The latest from Private Eye: “Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, is the latest Opposition member to accept help from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). “The management consultant is supplying an analyst to support Reeves from October to January… This suggests that, although Labour has made a lot of noise about the government’s work with unpopular contractors like Atos and A4e, the People’s Party intends to stick with this commercial approach to welfare should it find itself back in power next year. “PwC is already involved in advising the government on ‘commissioning’ welfare services; and last year Tory employment minister Mark Hoban asked it to help strengthen ‘quality assurance’ in the fitness-to-work tests carried out by Atos [PwC is Hobans former employer, implying an inappropriate relationship from the get-go]. This didn’t seem to work, as Atos quit the contract this year after much criticism. “Reeves’ timing is unfortunate, to say the least. PwC is currently heavily implicated in the latest scandal of big corporations avoiding tax through Luxembourg. Most of the leaked documents show PwC was helping arrange all those tax-free tricks.” PwC is known as one of the big accountancy players along with Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young. They have been invited to actually write government legislation on behalf of the Tories and Liberal Democrats – specifically UK law on tax avoidance – while running many tax avoidance schemes. The Department for Work and Pensions employed several private firms. That is why I believe DWP is losing money hand over fist. There are the work programme provider firms who provide absolutely no useful training and are less likely to find anyone a job than if the person were left to their own devices. IT firms are currently working on Universal Credit, about which Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith lied to Parliament when he said he was having to write off £34 million of expenditure – the true figure was later revealed to be closer to £161 million, almost five times as much. I have spoken before of shamed ATOS that were hired to carry out so-called ‘work capability assessments’ of people claiming sickness, incapacity and disability benefits, following a system designed to ignore real medical evidence. They would rather place emphasis on a bogus, tick-box test designed to find ways to cut off their support. Unum Insurance, the criminal American corporation designed the test, in order to push British workers into buying its bogus insurance policies that work on exactly the same principle. The bosses of companies like Unum, Atos and KPMG (and by extension, PwC) were planning to ensure that they would have government contracts, no matter which political party was in office. In effect they would be unelected kings because whatever you decided at the ballot box, they would be in charge. Money paid to these companies does not benefit the British economy but goes abroad to their foreign headquarters or parent companies. PwC is part-American-owned. If Rachel Reeves had promised to be as tough on tax dodgers, in her previous job as shadow chief secretary to the treasury, as she promised to be on welfare in her first speech as shadow work and pensions secretary, Labour might have a lot more credibility. The article said that ensuring we get the money that is currently going unpaid by tax dodgers – who are facilitated by firms like PwC – would ease the benefit bill as it would take up a smaller proportion of the national tax take. And now she is taking advice from PwC. Maybe someone at PwC read the article and decided to take preventative action. It seems clear that if Labour has any involvement with this company – or allows it to continue working behind the scenes on government business – it will not be in the public interest!
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 22:06:46 +0000
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