Tories blew £100k of public money hiding ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ firms – because they were profiting from it?

The scheme was pioneered by Tory welfare slasher Iain Duncan Smith [Image: Getty].

The scheme was pioneered by Tory welfare slasher Iain Duncan Smith [Image: Getty].

This Blog, and others, has spent years warning that the Conservative Government will spend huge amounts of public money hiding what it is doing.

So the revelation that Iain Duncan Smith spent £100,000 hiding the names of companies that have exploited the cheap, unpaid workers available through ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ comes as no surprise.

It is easy to see why. Between June 2011 and July 2012, the total profit made by Mandatory Work Activity provider companies, charities and councils was nearly £1 billion.

There was no cost associated with that profit, either – at least, not to the organisations involved.

You and I and everyone else who pays any tax at all put more than £16 million into making profits for those companies – as we were paying the benefits of the claimants who were being forced to work, and for far less than the then-minimum wage.

And that’s just for a 14-month period, ending more than four years ago.

Mandatory Work Activity has made many billions of pounds for the organisations taking part, and I suspect the Conservative Party has fared very well out of it, also.

How many of the organisations taking party in the scheme are donors to the Conservative Party – and how much did they give?

You see? It was all part of a nasty plan to spend public money and make a private profit for the Tories – to help them gain an unfair advantage at election times when they will be able to outspend everyone else, no doubt.

That is the purpose of Mandatory Work Activity: Making money for the Conservative Party. And that is why we look down on every dirty organisation that has been taking part.

The Tory government blew £100,000 of public money trying to hide a huge list of firms that used jobseekers for unpaid work.

Tesco and Asda were among household names on a list of 500 companies, charities and councils named as taking part in ‘Mandatory Work Activity’.

The list dates to 2011 but was only released in July – after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched an astonishing four-year legal battle to hide it.

Officials claimed releasing the information would hurt “commercial interests” – but eventually lost in the Court of Appeal.

The whole saga cost more than £100,000.

That is because taxpayers had to fund both sides of the court action in a farce branded “worthy of a movie plot”.

The DWP spent £92,250 on lawyers and court fees trying to keep the list secret.

It did so by challenging the government-funded Information Commissioner watchdog (ICO), which had to spend £7,931 defending its case.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Debbie Abrahams said: “Damian Green said the film I, Daniel Blake was ‘a work of fiction bearing no relation to the modern benefits system’.

“And yet here we have a scenario worthy of a movie plot in which a government tries to hide the truth of its own failings from the public.

“They think nothing of demonising those who need the support of our social security system, a system that is there for any one of us in a time of need, forcing them into unpaid work or using spurious reasons to sanction them to manipulate the unemployment figures.

“At the same time they fritter taxpayers’ money on lawyers to cover up their failings and defend pernicious policies like the bedroom tax.”

Source: Tories blew £100k of public money hiding list of firms that used jobseekers for unpaid work – Mirror Online

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6 thoughts on “Tories blew £100k of public money hiding ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ firms – because they were profiting from it?

      1. David Woods

        If there is you can guarantee ‘bleach bit’ will be used excessively until they all come out smelling like roses ‘again’!

      2. Sanjit

        Illegal is a construct of the law, it’self a construct of Government, so one and the same thing. Self interest is rampant with the Tories and what is morally right or wrong resonates only with those who understand the motives behind undemocratic practices.

        As for the welfare spending, we will no doubt see more Thacherite tricks enacted to reduce figures as an election looms. Tory MP’s will stand in applause on the benches while their manipulated costs are presented as success, patting each other on the back and smirking at the oppositions disgust. Thrusting the poor into destitution comes a low second to their one up-man-ship.

        Conscience plays no part, for they know that come the dawn of defeat, the same despicable organisations that supported workfare will be queuing up to take them on their boards.

  1. Dez

    Once again common sense is ignored for the sake of protecting the Conservatives image….not the Companies profiteering from this free labour. By paying these legal costs using taxpayers money to supposedly protect the user/abusers all it suceeded in doing is revealing their cunning plan to the electorate. The total absence of any positive outcome publicity (ie jobs created and filled) suggest this was a one way ticket to use free labour for their mates to increase their Cons donation amounts. What a bunch of low lifes they are . Obviously treating humanity with dignity was never taught in their schooling but promoting the old work house philosophy was.

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