"Now the jobless get manicures, massages and facials...all thanks to the taxpayer" is certainly a headline worthy of the Daily Mail, but even though they wrote about it last month question;s still remain about how much money the Government is pumping in to the so-called "Big brother Project" which is supported by the DWP.
To save you reading the Mail article, the project is essentially about helping the unemployed single parents to boost their confidence and is run by a company called Inspire2Independence.
According to their website, the two week course provides provides a free makeover, free shopping trip, free lunch, free childcare and they reimburse travel costs. All of this is funded by the DWP through Jobcentre Plus in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, along with the European Social Fund. How that funding is split is a mystery though.
When the DWP was asked back in July how much taxpayers money it was giving the project it claimed that the information was "commercially sensitive". Since then questions have been asked in Parliament and yesterday the line changed.
When David Davies MP asked the DWP very specifically, "how much the Department has spent on the Big Brother project for single unemployed parents since the project’s inception" the response was no longer to hide behind the "commercially sensitive" argument.
Instead, my old favourite turned up again, apparently the information was "not held centrally" and could "obtained only at disproportionate cost". Sounds dodgy, probably is dodgy, FoI is a calling!
5 comments:
Good Grief! Have the DWP lost their minds? Did it even have a brain cells between all of them to begin with? This is an insult to all taxpayers.
Wonder who the shareholders at Inspire2Independence are?
ESF will probably be 40% or possibly 50% of the cost. Some of the balance could well be core costs that have been assigned with convincing arithmetic and timesheets to this project.
Insult to all taxpayers ...? Goodness me if a small proportion of these jobless people get jobs and careers and get off benefit as a result this will be a major boost to taxpayers who will have still less to pay out.
Whever i2i are their pay scales are desperate so they won't be making much of a dent in the working poor themselves.
Chris, we;re not talking about letter writing courses here. These people are being taken on free shopping trips for christ sake and being given Richard and Judy style makeovers. Why should the taxpayer fund someone inability to not look like a scruffy bastard?
I think you are being harsh Dizzy. For all we know, this taxpayer funded beano could result in hundreds of jobless people become professional personal shoppers.
Hereford and Worcester could become *the* place to be for Hollywood stars and WAGs because of the shopping centre of excellence that is being created.
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