Category Archives: Whitehall

Young, gifted and black? Join the Equality and Human Rights Commission and be conned over your pay

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Baroness Onora O'Neill: the chair of the ECHR Pic credit: Flickr

Baroness Onora O’Neill: the chair of the ECHR
Pic credit: Flickr

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is supposed to be the champion of the rights of ethnic minorities, the disabled and women against discrimination. It should be in favour of equal pay.

As a previous blog revealed its reputation is rather shaky when it comes to defending equality between men and women in the Middle East. Baroness Onora O’Neill, its part time chair, talks the big talk in the UK when  it comes defending women’s equal rights to men only to believe in her other position as a trustee of the  American University of Sharjah that women are second class citizens compared to men who are not allowed to meet privately with them as equals. I wonder whether she is allowed to be alone with a man when she is in Sharjah.

Now it turns out that her officials are quite happy to massage figures claiming the EHRC is making great progress in narrowing the pay gap between ethnic minorities and white people, the disabled  and the able-bodied and between women and men.

During recent pay negotiations with the PCS union the management  claimed that its new pay deal would reduce the gender, ethnic minority and disability pay gaps.  It turns out that the figures over ethnic minorities were false. Instead of narrowing the gap  from 15.5 per cent to 14.5 per cent it actually widened it to nearly 17 per cent. You can read the full story in Tribune magazine this week.

While there is a marginal improvement – narrowing the gap by 0.2 per cent for the disabled to 7.7 per cent – this figure is actually almost one per cent worse than in 2011.

You might wonder what the EHRC would do if they caught a private firm fiddling the figures and opening themselves to prosecution . Any clever barrister defending that firm would just have to say – well you lie about it yourself in the ECHR.

I did put this to the EHRC Ignoring their main point of my question the press office released this statement from the Commission:

“We negotiated with the Trade Unions (including PCS), to agree how to distribute the 1 per cent pay rise we are limited to by government. We agreed and implemented their proposal to pay more to those on lower pay grades and less to those on higher grades and made a slight adjustment to this.  Our adjustment was slightly more favourable towards BME staff than the Trade Unions’ initial proposals.”

Oh so the union clever enough to expose your flawed figures would be better giving up- because you can give  the staff a better deal just out of the generosity of your own heart. Really?

But the key point is if we can’t trust the body that fights for equal pay to be honest about what it is doing to narrow pay gaps, who can we trust?

Child Sex Abuse: Failings in the Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam Review

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Peter Wanless: Some failings in his inquiry PicCredit: www.thirdsector.co.uk

Peter Wanless: Some failings in his inquiry
Pic Credit: http://www.thirdsector.co.uk

Yesterday Theresa May, the home secretary was rightly called before Parliament by her shadow Yvette Cooper, to answer questions about the findings of the Wanless and Whittam Review into the missing dossier naming VIP paedophiles given to her predecessor, Leon Brittan by the late Geoffrey Dickens MP. If Yvette hadn’t done it, Tessa Munt, one of the” magnificent  seven” MPs who called for an overarching inquiry was already planning to do so.

The report with its 12 annexes was rushed out at 11.30 am leaving MPs of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee precious little time to digest it before questioning both authors in a session truncated because of the timing of May’s statement. No wonder Keith Vaz, its chairman, might have been a bit tetchy during May’s statement.

In conducting a meticulous search inside the Home Office  both  Wanless and Whittam did a thorough job – as far as they could – to try and find any references to  what appears to be a long destroyed document. They also exposed the chaotic state of the Home Office’s record keeping and if you look at the annexes to the report shed a little more light on other cases.

So far so good. They then seem to have asked other Whitehall organisations to conduct a search on their behalf but as Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond, quizzed her over the failure to find anything at the old Director of Public Prosecutions, where the dossier was sent, still left a question in this area whether the work had been thorough.

They also seem to have spent some time chasing officials who held documents at the time they have been destroyed in  the hope that they might get them. This is important – even though their report is sceptical about it – because in one of my investigations for Exaro  official documents have turned up because someone kept them in their attic.

They also questioned the Home Office whistleblower who came forward to Tom Watson MP with his fears that a senior civil servant,Clifford Hindley, may have been involved in the funding of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange.

But where they failed – and this was taken up by Steve McCabe, Labour’s shadow social services minister, – was in pursuing civil servants who were around at the time. The lame response from Theresa to appeal to people to come forward was not good enough.

Wanless and Whittam would have seen a lot of documents with civil servants’ names on them because of the way Whitehall has a distribution list for almost every document.Some may be dead, most will have retired.

But they missed an opportunity to be proactive and chase them up. For they must be accessible. They will all be on final salary pensions paid out by Whitehall. It would not be too difficult, to contact the semi privatised agency and get their names and addresses and ring them up. They might be a little outraged about their personal data being accessed – but this is an official inquiry to get to the facts. People do talk to each other – and also someone at the DPP at the time also got that dossier who may not want to disturb a pleasant retirement going on cruises and playing golf.

The result is that we have unsatisfactory verdict of ” not proven ” from this investigation which takes us little further than the Home Office’s original findings.

To get to the truth over child sexual abuse we are going to need a lot of lateral thinking and a sceptical investigative state of mind to prise out information. I hope the overarching child abuse inquiry takes this on board and treats the Wanless review with some forensic scepticism.

The net begins to close on the Westminster paedophile ring

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As the child  sex abuse inquiry starts to take soundings from survivors a very serious development has happened for those who hoped to keep the Westminster paedophile ring dead and buried forever.

A brave survivor who has never talked to the police decided to take his courage in his hands and talk to the Met about his horrendous experiences in Dolphin Square where sexual abuse of young boys is alleged to have been combined with sadistic practices.

The survivor who has been given the name ” Nick” to protect his identity. The full story by my colleagues on Exaro was published last weekend in both the Sunday People. You can both read it in full and hear an interview with  him by editor Mark Watts  and my colleague Mark Conrad on the Exaro website.

Suffice to say they have been rumours of dark events at Dolphin Square, used for years as London flats for MPs of all parties but no one has ever testified to the police on what they alleged had happened to them.

He told Exaro that officers “are very serious” about investigating his allegations that two former Conservative MPs – including an ex-cabinet minister – and other VIPs sexually abused him as a boy at Dolphin Square and other locations.

Nick told of how the two well-known politicians raped and physically beat him after he was forced to drink alcohol. He recalled that he was taken to Dolphin Square around 10 times, from the age 11, over a period of two to three years either side of 1980.

Interestingly he also recognised the address that used to be Elm Guest House in Barnes – where the criminal investigation Operation Fernbridge began- as he place where other boys were dropped off – even though he was never abused there. This suggests there is a connection between the notorious guest house and Dolphin Square.

He is not the only person who has made allegations to Exaro about Dolphin Square but there are also other boys who must still be alive today who may also know  what happened to them there.

Given that there is now an inquiry with a remit to look at how well police investigations are conducted it is to be hoped that this time the Met will be given the time and resources to thoroughly investigate the matter. Just as Theresa May, the home secretary, has described the child abuse inquiry as a ” once in a generation ” opportunity to lay this matters to rest it is to be hoped that senior people in the Met will take their cue from her and decide they have a ” once in a generation ” opportunity to investigate  and clear up a matter that has been the subject of Westminster rumour and speculation for decades.

Is Whitehall still letting profit hungry contractors off the hook to rip off the state?

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Chris Grayling: His £400m gift to contractor's profits sparked a pathetic clampdown pic courtesy: BBC

Chris Grayling: His £400m gift to contractor’s profits
sparked a pathetic clampdown pic courtesy: BBC

Remember the major row over  justice secretary Chris Grayling’s “poison pill ” contract to privatise the probation service. This allowed  the successful bidders to walk away with up to £400m profit on a ten year contract should an incoming Labour government have the temerity to cancel it if they won the next election.

Grayling  not so innocently said that this was just normal Whitehall practice. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee said it was “It is not value for money. It is unacceptable and must be challenged before the event.”

She demanded something be done and now the Treasury have responded. They have written to every accounting officer of every ministry and every government agency laying down new guidelines. You can read the letter here and see my news article in Tribune this week.

In my view the response is particularly pathetic and certainly not nearly hard-hitting enough to protect taxpayer’s money.

Of  course accounting officers are reminded that they must consider value for money and must be able to justify such decisions but it does include some  remarkably helpful  “get out “clauses that allow such deals to continue.

One  says they should consider: “whether it is likely that, if the public body terminates the contract for policy reasons, the supplier would have a legal case to claim even without the clause being in the contract.” Well it might but I would be amazed if a judge allowed them to keep all projected profits.

They are also expected just to ask rather than instruct companies “whether the market be willing to bid without such clauses, particularly when outsourcing for the first time, or establishing a new market.” And they should ask whether such a deal is “normal practice in this area of business.”

To me this seems an open invitation for private contractors to say, of course it is, where if they had a private contact with another private firm, they would lucky to get all the money back if the other company just collapsed.

It is only that the Government cannot go bankrupt that they are in a position to negotiate such terms.

Now of course accounting officers could refuse to sign such one-sided contracts in the first place and demand the minister in charge directed them to do so. But in fact remarkably few permanent secretaries and chief executives  ever do this. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand in any financial year.

Once again this coalition government is running the country for the benefit of private companies not for the taxpayer or even to the benefit of the ordinary public.

 

 

Child Sex Abuse Inquiry Debacle: Why it is important where we go next

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Today (mon) home secretary Theresa May, will face a barrage of criticism in Parliament for her office’s failure to twice find a suitable person to chair the much needed historic child sex abuse inquiry

Losing not one chair but  two – Baroness Butler Sloss and Fiona Woolf – because of potential conflicts of interest in a matter of weeks smacks of real incompetence by a department that should know better. it also caused severe embarrassment both to the people appointed and to the home secretary herself.

But I hope today is seen not just as an opportunity for ” yah boo” politics between Labour and the Tories but for a more reflective discussion of how we got here and what is needed to put it right.

What cannot be denied is that the home secretary did not entirely fulfil what she promised the ” magnificent seven ” MPs requested in drawing up the panel. True she did take on board their request for survivors on the panel – appointing two – Graham Wilmer, who runs the Lantern Project and Sharon Evans,  a former TV  presenter who runs a children’s charity.

But there – as far as I can find out – been no through consultation over the appointment of the two chairs of the panel involving the MPs – and there has also, to my surprise, been no internal consultation inside the home office. Frankly they should also have asked survivors groups BEFORE not AFTER the appointments.

It is probably not well-known but the home office has its own very small unit which can advise on the setting up of independent panels, who is appointed to them, and can interview suitable people to sit on them – or at least advise newly appointed secretaries to inquiries set up by other ministries on how to get going.

I understand this body was never consulted yet it can claim a track record of success. Its biggest achievement has been the Hillsborough Inquiry into the tragic deaths of Liverpool fans where it got a chairman, now the former bishop of Liverpool, to preside. None of those families of the fans would now say it didn’t get to the bottom of a grave injustice hidden for years.

Yet child abuse survivors might be surprised to know that it got the information without any statutory powers by ruthlessly pursuing the evidence and cajoling reluctant authorities to hand over  the information, including stuff that is now landing the South Yorkshire Constabulary in dire trouble.

It did have one duty  – and only one duty – to tell the families who lost loved ones at Hillsborough Stadium first what it had found out. Once it had done this it published everything as fact – and set up of a train of events – now being shown by the inquest into Hillsborough.

It is also responsible for the current Daniel Morgan murder inquiry – where I suspect but do not know the same tussle is probably going on now.

Now many of the survivors seem to want a statutory inquiry which can compel people to attend, give information,  force people to confess to crimes, with grand public hearings and a very detailed terms of reference. Be careful what you wish for.

Superficially it sounds great but there are drawbacks to this approach. Terms of reference need to be nebulous rather than specific so the panel cannot be stopped following the facts wherever it takes them – and given the wide sweep of institutions involved it needs to go to places we may not have even thought about.

Second yes statutory power sound great but there is one drawback – I am told it allows lawyers representing anybody or organisation accused by survivors to demand the status of ” an interested party”. That means anything you tell them could go straight back to their lawyers before the inquiry even reports.

If it is non statutory there is no obligation whatever to tell them anything – and their lawyers have no right to find out.

If it follows what happened in Hillsborough and in Daniel Morgan – the families are centre stage. In this case, it means the survivors are centre stage – the panel is obliged to you, you are not obliged to the panel. This means you will know first what the findings are – not the armed forces, the security services, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the councils, the police, schools or any other body that allowed you to be abused.

Finally I hope the panel can tell you whether they have obtained a freezing  or preservation order on all documents listing evidence or allegations of child sexual abuse. Whitehall permanent secretaries have a superb meeting and network facility – and could send out letters now banning the destruction of all documents. I would expect the Church of England – after Archbishop Welby’s words last week to do the same.

And as for a chair – whoever is appointed faces the risk of ” guilty by association ” if they worked in any organisation because of the widespread nature of child sexual abuse. It just depends on how guilty the association is and the Home Office needs to do a  better job of finding this out.

Tackling tax demons: Trick and treat at the heart of the City Establishment

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On Halloween eve an unique invitation only conference took place in the historic  and just slightly spooky Livery Hall in the City’s historic Guildhall.

For six hours the Westminster Establishment politely occupied the bastion of  the City Establishment to discuss a subject that perhaps capitalism would like to go away – global tax evasion and tax avoidance.

Margaret Hodge;

Margaret Hodge;

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee and scourge of tax avoiders Google, Amazon and Starbucks, brought together business chiefs, politicians, tax accountants, civil servants, charities, trade unionists and the odd pesky journo like me from Britain and across the world.

The event was unique because on a grand scale it put people in the same room who would verbally be at each other’s throats and tried to find some common ground to tackle a world-wide scourge.The scourge that is making the elite ever richer and leaving the poor, and increasingly the middle classes,left behind as well as exploiting developing countries.

The result was interesting – both for unpredictable quotes and for disclosure of what is really happening to try to tackle this.

One of the  most memorable quotes came from Justin King, the thoughtful former CEO of Sainsbury’s, who admitted that “If business becomes more unpopular than politicians then we really do have a problem”. He also warned no doubt with declining Tesco in mind – that business rates and corporation tax were both on the way out – as business needed less real estate to function and countries vie with each other to reduce corporation tax.

Another memorable moment was Will Morris, chair of the CBI Tax Committee, backing the Public and Commercial Services Union case that George Osborne was wrong to axe a third of HMRC staff. What next Mark Serwotka , the general secretary, sharing a platform with the CBI?

Or for Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, who pointed out, after accountants defended their role, that not one accountant had ever been disciplined by their venerable professional body, dating from the 1880s, for producing an illegal tax avoidance scheme.

The other striking feature of the conference in the  male dominated City was the role played by powerful women on both sides of the argument.

For me the most striking was the speech given by Grace Perez-Navarro, Deputy Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. She revealed that the OECD were not just talking about it but had secured some 90 plus agreements with tax authorities like the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar among many others to exchange information but not to make it public yet. She is also a firm advocate of forcing companies needing to release country-by-country reporting of profits generated by multinationals.

“Our efforts to increase transparency, combat offshore evasion and counter tax avoidance by multinational enterprises are having an impact on the ground and helping countries to make sure that all taxpayers pay their fair share,” she said.

But there were also outstanding contributions by Irene Ovonji-Odida, ActionAid chair, on what needed to happen in Africa and on the pro business side by Heather Self, of  lawyers Pinsent Mason, the capitalist’s best legal friend and from the floor by Maya Forstator, an independent researcher who has challenged the claims by some of the world’s leading charities like Christian Aid and Action Aid on the effects of multi nationals taking money away from developing countries.

We also learnt some curious irrelevant information  about the cars some of the speakers drive. Richard Murphy, the Tax Justice accountant used the analogy that he drove an 11 year old car to show how out of date international taxation law is only to be trumped by Grace Perez-Navarro who drives around in a 22 year old motor.

There were no instant changes arising from this conference. More important was the fact than in an age of increasing inequality – the issue of tax is certain to remain  high on the agenda and there are active people wanting to deal with issue to make things happen.

Meanwhile as Margaret Hodge wound up the conference with a  damning speech on what more needed to be done, in another part of the Guildhall, another Parliamentary select committee chair, Keith Vaz, was undermining another powerful woman, Fiona Woolf, the current Lord Mayor of London, who has been appointed by Theresa May, the home secretary, to head the child sexual abuse inquiry

The home affairs committee chairman released seven drafts of her letter outlining her links with Leon Brittan,who is likely to be investigated over the disappearance of crucial home office documents,on the issue.showing how she kept changing her story. Today people think she will be under enormous pressure to quit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Oh my God” – Gove’s reaction to the prolific paedophile Salesian priest

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Michael Gove: shock and awe at revelation at school he declined inquiry

Michael Gove: shock and awe at revelation at school he declined inquiry

Graham Wilmer’s new book The Devil’s Advocate reveals an amazing tussle he had with the Department for Education over trying to get them to consider an inquiry into the running of the Salesian schools as the Met Police Operation Torva was uncovering growing evidence of pedophilia in their order.

A report on the Exaro website reveals the full details of a row between the ministry and Graham Wilmer, who is now a member of Theresa May’s independent panel into national child sexual abuse.

Wilmer says that he “had written several times” to Gove to investigate the Salesian order, which runs several schools in the UK. Wilmer is director of the Lantern Project, a charity that supports CSA victims.

Wilmer writes, “He [Gove] did not respond initially, but one of his officials did, telling me that, while she was ‘saddened to hear what had happened to me’, they were not going to investigate because ‘it was too long ago.’

Eventually he got a letter from Edward Timpson, the children’s minister saying:

“Departmental officials have written to Mr Wilmer a number of times to explain that the secretary of state’s powers in this area are extremely limited.

“The investigation of allegations of abuse is a matter for the local police force, and it is not within the secretary of state’s powers to run a parallel investigation.

“I think that it would also, legal issues aside, be counter-productive and unhelpful. We need to see the outcome of any police investigation before concluding that the department can or should take action.”

Well as my previous blog discloses we now have a finding from the police exposing Father Terence O’Brien, being a prolific paedophile over many years.

So taking the opportunity of being at the Conservative conference I bumped into Michael Gove in a hotel corridor. I put it to him that the police investigation was now completed and they had discovered a prolific paedophile at the Salesian college in Battersea who died in the year 2000

Gove’s reaction was ” Oh my God” but before I could question him further he was hustled away by his minders who informed me he was already late for a meeting.

I have a feeling that this will not be the end of the story. the ministry claims it has few powers to investigate schools and was obviously not keen to do so.

This sounds very much like a matter that will have to be taken up by the inquiry.

Reflections on Labour: Two women who could help change Britain

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Margaret Hodge; A practical route map for Labour

Margaret Hodge; A practical route map for Labour

The most exciting part of political conferences is not the main conference hall but the fringe. It is here that people are much more likely to speak their mind and real issues are debated – not set piece presentations ( even if Ed Miliband forgot a bit of his!).

Two totally unreported contributions came from two of the more feisty women in the Labour – both with strong views.

Angela Eagle, shadow leader of the Commons, chair of the conference and the national policy forum made a refreshingly off message analysis of present British society and where it is going.

Speaking at a Unite union fringe organised by Class (Centre for Labour and Social Studies)- analysing the rapidly widening gap between the mega elite and the ordinary worker – she actually described the present situation in society as ” immoral”.-pointing out that  top directors now earn 130 times more than their workforce.

She also defended benefit claimants -pointing out that the media campaign labelling or libelling them all as scroungers – had meant ordinary people coming to her Wirral surgery were wrongly put on the defensive just because they were claiming from the state.

Angela Eagle providing Labour with a moral compass. Pic credit: The Guardian

Angela Eagle providing Labour with a moral compass. Pic credit: The Guardian

She was on a platform where the speakers were firmly of the view that the present economic situation was unsustainable, companies were hoarding money rather than investing and people could only spend by getting more into debt.

It shouldn’t be surprising that you hear such views at a Labour conference, but it is surprising these days to hear such comments from a member of the shadow Cabinet.

The second feisty contribution came from Margaret Hodge, chair of the Commons public accounts committee. She was speaking on a different platform with the Policy Network.  Here the issue was how Labour could make a difference by accepting the present economic situation and using public money more effectively.

Superficially  you might think the two women were on  different planets but actually they complimented each other.

Margaret Hodge, with enormous experience of investigating Whitehall scandals, tax avoidance and the dodgy behaviour of private companies providing public services, had a practical route map on how Labour could handle this.

Her solution including forcing the companies to become transparent with the way they spend or misspent our money, using public procurement to secure the living wage for all workers, clamping down far more effectively on tax avoidance including collecting the taxes, and looking at radical five-year plans to innovate public services, rather than the Treasury knee jerk reaction top impose cuts with three months notice.

Ed Miliband would be mad if he did not appoint her to head a new unit with oversight of public contracts if he wins the election – she could then insist on implementing this programme rather than report on the messes left behind by the private sector.

He would also be mad not to promote Angela Eagle into a job where she could influence the direction of public spending. Both women  have enormous talents. Angela provides a moral compass, Margaret a practical route map  out of an increasingly unfair society.

 

 

 

The nasty coalition move to make English human rights subservient to business profits

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Are you black or gay and feel your firm discriminates against you? Are you disabled and find a company stops your right of access? Are you woman and you don’t get equal pay with a man?

Naturally you might expect the government’s independent champion  the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to be on your side and prosecute firms who repeatedly failed you.

But a pernicious piece of legislation now going the House of Lords plans to put all this at risk by putting a nasty spanner in the works to hobble the very body that is supposed to stand up for your rights.

The Deregulation Bill – promoted as liberating business from silly bureaucratic rules – includes what s

ounds like a rather arcane provision saying that all regulators for the first time must consider the impact on economic growth before they launch criminal or civil proceedings ( see clauses 83/84) against a company.

In other words if the EHRC doesn’t do this- big companies with loads of cash can take them to judicial review and get cases where they break the law on discrimination annulled. It would also make the EHRC – not the most radical of bodies – even more careful before it takes up your case.

The government are not planning to say until the law is passed which regulator –  it could be anybody from the health and safety commission  to English Heritage or the gas and electricity regulators- they will apply the rules. Only that they won’t be able to impose it on regulators in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But a group of MPs and peers have already rumbled that the EHRC is one of the targets – and ministers have had to confirm that it is true.

The section by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Deregulation Bill is coruscating about this .They say :”Applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC poses a significant risk to the EHRC’s independence…The Government is therefore risking the possibility of the EHRC’s accredited “A” status being downgraded and of putting the UK in breach of its obligations under EU equality law. This could be easily avoided if the proposed new duty did not apply to the EHRC. However, it would  appear that the Government still intends to apply the economic growth duty to the EHRC and to attempt to deal with concerns about independence in another way.”

I gather peers when the bill is debated clause by clause from October 21 in the Lords intend to have a real go at the government for doing this.I can offer him one historical argument.

For cinema addicts there is great feel good film doing the rounds called Belle – see this link on Youtube –  set in the eighteenth century about how a mixed race girl is adopted by the family of the Lord Chief Justice who has to rule on whether slaves who were deliberately drowned by a ships’owner were ditched cargo or human beings.

The main case for treating them as cargo and not recognising their rights as human being – was that slavery was big business and that English firms who shipped slaves in future could face economic ruin.In other words just as written in this  21st century bill – the lord chief justice – had to consider the economic consequences alongside human rights.

I am sure Helen Grant, the former equalities minister and now sports and tourism minister, who is of Nigerian and English heritage herself, would not condone the return of slavery to protect business for one moment.

But if she as a former equalities minister  ignores this pernicious clause and does not  urge her colleagues to exempt the EHRC from this legislation she is returning to the arguments of the eighteenth century. Like Belle in the film, her heritage is the same – except for being brought up in a Carlisle housing estate rather than in Kenwood in Hampstead.

Pass the sick bag not the pop corn: US verdict on DWP’s privatised sick note service

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Last week I revealed how Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, had awarded a new contract to Health Management Ltd, subsidiary of US multinational company, Maximus, to take over from doctors  to decide when you should return to work if you claim more than four weeks sick pay.

The programme is to be rolled out from November to next May aims to save up to £165 million a year by getting people back to work faster as part of Lord Freud’s welfare reforms. Effectively it will mean you will get a telephone consultation  from a call centre and be emailed when you should return to work. If don’t co-operate you will lose your benefit.

The company’s press release reveals the 63 month contract will be rolled out first in Wales, the Midlands and the North before it hits the more affluent South.

Richard A  Montoni, the multi billionaire chief executive explained:“The Health and Work Service program is a natural opportunity to demonstrate Health Management’s expertise as the UK’s largest occupational health care provider and an important step in our long-term goal of expanding in this important market.

“While we expect an initial start-up loss due to the nature of the contract, the overall program economics are strong and once ramped, the contract is in-line with our targeted range of portfolio performance.”

Now through using a website called Glassdoor I have discovered what employees and ex-employees in the US think of Maximus. If you feared it was going to be a cheapskate alternative to your GP – aimed at using low paid, untrained, overworked people in call centres while maximising its profits for overpaid bosses you are right..The customer or claimant seems the least of their concerns.

These are a selection of their comments:

“When starting the business I asked for instructions on how to complete basic daily administrative tasks essential for audit. I was told by my colleagues and my manager not to bother as “we never do it”. Six months later, after figuring out, off my own back how to do it, Head Office comes down like a tonne of bricks on the office stating they have not been done and have failed audit. On top of this I worked with racist, homophobic and disgruntled colleagues who were obnoxious, lazy and didn’t give a damn. My line manager refused to verify my work as he was too lazy

“Management has absolutely no people skills. Little to no room for advancement unless you are related to a director. Unqualified employees are in management positions.”

“Almost everything in my team was micro-managed. One of the Directors was a control-freak and insecure about “loosing his relevance”. So “just to stay relevant” he created “red-tape” processes by making every small change go thru him with his approval, causing delays to routine work cycles.

“Managers and supervisors only care about bonus for themselves.Representatives can easily be disqualified for bonus. There is also too much favoritism among employees. Promotions happen on the basis if they like you or not and not so much on your qualifications. Some managers like to micro manage their staff by setting excessive production goals. Supervisors are under-qualified and possess little to no people skills.

“At MAXIMUS there is little to no room for advancement or growth. …This company makes unreasonable demands for staff to complete work and unreasonable deadlines. This company does not support personal time off due to family/personal issues.” (so they won’t sympathise with you if you are sick)

“No work/life balance. Projects are incredibly understaffed, combined with perpetually tight deadlines, resulting in an average work week of 60-80 hours. Long nights and lots of weekends.

“Upper management often promotes with in their own inner circle and rarely promotes anyone from operations. Most management has little to no hands on experience and are typically hired because they come cheap or are hired by someone they know.”

Of course not everybody is critical. There are some pro company pieces but they are mainly because evidently the firm offer free medical insurance ( not an issue here yet!), the commute to work was easy and some of the colleagues were good mates.

As one said: “Fairly normal work hours, decent training, clean environment, clean restrooms, free coffee, good feelings from helping people when all goes smoothly, being able to trade shifts with other workers, getting paid every week as a temp, working independently.”

and as a plus “On Fridays we have someone come to our desks with free bags of popcorn.”

No doubt that makes everything fine I think if half of this is true it more a case of pass the sick bag than the pop corn!