The above is in the Scotsman today to tell us:

How Scotland can escape vicious circle of ill-health, unemployment and poor public services

Newcastle is not far away but, typically, he knows nothing about public services in Scotland.

He clearly is ignorant of the facts on public services in Scotland, as opposed to in Newcastle.

How about?

More GPs, doctors, nurses, midwives, beds, home health visitors, fewer strikes, shortest NHS waiting lists, with consequent lowest stillbirth in UK, lowest Covid deaths in UK, lowest Covid care home deaths in UK, fewest (zero) hospitals in special measures……

More police officers per head, fewest forces (zero) in special measures, with lowest crime in UK, lowest murder, lowest rape, lowest domestic abuse, highest crime solving…..

More teachers per head, best maintained schools, attainment gaps closing, higher attainment, more graduates per head……………..

And what is Fedcap famous for?

Wage theft

In 2018, an investigation by the US Department of Labor found that Fedcap had violated the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act at 17 federal facilities served by Fedcap in New York and New Jersey, with violations including illegally deducting third-party administrative fees from employees’ pay and failing to pay required benefits to employees, for which Fedcap agreed to pay $2.8 million to more than 400 workers to resolve the violations.

In 2021, a worker for Fedcap’s job placement program, Brickzaida Aponte, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company committed wage theft against her and other workers. Fedcap settled the lawsuit in 2023, agreeing to put $850,000 into a settlement fund for roughly 4,000 workers.

Privatization

On February 14, 2020, the Progressive Conservative government of the province of Ontario in Canada announced that as part of its plan to reform government employment services accessed by Ontarians, three prototype regions would be overseen by a Service System Manager to identify efficiencies and ways to increase labour market responsiveness. The Service System Manager for the Hamilton-Niagara region would be a consortium led by Fedcap.

Ontario’s official opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) called the plan a “recipe for disaster.” It expressed concern that paying service managers based on job matching results would erode social services, and that contractors could refuse to serve more challenging cases, press people into poor-fitting job placements, or force them back to work prematurely. The NDP said similar privatization plans in the United Kingdom and Australia have not worked out, citing Australia’s privatized JobActive system which was described in an Australian Senate report as a “bureaucratic nightmare” that would need to be overhauled.

Ministers of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) in the Hamilton-Niagara region expressed concern at the Conservative government’s push to privatize public services, its insufficient consultation with stakeholders, and the resulting uncertainty for local employment service providers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedcap_Rehabilitation_Services#:~:text=Fedcap%20Rehabilitation%20Services%2C%20Inc.%2C,1935

What can Brian Bell do?