No conflict of interest here then?! / 14 September 2011
According to documents obtained by the Guardian newspaper, Cameron’s senior adviser on troubled families has set up a new partnership to bid for work under a programme to get 120,000 households into work. A programme that she helped create!
Emma Harrison, the multimillionaire founder of private welfare company A4e, was appointed the “families champion” last December. The prime minister singled her out in a key post-riot speech last month, saying she had “develop[ed] a plan to help get these families on track”.
She's already on public record as having stated that, for her to make any money from the scheme would be at the least a “conflict of interest”.
Harrison told the Guardian she withdrew from bidding when the government announced the first tranche of contracts, worth £200m, in February. She said she had accepted the unpaid role but had been “shocked” to learn there would be hundreds of millions of pounds in funding.
“Chris Grayling [the welfare minister] told me he had got £200m. It was a bit of a shock … I thought: ‘Oh crikey, that makes me feel a bit awkward. We will have to withdraw [from the bidding].’”
But documents sent to private firms who did bid for the work reveal that Harrison’s company had set up in January a “partnership” called Families Unlimited, with (wait for it) a former civil servant who until this year was running the Department for Education’s “support services for families with multiple needs”, to pitch for the cash ... so apparently she wasn't really feeling THAT awkward!
Families Unlimited offered to execute the work won by “prime contractors” for a fee. In blunt language, the documents say that “A4e will not bid as a prime contractor … due to a conflict of interest arising from the work of its founder and chairman, Emma Harrison, through the Working Families Everywhere initiative. However, DWP [the Department for Work and Pensions] have advised that no conflict arises where A4e is acting as a subcontractor.”
If I remember right, wasn't A4e the company that took the 'direct payments' contract away from the East Sussex Disability Association (ESDA)?!
Talk about jobs for the boys ... and girls!
Keywords: conflict of interest,disabled peoples movement,disabled peoples protest,disadvantaged families,funding,money,politics,the big society,user led organisations
Comments
Moira Smith
/Oh absolutely wonderful site!!!! I feel blessed to have found you!! Please keep me in touch, and espescially, may I post to FB?
Love, light and blessings, you are so very talented. Mxx
Colin Hambrook
/I;ll email the old codger and tell him we're missing him. I know he's been having a hard time of it, impairment-wise, in the last six months and more.
richard downes
/i'm stillmissing crippen. when you gonna beback old fellow?
Sue
/Emma Harrison and her gang A4E which I think stands for Angst for everyone, is certainly not my favourite person. She and that other organisation Shaw Trust have destroyed direct payment support schemes run by disabled people and not just in East Sussex either. The latest trick is to bid for a dp scheme and then persaude the people on your employment programme (well it is payment by results you know)to take jobs as PAs! Leonard Cheshire are now starting to kick out local disabled people's organisations as well.
Simple Simon
/Shame on them ... one rule for them and another for everyone else not in the Tory network. How much longer will we tolerate this corrupt government? What are we, as disabled artists doing to protest about this?!
Kevin via Facebook
/For a govt wanting to get rid of quangos its certainly making up enough of its own. Makes us all feel stupid and idiots who come from working class backgrounds. has she never heard about working class pride, the privacy of a household from prying eyes of do-gooders and the invasion of the middle class social worker missionary mercenary. Ready to go where any money can take them - at a price. So no autonomy or pride for the natives and they having the right to find their own solutions from within and their own communities and families. Thought not. We need to be governed sorted and managed like sheep ... Baaa!
Miss Dennis Queen
/Disgusting! Keep sharing the news folkls!
Arty Farty
/This is the sort of information that the government try to sweep under the carpet. Well done Mr C and DAO for bring this out in the open.
Dawn via Facebook
/And were planning for this over 18 months! Hence Govt cash for TTC...they are ferociously marketing themselves but by the same token Rethink, for example, are cutting staff/downgrading staff and employing less qualified face to face workers.
Lynn via Facebook
/good one Dave, I think this also applies to some charities... most are usual suspects (Leonard Cheshire, Scope, Mencap etc.) but also, Mind, who whilst pretending to campaign for survivors re-benefits theft by the CONDEMs are part of a consortium which are going to be workfare providers.