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Roger calls on the Government to end incompetent and unfair Atos assessments

Posted by Roger Godsiff, MP for Birmingham, Hall Green, at 09:58, Thu 25 July 2013:

Roger was unsurprised by this week’s announcement by the Department for Work and Pensions that disability benefit assessments carried out by Atos are of “unacceptably poor quality”. Roger has previously called for a complete suspension of Asos assessments, which he described as “a benefits grab that destroys lives” back in November 2012.

Roger says: "The announcement that the quality of the Work Capability Assessment is well below standard will come as a bitter-sweet acknowledgment to all those claimants who have suffered ignominiously at the hands of this organization. The whole point of organizations such as Atos is not to make a fair assessment in the best interests of the individual involved but to cut the benefits bill, for which they are paid handsomely.” He continued: “The mentally ill and those affected by intermittent conditions, ‘good days and bad days’, have had a particularly rough time through Atos adding further unnecessary stress and strain to those who have enough to cope with already”.

Last year Roger tabled Early Day Motion 714, which called for an immediate cessation of Atos work capability assessments following the death of a man who suffered a heart attack the day after his benefits were stopped, and called on the Government to overhaul the system before more people lost their lives. Roger says: “I urge the Government to act now to put disabled people’s lives before this company’s profits.”

It has long been obvious that Atos assessments are unfit for purpose. Around 30% of those who are refused employment support allowance go on to appeal and are then granted the benefit. There have been more than 600,000 appeals since the WCA started, costing about £60m a year. This is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money, which would be much better spent on improving the lives of disabled people.

Mark Hoban MP, the Minister of State for Work and Pensions, is planning to allow more companies to carry out assessments to “increase capacity”. However, Roger does not believe that allowing more profit-driven private companies to have a slice of the disability assessment pie will do anything at all to improve standards, or ensure disabled people are able to access the benefits to which they are entitled. Dr Mark Porter, chair of the British Medical Association, has the same opinion. He wrote to the Government saying that GPs should be asked to provide factual information for every assessment. Dr Porter also described the current process as “insufficiently rigorous and consistent” and the cause of “avoidable harm to some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society.”

Roger says: “When will the Government start listening to doctors, disabled people and the taxpayer, and stop throwing money at a company which is incompetent at best?”