An early morning start today (I hate early mornings), for
breakfast in the Commons with a key MP whose identity I will protect! An
unhealthy bacon butty but no doubt I'll walk it off over the day...
The main event was the launch of the acevo/Shaw Trust report
on the Work Programme (WP), "Refinement not reinvention". Worth
reading - you can find it here: http://www.acevo.org.uk/document.doc?id=2623.
It was good to get the new Employment Minister Esther McVey
to the launch in Whitehall. And doubly good to get the opposition shadow
Stephen Timms along as well. Rather impressed with Esther; someone who has had
a real job before the Commons, in her family business in demolition and then in
media and in various TV programmes like Channel 4's "Nothing but the
Truth" (as I said in introducing Esther; useful for DWP in particular).
The key point for the third sector is that whilst we know
many of the shortcomings of the WP (and there were many in the design of the
programme), the architecture can work.
In designing the new contracts for 2016 we can learn from how the WP has
gone, and change it, but we don't want it all to be abolished. That will create
more uncertainty for the sector, not to mention the consequences for those we
are trying to help.
I had a word with Stephen Timms afterwards to make that
point, especially in terms of Labour's job guarantee proposal, but the
programme can be built on that.
On from the Launch to lunch with Michael Pragnell, who
Chairs Cancer Research UK. We were getting together to talk about the whole CEO
pay saga, but more widely to discuss the work of one of the world's most prestigious
charities; the research that is going on into cancer cure and prevention is
remarkable.
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