Systemic Fraud at A4e

(Blog with Video)

Welfare-to-work firm A4e knew of widespread fraud and systemic failures by management to control it !

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants demands on behalf of benefit claimants "Answers" from the British government !

Auditors found staff claiming for putting people into jobs which did not exist, jobs which did not qualify for payment and fabricating paperwork.

Who's fiddling the benefits system ?

An investigation into allegation of fraud against welfare to work company A4e has been launched by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Police were already investigating claims of irregularities at the company, which was paid £200m a year by the government for training the unemployed and getting them into long-term jobs.

As part of its work, A4e handles millions of pounds worth of government contracts for welfare-to-work schemes.

The DWP said it had "immediately commenced" an independent audit of its commercial relationships with A4e.

"The Work and Pensions Select Committee was made aware of this audit at the time and the department later received assurances from A4e that it had not uncovered any major issues."

"We have made it absolutely clear to A4e that we take this matter very seriously, and that if, at any point during the audit or thereafter, we find evidence of systemic fraud in DWP's contracts with A4e, we will not hesitate to immediately terminate our commercial relationship."

Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the public accounts committee, said :

"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."

Tuesday 20th March a fifth person was arrested in connection with the police investigation into allegations of fraud at A4e's Slough offices dating back to 2010.

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants, demands that:

* A4e have its Contract terminated immediately ?

* A4e be forced to hand back - millions of pounds ?

* Emma Harrison be forced to hand back her title "Order of the British Empire - Commander British Empire CBE"

* Criminal proceedings & prison for those who sought to make money from the misery inflicted upon benefit claimants.

In 2002 Emma Harrison bought with monies from awarding herself big bonus from A4e - Thornbridge Hall a sixteen-bedroom country mansion in Derbyshire, Still to date ... she hires the hall out to A4e ! Mrs Harrison was made a CBE in 2010 under David Cameron prime minister-ship.

OUR blog posted on - 27 April 2010 - Finally A4e is exposed in the wider media !

UK Unemployment Figures - The Perception is Deception !

UK women bore the brunt as the nation's dole queue continued its relentless march towards the "Official" three million mark.

More than 22,000 women joined the jobless ranks, making up nearly four-fifths of the 28,000 total rise. There are now 1.13 million women unemployed - the highest in 25 years. Unemployment among women has increased by 19.1 per cent since the recession, compared with just 0.32 per cent for men.

Unemployment figures out recently confirmed the worst, UK youth unemployment continues rise at alarming levels. The figures are a damning roll-call of the damage done to employment since the Con-Dem coalition began its ceaseless cuts onslaught

Keen to conjure up a distraction from the abysmal unemployment figures the government tries & con the people into believing the "economy is improving" - the perception is deception!

Disabled campaigners working at various Remploy factories joined campaigners in a “dole queue” demo outside Westminster to protest against government plans to shut down 36 of Britain’s 54 Remploy offices, which provide stable employment for people with disabilities.

Minister for disabled people Maria Miller claimed weeks ago that many of the centres were not financially viable.

In the UK we witness another escalation in the official unemployment rate to 8.2 per cent, the highest for nearly 17 years - directly attributable to government policies.

The current total of 2.7 million is a horrific figure but it masks the reality of a far larger number of people denied the essential human right to work.

Not only would many of the 1.4 million part-time workers prefer to have full-time jobs but hundreds of thousands more have been erased from the jobless rolls by bureaucratic gerrymandering that puts them on dead-end work experience schemes or invalidity benefits.

Work experience could have an important role in bridging the gap between schooling and employment for young people, as happens in Germany and elsewhere.

However, most schemes operating in Britain are either a thinly veiled subsidy to private firms or a sponge to soak up jobless youngsters and massage unemployment figures.

Young people are quick to see through governmental deceit and to appreciate that the political elite is largely indifferent to the prospect of growing numbers of a new generation condemned to the scrap heap.

Cynicism flourishes when the victims of unemployment see themselves vilified by politicians and the bourgeois media as if they are on benefits by choice rather than because of the failure of the capitalist system to provide sufficient jobs.

This applies equally to youngsters shuffled from one scheme back to the dole and on to another scheme and to former industrial workers - miners, dockers, steelworkers etc - on incapacity benefit in employment deserts and berated as welfare spongers.

The huge job cull in the public sector - championed, let's not forget, by the leadership of all three of the main parties - has introduced a new category of casualty, women.

Given female preponderance within the public services, coalition government funding cuts are falling disproportionately on women, with the Fawcett Society calculating that women made up 80 per cent of job losses in the past quarter.

This represents a massive blow against gender equality since women are not only the majority of the workforce in the public sector but depend most upon its services.

Women are also the sole wage-earner in most single-parent households.

Coalition government ministers may make cooing noises and put on their concerned faces when they talk about unemployment, but what is happening is not an aberration.

It is part of their economic plan, shared by the other capitalist governments throughout the European Union.

Their intention is to take advantage of the financial crisis sparked by the banks' unsustainable speculation to force through changes to entrench capitalist advantage over the working class.

Trimming the state, particularly public services, the NHS and state pensions and benefits, is part of a strategy to hand over these areas to the private sector for profitable exploitation.

The role of mass unemployment is to neuter the trade unions and to reduce workers to ciphers, employed, if at all, at low pay rates, poor conditions and few employment rights.

Waiting patiently for a possible change of government in 2015 is futile, since a five-year onslaught by the Cameron-Clegg coalition will create a qualitatively different situation..
It obvious, we know what the governments agenda is:
The Tories are taking secure jobs away from workers, who end up working unpaid on the "work programme" - this is "reality" in Modern Britain.

European Day of Action Against Capitalism on March 31st 2012
Here’s the international homepage of M31 – European Day of Action Against Capitalism: http://march31.net/

There will be parallel demonstrations and other interventions in many countries, from the UK, Ireland & Athens through to Zagreb, Frankfurt & to Utrecht plus many more...

The International Workers Association has called days of action against austerity, exploitation, and oppression on 29, 30 and 31 March. As part of this, on Saturday 31 March, Solidarity Federation locals will be taking action against workfare.

Workfare - working for your benefit - is not just an imposition on the unemployed. It is also an attack on the pay and conditions of those currently in work.

Thousands of unemployed people have been forced by the threat of sanctions to ‘volunteer’ for unpaid work in large retailers, charities and other bodies such as councils. Young people are told that ‘work experience’ will help them get a job.

Video: Employment Minister Chris Grayling interview on WORKFARE !

Demo's 31 March at Brighton, Liverpool, Lincoln, London

Click on the all the links for current list of demo's

Workers Protection & Unemployment in the UK

The UK Government is pushing for a change in the law - MP's will vote within days, on whether to double the unfair dismissal qualifying period from one year to two years.

The government wants to make it easier for bad bosses to sack workers on a whim – creating a hire and fire culture. Particularly badly hit will be young workers. If they are lucky enough to find a job in Coalition Britain, they will then be constantly looking over their shoulder, worried about being sacked when their face doesn’t fit at any time in their first two years.

Next the government will want to go for ‘no fault dismissals’, meaning organisations employing fewer than ten people will be free to sack workers for no good reason. Plans to charge workers for taking a case to a tribunal will also make it harder for employees to make claims.

Together with the coalition’s savage restrictions on entitlement to legal aid, and its snipping away at health and safety protections, this government is taking working Britain back to the dark ages.

Those lucky enough to be working in Britain ought to be seriously worried. Their working lives are about to become more insecure, trade unions need join forces with the unemployed, your members & ordinary workers face the sack more easily thanks to this Tory led government.

Figures out tomorrow (14/3) are expected to confirm the worst youth unemployment figures for nearly 25 years. Keen to conjure up a distraction from the abysmal unemployment figures and the lack of a `compelling narrative’ on the economy, Tory strategists are cooking up a synthetic rage against workers’ rights.

The 1980s recession was a generational disaster and there is a major risk of it happening all over again, Whatever interpretation economists might have, as far as ordinary people are concerned we are already in a double dip recession and young people are clearly one of the groups bearing the brunt of it.

The effects of long-term unemployment are often depressingly long lasting. Those who were out of work for more than a year during the 1980s were more likely to struggle during the current economic crisis and overall tended to earn less than those who got through the decade economically unscathed.

The manner in which this government is making use of the global recession to systematically take apart the four pillars of our society - access to justice, welfare, education and health – is both breathtaking and terrifying.

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants