Adios, Atos

As a volunteer adviser Atos is my natural enemy. By which I mean that if I was an adult Cape Buffalo and Atos was a lion cub I would not hesitate to trample it. No messing. There is no love lost. Of all the vile companies I would like to vilify no vilification would be vile enough. The news of Atos's early departure from its contract with the DWP (to administer the Work Capability Assessments that claimants for Employment and Support Allowance need to undergo to show they are too ill or disabled to work) is wonderful.

Sick and disabled people who are refused ESA will receive no income replacement benefit unless they declare themselves available for work and claim Jobseekers Allowance. The refusal decision usually comes as a result of not scoring enough points at the Atos medical assessment. Since even part-time work is out of the question for many claimants they then have to appeal to HM Courts and Tribunals Service and hope that  the refusal decision will be overturned.

I guess I've been helping clients to appeal at the rate of 2/3 per month consistently over the past 3 years. Around 40% of appeals are successful, indicating that Atos has got it wrong - and caused unnecessary hardship and stress to countless people who are often already suffering from anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illness.

And not just hardship and stress. A woman in Scotland took her own life after being refused ESA. Mark Wood died with malnutrition after his ESA was stopped following an Atos assessment. There are other similar cases.

A whistle-blowing ex-Atos employee has told of assessors actually being told to use the wrong criteria instead of the government-determined descriptors (which have, themselves, been criticised as not fit-for-purpose) and also told to change their reports in order to award fewer points!

But am I dancing happy on Atos's grave? No! The woefully inadequate assessment process will continue unchanged. And who, now, will get the DPW's contract? Serco, known for their cheating over tagging contract with the government? G4S who famously failed to fulfil their contract for the 2012 Olympics and employ the kind of people who caused the death of Jimmy Mubenga?

There is no reason, other than dogma, to outsource these medical assessments; in fact it is morally repugnant to make a profit from people's ill health in this way. The decision process needs to be based on real medical evidence. Why not a body within the NHS, independent of both the DWP and the claimants' GPs?