Allowance only) rather than the number of people seeking work who are not on benefit. This makes a huge difference to the numbers unemployed in constituencies.

Central Office defended their stance by saying : “This  (questions surrounding the use of JSA figures) is nonsense. This unemployment measure is provided by the independent House of Commons Library – and for constituencies they are the most up to date and most reliable numbers to use.They are used by MPs and candidates across the country, regardless of political party.”

However as readers of this blog will know this is not the true and accurate picture because since Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, introduced universal credit – those transferred from JSA and still on the dole  were no longer counted in the JSA figures. So where there are jobcentres already implementing universal credit in constituencies these figures were  much less.

So it is rather outrageous for Tory Central Office to quote the very House of Commons reports that reveal this as the correct interpretation of the claimant count particularly if they only use JSA..

The very latest statistics available have for the first time started showing both but the situation is a mess as this report  from the Commons library covering unemployment in February 2015 shows. For the first time it does try to show those on Universal Credit and those on JSA who are the dole – adding about 27,900 to the JSA total.

As  the report says : “From April 2013, some unemployed people attending certain jobcentres are claiming Universal Credit rather than JSA. Consequently, simply looking at the number of JSA claimants in the areas affected may not give an accurate reflection of the number of people looking for work. At the national level, the effect of Universal Credit on the total claimant count remains minor.”

But given the distortion between those on the dole in the prosperous South and less prosperous North these figures are still significant. In the North West of England it accounts for another 25,000 on the dole. In London it is just 400.

To make matters worse trying to breakdown accurate figures for the long-term employed and by age group is impossible at the moment. The figures are just not available.

As the report says: “Data on the number of Universal Credit claimants who are out-of-work by age are currently not published at the constituency level. However, data are available on JSA claimants by age.
In constituencies where Universal Credit has been introduced, the number of JSA claimants may not reflect the actual number of unemployed claimants in a particular age group.”

It adds: “Similarly, data on the number of Universal Credit claimants who are out-of-work by duration of claim are currently not published at the constituency level.”

So beware of false claims and people quoting official House of Commons documents to back them up. They are not necessarily giving the full picture.

A4e: Six jailed in £300,000 fake job fraud scam

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A4e: Improving People's lives -and defrauding the government

A4e: Improving People’s lives -and defrauding the government

The scandal that rocked A4e, the private contractor condemned by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, for fiddling the books, hit home this week.

Six people were given jail sentences and another four were given suspended sentences by a judge at  Reading Crown Court.

The BBC reported here yesterday the sentencing by the judge. The scheme as reported earlier on this blog involved mentoring single parents – some of the most vulnerable in society so they could get work. But the £1.3m Aspire programme turned out to be a vehicle for fraud by the staff.

The court was told  staff made up files, forged signatures and falsely claimed they had helped people find jobs, enabling them to hit targets and gain government bonuses.

Judge Angela Morris said there had been a “systematic practice” of compiling bogus files over a “considerable period of time”, behaviour which she described as “appallingly cavalier”.

She said: “No amount of pressure justifies the wholesale fabrication of information in files or the forgery of other people’s signatures on documents, all of which is designed to extract money from the Department of Work and Pensions.”

The roll call of fraudsters are:

  • Charles McDonald, 44, of Derwent Road, Egham, Surrey, pleaded guilty to six counts of forgery and one of conspiracy to commit forgery. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
  • Julie Grimes, 52, of Monks Way, Staines, Surrey, pleaded guilty to nine counts of forgery. She was sentenced to 26 months in prison.
  • Nikki Foster, 31, of High Tree Drive, Reading, pleaded guilty to nine counts of forgery, and was jailed for 22 months.
  • Ines Cano-Uribe, 39, of Madrid, Spain, was found guilty of one count of forgery and one of conspiracy to commit forgery. She was jailed for 18 months.
  • Dean Lloyd, 38, of Rochfords, Coffee Hall, Milton Keynes, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of forgery. He was given a 15-month jail sentence.
  • Bindiya Dholiwar, 29, of Reddington Drive, Slough, pleaded guilty to seven counts of forgery, and was jailed for 15 months.
  • Zabar Khalil, 35, of Dolphin Road, Slough, was found guilty of one count of forgery. He was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years.
  • Matthew Hannigan-Train, 31, of Westacre Close, Bristol, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit forgery. He received a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years.
  • Hayley Wilson, 27, of Middlesex Drive, Milton Keynes, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit forgery. She was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years.
  • Aditi Singh, 32, of Albert Street, Slough, pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery and one count of possessing items to commit fraud, and received a 10-month sentence, suspended for two years.

However less we forget the Department for Work and Pensions was severely criticised in a Commons public accounts committee report for failing to conduct checks on what was going on with A4e at the time – and the company was only investigated because whistleblowers came forward about what was going on.

Chris Grayling, then the minister responsible for employment, took no action to investigate further either. As the PAC said at the time in a report  on A4e and other programmes the DWP never looked at whether A4e was ” a fit and proper contractor” to run other programmes.

A4e chief executive Andrew Dutton said  yesterday the company has a “zero-tolerance policy” towards fraud and money had been set aside so “the taxpayer will have lost nothing” from the scam.

Mr Dutton said: “Their claims do not reflect the way this company operates, or the values of our 2,100 staff, whose honesty and integrity are much-valued.”

I remain to be convinced whether the company has truly reformed.

Distorted and Massaged: How the dole claimant figures show a divided nation

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George Osborne at the Despatch Box in Parliament pic credit: video snatch from www.csmonitor

George Osborne at the Despatch Box in Parliament
pic credit: video snatch from http://www.csmonitor

George Osborne’s great claims that the UK is on the road to jobs recovery has already been attacked for producing a mass of new low paid jobs, zero rated contracts and a boom in part-time working.

A closer analysis recently provided by the House of Commons library breaking down unemployment by constituency reveals a rather different disturbing and divided picture. And it officially shows the current claimant count is being massaged by Iain Duncan Smith, the works and pensions secretary, to underestimate the number of dole claimants on benefit.

As I report in Tribune magazine the figures reveal huge differences in the claimant rate between constituencies with up to 25 times more people on the dole in the worst parliamentary seats than the best. It shows that the “recovery” is by no means universal despite the creation of hundreds of thousands of low-paid jobs.

The worst place in the United Kingdom is undoubtedly the Foyle constituency of Mark Durkan, the SDLP MP. Here there are more than 6,600 on benefit representing 13.2 per cent of the population.

The recovery has by passed Foyle – with a drop of just over 5 per cent in claimants in the last year – compared to an average drop of 30 per cent in the UK and more than 45 per cent in Epsom and Ewell, the Surrey seat of Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary.

The best place in the UK is still fuelled by the Scottish oil boom – the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine constituency of Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Robert Smith – with just 0.4 per cent on benefit – 221 people claiming benefit with only 30 unemployed for more than a year.

Other unemployment blackspots are Birmingham, Ladywood and Hodge Hill, all over 11 per cent and falling at a lower rate – some 20 per cent -than the national average.  There is a similar picture in Belfast North and West;Bradford East and West, Middlesbrough and Birmingham, Perry Barr.

But there are areas where unemployment claims have disappeared. Among those with benefit claims of 0.7 per cent and less are Stratford-on-Avon, Henley-on-Thames, Mid Sussex, North Dorset, Kenilworth and Southam and North East Hampshire.

But there is also a disturbing picture that has gone unnoticed because of the debacle by works and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, in launching universal credit. At  the moment it covers about 0.3 per cent of the population.

The Commons library  reveals that currently statistics are not being collected from people on universal credit to find out whether they are in work or unemployed when they claim the benefit.

As it says : “Some new jobseekers are claiming Universal Credit rather than Jobseeker’s Allowance since the commencement of the Universal Credit pathfinder on 29 April 2013. These jobseekers are not included in the claimant count. ”

“…As a result, the claimant count will understate the total number of jobseekers in the constituencies affected.
ONS (Office for National Statistics) intends to include jobseeker Universal Credit claims within the claimant count statistics “as soon as possible”.”

However the ONS website says :  “No timetable is currently available as to when this will occur.”

This affects claimants at 40 jobcentres. The worst example is the Oldham West and Royton seat of Labour MP Michael Meacher where 1240 people are on universal credit.

The number of JSA claimants in his constituency is 1530, down  51 per cent over the last year but if the figures do not include those on universal credit instead – they are bound to be an underestimate of the real number of claimants on the dole.

A similar situation exists in  Wigan, the seat of Lisa Nandy, where 1020 people are claiming Universal Credit and is recording a 46 per cent drop in the number of people claiming  JSA over a year.

Now it would be remarkable if Wigan and Oldham could post  bigger cuts in dole claimants than Epsom and Ewell in Surrey. It is obviously not true.

So I think Mr Osborne better be very careful if he starts talking up the big drop among the unemployed in the North before the next general election based on these massaged statistics. If he does he will be telling the electorate at best only a partial truth and at worst lying through his teeth.

Anti Austerity: Time for the Job Creators Allowance

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Muhammad_Yunus_-_World_Economic_Forum_Annual_Meeting_2012 (1)This month a radical thinker passed through Westminster and presented an idea that politicians tackling Britain’s economic crisis should sit up and take notice.

Nobel Peace prizewinner Muhammad Yunus was addressing a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference on growth and development en route from Bangla Desh to Mexico City. The conference attracted people from as far apart as Somalia and Paraguay and Haiti and Timor-Leste.

Yunus is the man who created an anti-bank bank called the Grameen Bank in Bangla Desh which broke every rule of traditional banking. As he put it : ” I went and talked to the banks and did precisely the opposite of everything they told me.”

His bank was only interested in lending money to the poorest in Bangla Desh – those with nothing so they could start tiny micro businesses. His ideas have now been taken up in developed economies notable the United States in New York and elsewhere.

He has been criticised however by people who say it  is still exploitative and has not worked, The idea has been hijacked by others as this review suggests.

But his bank is extraordinary. he employs no lawyers, has no detailed contracts, and lends to people with no collatoral and yet 99 per cent of the small loans are repaid. Bad news for Price Waterhouse and City lawyers as well as banks.

I was particularly struck by one phrase he tells the unemployed in Bangla Desh to say. ” I am not a job seeker. I am a job creator. I want to start at the top not be exploited at the bottom.”

Now it occurs to me that this might have a lot of resonance to Britain post the crash. Capitalism and bankers are brilliant at helping the haves have even more so they can exploit the have-nots, What about turning the idea on its head and help the have-nots for once.

Britain is rapidly becoming a more unequal society in wealth and jobs. Constituencies near to me like Hemel Hempstead face a job feast this Christmas with Amazon and Royal Mail competing against each other to fill vacancies. Constituencies like Birmingham, Ladywood and Foyle in Northern Ireland face a job famine  with over 11 per cent still out of work.

It also strikes me that among the wasted talent on the dole they must be people capable of learning skills, particularly in the  child or personal caring professions, but can’t get going because they haven’t basic qualifications or access to a few hundred readies to get started. This is why Jobcentre plus in pushing them into low paid work, zero hour contracts, to become the new exploited of companies funded by wealthy private equity groups.

Now if a politician decided that instead he was going to find a way to connect with the dispossessed by setting up a bank only interested in funding them to create their own job – this might have more resonance in the real world than in the current Metropolitan elite.

Traditionally this idea sits with Labour – the party created by trade unions, that believes in social credit organisations rather than Wonga and backs the ideals of the Co-operative movement. But it could equally apply to the Greens and some strands in other parties

What better way to reconnect to the working class than allow him and her to get cash to buy equipment so they can earn some money, even get  a second-hand white van. A veritable Job Creator Allowance.

What about the money for this?  Why not use the huge fines on corrupt banks to kick start the scheme rather than as sticking plaster for the NHS (Labour) or tax cuts (Tory)? What is a more delicious idea than taking money from bloated, arrogant money manipulators and giving it to the very people they wouldn’t give house room?

How would it work? I don’t know but I now know a man who does. He is called Muhammed Yunus. Someone should call him up and put the idea in their party manifesto. He did speak after all in the Attlee Room,  named after one of Britain’s greatest reforming Prime Ministers.