by Keith Richmond
A CONTROVERSIAL company at the heart of the Government’s flagship programme to privatise job seeking in Britain has been dumped after a police probe into a scam involving £1.1 million of taxpayers’ money.
Maatwerk, a Dutch firm operating in Britain, Holland and Germany, was to be paid big bonuses for getting disabled applicants back into work under the Government’s New Deal for Disabled People.
The arrangement was criticised, when it was introduced, by trade unions and disability groups who said it was wide open to abuse. And so it has proved.
Staff at the Maatwerk office in Manchester forced 7,000 disabled jobseekers to sign forms saying the firm had found them employment – and then picked up payouts from the public purse of up to £3,000 a time.
The signatures of the jobseekers were real but the claims on the forms were false. The disabled workers had not been found jobs by Maatwerk. But the payments from the Government were real enough and amounted to a total of £1.1 million.
Those involved in the swindle – which ran for three years – deliberately targeted people on disability and sickness benefits.
Government auditors grew suspicious about the apparent success of the scheme and launched an investigation. They raided the company’s offices in Manchester and took away 63 files with “irregularities”.
Maatwerk has now been dropped from the Government’s scheme and the police are set to make arrests.
A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for the New Deal scheme, said: “The department takes all allegations of impropriety by its suppliers very seriously. We have concluded our enquiries and passed all our evidence to Greater Manchester police. As this is now a criminal investigation we are unable to provide further comment.”
A police spokesperson said: “Inquiries are ongoing. Greater Manchester police has been passed details of an investigation regarding allegations of fraud by a recruitment company based in Manchester city centre.
“Officers will be reviewing the information they have been given and will be taking a file to the Crown Prosecution Service for further consideration.”
Maatwerk Groep of the Netherlands was bought, just after the investigation began in December last year, by the American firm ResCare, which also deals in finding jobs, education and training for people “who have significant barriers to employment”. It is the biggest provider of workforce services in the United States.
Jesica Lindgren of ResCare said: “We inherited some unfortunate allegations and have since worked to bring the operations up to ResCare standards.”
The million-pound swindle will embarrass the Government and points up a problem at the heart of its attempts to involve the private sector in what has historically been a public service. Companies get involved to make a profit, not to offer a service, and the taxpayer is left out of pocket.
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