“That’s another fine
mess you’ve got me into”, said Dave to IDS (I suspect) when today’s Daily
Mail arrived through the letterbox of No.10.The headlines suggested it had all gone horribly wrong (again) on the procurement front. Fresh on the heels of the CX of the UK Student Loans Company promoting tax avoidance, here was a ‘Tsar’ getting an £8.6m dividend through what appears to be promoting contract avoidance.
In a nutshell the story is the lethal mix of:
- A Tsar
- The DWP Work Programme
- The Tsar is paid a dividend from her company
- The company’s only customer is the public sector
- The main customer is the Work Programme
- The company’s delivery performance has been abysmal, namely, 9-24.2% ‘back to work’ as opposed to the target of 30%
- Half the company’s subcontractors are the third sector.
It looks like the main beneficiary in getting 120,000
troubled households into work was the main shareholder of a poor performing
contractor. I suggest she would
be better as the Tsar of Contract Manipulation. To take Dave’s previous endorsement out of context “… I know we can count on her to help drive this campaign forward”. It seems to me that
