The SNP government said you can trust us to be different from the DWP when we control the disability benefits and get the disabled back to work schemes the Smith Commission agreed the Scottish Parliament should now control.
Yet, late last week the Herald exposed Nicola Sturgeon had in fact requested the DWP keep delivering the benefits until 2020 - as the SNP government was not capable of delivering them by April 2017 - despite claims they could run the whole of Scotland by 2016.
No Scottish Government has ever been given devolved powers from Westminster and refused to deliver them - until now.
Instead of protecting the disabled people of Scotland from what is an ever increasing cruel DWP, as promised for votes, the Scottish Government decided they only want the power to award contracts to companies to get the disabled back to work, so they get their benefits by April 2017 - while the Scottish people have to wait until 2020.
So what is the difference between the SNP control of these contracts and the DWP control as the SNP government have just given the same people the DWP gave the contracts to?
Yesterday the Herald reported the SNP government has used their new Smith Commission powers to do things differently to give initial contracts worth £14million to get the disabled people of Scotland back to work from April 2017 to Remploy, Momentum Scotland and Shaw Trust.
Remploy/Maximus
Remploy sacked thousands of disabled people across the UK after the Westminster government privatised it, so it could go into partnership with disgraced and discredited American led Maximus in 2015, after Liz Sayce, Chief Executive of Disability Rights UK, recommended the government privatise Remploy.
Two of the three people who now sit on the Maximus UK board are Canadian Leslie Wolfe, left, who resides in America, who is the General Manager of Maximus UK
Michael Batty, right, below, also sits on the board of Maximus
Both these people now also sit on the board of Remploy.
Michael Batty also sits on the board of Centre for Health and Disability Assessments (CHDA), a subsidiary of Maximus, which the DWP gave a contract on 1st March 2015 to assess people with long-term illness or disabilities or poor health.
Maximus website reveals it is led by people from G4S, Serco, Defence Contractor, BMI Private Healthcare and a former special advisor to New Labour between 2005 and 2010.
According to accounts for 2015 filed by Maximus they made £6.7 million profit in the UK in 2015 - a 36% pre-profit margin.
Remploy also has Abdul Quddus, on the board
Abdul Quddus worked for disgraced training for work provider A4E for years, a company New Labour and Israel gave contracts, to control training for work - with talks to extend this Israelie A4E contract across Palestine too.
So the SNP government has given disgraced company Maximus control of disabled people in Scotland, just like the DWP, disguised as the now privatised and equally
disgraced Remploy name.
So what of the other two companies SNP have given money and contract to get disabled people back to work for them?
Momentum Scotland (Parent Company Irish charity Rehab Group)
Momentum Scotland might be registered as a Scottish Charity but it is people from Southern Ireland and England who control the board - with one token Scot on the board as it is actually a "subsidiary" of a charity in Southern Ireland called the Rehab Group.
"Significant failings in governance and practice in the organisation were brought to light in the first quarter of the year, through concerns expressed in the media and by public representatives. These failings constituted a serious breach of trust, and the organisation’s reputation was significantly damaged as a result."
The scandal related to the Irish Rehab Group paying between €60,000 and €350,000 to 154 employees (with redundancies), which is revealed on page 52 of the 2014 annual report - while newspaper stories reveal they also paid more than €400,000 in consultancy fees was paid to former board member Frank Flannery over seven years.
Court papers revealed they abused charitable lottery money as Rehab Group leased cars for staff using money provided by the State to subsidise its struggling charity lottery with the Independent newspaper in Ireland also revealing
"The funds were only supposed to be used for charitable purposes – not spent on administration. But the Department of Justice claims Rehab money that was supposed to go to charity was also spent on advertising, professional fees, software licences, and stationery costs."
The scandal resulted in 36% drop in funding resulting in this rogue Irish Charity putting into effect large scale redundancies across the UK to solve their problems in Ireland while the Group Chairman giving "particular thanks to the Scottish Government" for their support.
in 2015 charitable work was cut by nearly £1million across the UK, despite operating income increasing by £700k, staff were also cu while Momentum Scotland followed their Irish parent group, despite the scandal, and increased high salaries at the top from 2 people earning up to £150k between them to 5 people earning £350k between them - it seems the scandal is not over.
The Irish Rehab group' s 2015 accounts for their Scottish "subsidiaries" reveal they had the contract to deliver services in Scotland from the DWP as well as coining it in from 7 local authorities, NHS in Scotland, Skills Development Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Government and Big Lottery Scotland - seems charity begins in Ireland not at home any more - as they reported a surplus (profit) of over £142k in 2015 with assets worth over £1.6 million with plans to move into the privatised social care market in Scotland too.
The "charity" just bought itself a nice head office funded by bank loans and Scottish government loans - no wonder the SNP have no time to set up a system to pay disabled people benefits - as the Scottish Government and COSLA are too busy organising benefits for this rogue Irish charity.
And because Momentum Scotland is a subsidiary of an Irish charity they are exempt from publishing a cash flow statement, group accounts for their subsidiaries and their basic financial instruments because they are subsidiaries of an EU entity.
But page 16 of the accounts reveals the sums of money paid by Scottish government and councils and in 2014 and 2015 the Scottish government gave them unrestricted grants of £90k each year, while the Irish parent company gave nothing.
Who is the final company to benefit from SNP contract to get the disabled out to work for them - Shaw Trust - so what do we not know about them?
Shaw Trust (woman who created disabled workfare & ESA on the Board)
Shaw Trust is a UK "charity" which the DWP also gives contracts to control the disabled for them too.
Shaw Trust is in the top 5 of charities paying the highest wages to their executives in England and Wales - alongside Age UK and Red Cross. yet Ofsted rated four out of five categories of their independent learning programme as inadequate in August this year.
The Chairman, Ken Olisa, is a former I.T. company director for IBM worldwide and Wang. He is Freeman of the City of London who was a member of IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standard Authority) until 2013.
Fellow "trustees" include Janet Allen, who has over 20 years in global banking John Norman who was head of business continuity planning with BAA Airports Ltd and recently also appointed to the Finance and Audit Board of Poplar HARCA housing association which is in the top 5 housing associations paying the highest pay for their executives.
Other "trustees" is Peter Holmes, a non-executive member of Westminster's Insolvency Service who has worked for Accenture and was managing director of UK Systems for Sema Group Plc (now Atos Origin) along with Venessa Miner, consultant to the Department for Education who was Commercial Partnerships Director at TV producer Endemol.
Three more very interesting people joined the board of Shaw Trust this year.
Rebecca Sudworth, who was a Senior Civil Servant in the DWP who designed and delivered this vile Work Choice programme for the disabled (and ESA after starting her career at Ofxfam joined them. Rebecca is also a director of Peabody Trust housing association which is third on the list of housing associations paying the highest amounts to their executives.
Christina Patterson a freelance journalist, who writes for Rupert Murdoch's The Sunday Times and The Guardian and a regular guest on the Sky News press preview.
Paul Baldwin admits he is trying to get on as many charity boards as he can - Prior to the merger between Shaw Trust and the Disabled Living Foundation (DLF) Paul served as Chair of the DLF Board. Paul has nearly 20 years’ experience of the banking industry, working for UBS, Kleinwort Benson, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC.
While being 5th of all the general "charities" in England and Wales for paying their executives some of the highest rates of pay Shaw Trust have been responsible for benefits sanctions on disabled people across the UK, based on their recommendation as one of the largest charitable Work Programme contractors.
We don't know yet if Shaw Trust will start charging the disabled for doing volunteer work (as they did with one of their work programmes for the disabled in England) but SNP have stated none of these companies can recommend sanctions for anyone in Scotland - just for these 3 contracts - sanctions for every other contract will still happen.
As blogger Johnny Void wrote in 2013 in his blog "Where The Workfare Money Goes – Charity Rich List Released"
"Charities will claim they need to pay high salaries to compete with the business sector"...
Workfare is good for business, helping to undermine wages and workplace organisation. And it’s good for big charities, who not only get a stream of unpaid workers but if they are particularly compliant may also be offered lucrative government welfare-to-work contracts...
That these are contracts and workfare placements that punish, degrade and impoverish the very people they claim to support can be brushed aside with glossy PR featuring ‘success stories’ – the handful of people who haven’t had miserable experiences at the hands of these organisations
Millions of lives are currently being crushed under austerity and the erosion of the welfare state. As Scope Chief Executive Richard Hawkes has said however, these savage cuts provide big opportunities for charities. The end result of corporate style charities paying bosses hundreds of thousands of pounds are those bosses acting in their own class interests and attacking the very people whose poverty they leech from to fund their own lavish lifestyles."
In 2013 Shaw Trust was branded as cruel in a local newspaper article "Anger over Trowbridge charity decision to charge volunteers for work" by the Guardian in 2013 which revealed
The charities commission was asked in August 2007 by a former employee and local people to investigate how Shaw Trust was controlling this Palmer Gardens Charity but the Charity Commission refused to do so.
Then in 2013, a local newspaper reported there was widespread anger as Shaw Trust had declared it was going to start charging the disabled for doing volunteer work for them with the report stating
"A charity which has started charging its volunteers to work has been branded cruel by the mother of one disabled woman who will now have to give up going there.
For decades the Palmer Gardens garden centre on Islington has offered horticultural work to disabled and disadvantaged people in Trowbridge. The Shaw Trust has now announced it will be charging £35 a day to work there."
This despite the fact disabled people have been volunteering free, some for as long as 11 years.
Spokesman for Shaw Trust Mark Brooks said: “This isn’t a profit-making organisation, and what we are trying to do is move towards balancing the books, and open the garden centre up to more people in the community.”
Then in December 2014 a terminally ill ex Marine, Gordon Lang, born in Kilwinning, living in Gosport, who served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, an amputee with terminal lung cancer was declared fit for work.
The Shaw Trust then wrote to him saying it would help him find work when he was better – despite him informing them he had terminal lung cancer after they first wrote to him.
The charity claimed it was never told. He died in April 2015.
Just like the disgraced Irish Charity Rehab Group, the charities commission was asked again to investigate the "charity's" finances after a director reported financial and governance irregularities in 2008. This after
"The commission investigated a Shaw Trust trading subsidiary called Shaw Trust Enterprises in 2000 after it was wound up with debts of £622,000"
The Charity Commission, in 2008 "refused to publish the findings of its seven-month investigation into governance and financial management at the Shaw Trust" but the Third Sector website revealed
"The findings were released to Third Sector last week following a request under the Freedom of Information Act. They showed that trustees received eight recommendations to improve governance, and were criticised for failing to withdraw from board decisions in which they had conflicts of interest."
Scotland was promised vote for SNP and we will protect the disabled from the terrible treatment they have been receiving from the DWP and the companies it put control of disabled people.
Now we find, just like New Labour, SNP misleaders are quite happy to con 5 million people for power, only to then betray the most vulnerable people in our society by putting some of the worst DWP contractors, with bankers, Westminster servants and the very woman who designed the despicable DWP "Work choice" and ESA programmes on their boards, in complete control of the most sick and disabled people in Scotland, to get them working free for their "charities" to profit.