Controversial assessments of disabled people that have led to many losing their state benefits will be reformed, said Steve Webb, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions minister.
He accepted there was genuine anger about how claimants of employment support allowance (ESA) had been treated. The “vast majority” of claimants for ESA, which has replaced incapacity benefit, are deemed fit for work by Atos, the French company which is paid £100m a year to assess claimants.
Yet four out of 10 of those who appeal against the decision by Atos are successful, a process that costs the taxpayer £50m a year. Last month Atos, whose staff assess around 11,000 benefit claimants a week, was savaged by the cross-party work and pensions select committee after it found that many people had “not received the level of service from Atos which they can reasonably expect”.
Webb said: “In the past, we accept, that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) folk just went ‘bang Atos says no’. We are now taking more control of that.” The system of “work-related assessments” which Atos carries out on the government’s behalf is currently the subject of an independent, state-funded investigation by Professor Malcolm Harrington.
Webb said he had held discussions with his Tory colleague at the DWP, Chris Grayling, over the future role of Atos in assessments and that the government understood that change was needed. He said: “One of the changes Harrington recommended is that you don’t just take what the Atos assessor says and tick the box. You say, ‘let’s see what the consultant says’. If I need more information I will ask for it.”
“I am sure there are brilliant Atos inspectors and very poor ones, it is a big organisation, but if someone hasn’t done the assessment properly there is much of a safety valve now to say hang on this assessment says no problem but I have got all these reports from the medics.
“The way Chris put it, is the contribution of the Atos judgment to the decision will be a smaller part. And that has got to help.”
On Sunday Lib-Dem delegates at their Birmingham conference endorsed calls for Atos’s “tick box” system of medical tests to be replaced by something more accurate and less stressful for those who go through it.
Same Difference 
The large majority of disabled people up and down this almost God-forsaken country have not and cannot expect to receive the level of service they should reasonably expect – from the massively (obviously) incompetent clowns at ATOS (their failure rate at assessment speaks for itself – they are not qualified to pass judgement on medical issues – they’re not even a medical company) – and from the system, the state, the establishment here; by way of lack of access to suitable disabled-adapted housing, access to services that will improve quality of life AND sustain that improvement – but most importantly of all TIMELY medical assessments by NHS doctors AND access to much-needed medical treatments & therapies.
This article comes not as a surprise to me, and I’m afraid to say I believe for all this “waxing-lyrical” the politicians like to do, not a great deal is set to change for the better – certainly not in the immediate or near future. I think it will take another ten years of someone rational, competent and compassionate @#10 to effect ANY positive change for us at all.
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