Employment minister Chris Grayling today said there is no evidence of prime contractors on the Work Programme treating subcontractors as “bid candy”.
Over the past month a number of people in the voluntary sector have suggested that primes on the Work Programme have been using them as bid candy to sweeten their offerings to Work Programme commissioners, but in a speech today, Grayling said there is no evidence of this.
In his keynote address to the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA) annual conference, Grayling said the contract lists that primes had signed at the beginning of the process, listing their partners, “remained largely intact”.
He said the mix of referrals from across the public, private and voluntary sectors was in line with expectations and added that the government simply wanted to work with the best organisations that could get the long-term unemployed into work, irrespective of which sector they come from.
ERSA, the trade body for the welfare to work industry, used the conference to launch the Work Programme Supply Chain Ten Point Plan which aims to provide constructive support for supply-chain relationships.
ERSA recommendations include urgent action to increase Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) referrals that should go to voluntary sector organisations, better communication through supply chains about referral numbers, and support by umbrella bodies such as Acevo and NCVO, in partnership with ERSA, to help their members meet the stringent requirements of welfare-to-work commissioning.
Speaking at the conference in London today, ERSA chief executive Kirsty McHugh said: “There has been much coverage in recent weeks about how the voluntary sector is faring under the Work Programme. Our membership, half of which is from the voluntary sector, is telling us that this is a complicated issue and that there is also much good practice.
"Many concerns emanate from the speed and nature of the procurement process, which puts pressure on all parties, and more recently the lack of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) referrals to the Work Programme, a disproportionate number of which would normally go to voluntary sector suppliers because of their specialist skills."
To view the ERSA’s Ten Point Plan in full click here.
