Just a Few Bad
The government has been forced by public opinion,
alongside a veritable tipping point of overturned decisions, to turn a critical
eye on their WCA administrator, Atos. They’ve announced that Atos must produce a
‘performance improvement plan’ since too many
of their HCP’s reports are below desired standard. Not, they quickly
emphasise, that they are ‘wrong’, simply that they are not putting
forward their case clearly enough. The ‘reasoning‘ underpinning a
portion of ‘recommendations’ lacks ‘detail’, it seems. No mention of
outright misrepresentation, or glaring errors, just the ‘quality’ of
report-writing that is not robust enough to underpin the concluding
recommendation (upon which DWP officers make their decisions).
Since all emphasis is on substandard ‘report
writing’, with no suggestion that decisions derived from them were incorrectly
made, I can only interpret this move as an attempt to make those reports
‘foolproof’ against tribunal scrutiny rather than to have them reflect more
honestly the applicant’s authentic circumstances with regard to their
impairments.
Many among the disabled activists and those
campaigning on their behalf see this news as a positive development. And it
certainly is ‘something’, rather than ‘nothing’. As others have pointed out it
is pathetically little, and is nothing like the wholesale denouncement that most
would wish for. Sadly, even this last perception is wide of base when it comes
to the WCA, and its construction and delivery.
In this situation the position that Atos hold in
the system of administration of welfare to the sick and disabled is akin more to
‘useful corporate idiot’ and proof of this is available for anyone to see in the
government’s own ESA Regulations.
Atos is the government’s shield in the symbiotic
relationship between them and the DWP. From this relationship Atos draws status,
legitimacy and above all massive profits. In this way it is similar to the
companies who administer the Work Programme, which itself has been
proven to do little more than line private pockets with massive amounts of
public money (its actual results assessed as “worse than doing nothing”).
Sadly Atos’ activity, by contrast, definitely does
more than nothing. It helps to cast people, whose only offence is to be ill, off
health related benefits and either into destitution, or to join the competitive
arena of seeking work against the able-bodied and healthy. The latter will,
after a year, proceed onto the afore-mentioned, and certified useless, Work
Programme, where they are likely to be ‘parked’ in favour of those it is
more easy to find work for.
What the government get in return from Atos, which
is a ‘black box’ in itself, since scrutiny is inhibited by ‘commercial
confidentiality’, is a defensive buffer against criticism of their
policies. Atos are, in the final analysis, only the administrators of the
government’s instrument. The government, through their ESA Regulations, say
“This is how you assess people”, “These are the criteria to be
used”. The computer driven LIMA system is simply the interface through
which the government’s set criteria is ‘operationalised’, made digital. The WCA,
as delivered, is an IT construct that is merely the government’s word made
technological flesh, the digitalised manifestation of DWP-designed instructions.
Because: Atos is an IT company. That’s what they do. They apply their
undoubted expertise and experience to produce computerised IT ‘solutions’ to
meet real world criteria. They don’t invent the criteria themselves, its
provided to them, in this case by the UK government’s DWP.
So what’s happening now? Its taken deaths,
suicides in increasing numbers, at least two solid years of intensified activity
by mainly sick people, who are derided as ‘extremists’ for their efforts, to
arrive at this point. This point at which the evidence is so damning, so
incriminating, that the facade of legitimacy of the WCA can no longer stand. The
outrage that Atos draws from a sizeable portion of the public has become
publically visible. But the shield which is Atos, which protects the government,
which deflects from government criticism of their
instrument, their descriptors, their
model of sickness/disability, their
deliberately designed construction of what they will
acknowledge as a sick or disabled person in need of help, still stands.
Direct all your ire at Atos, they say,
have said, these past years. It is the administration which is flawed, not
the foundation, they claim. But that is not the case. In truth Atos are
simply IT specialists who have accurately interpreted their government bosses’
instructions and are now ‘taking one for the team’. And its not a particularly
harsh ‘one’ at that; some reports are not up to scratch, its a ‘quality
control’ issue, bring in more ‘experts’, retrain the assessors. What a
wonderful misdirection, a stage magician’s sleight of hand using smoke and
mirrors. Atos is as insubstantial in the WCA process as smoke. The cards are,
and have always been, the government’s own, designed, printed and laminated by
them in the dark, shadowy recesses offstage. Their construction of the WCA (with
the help of dispreputable insurance company, UNUM) will never be seen as long as
a company like Atos is available to take the flak. And if Atos are ‘phased out’,
as it seems is being prepared, the new Atos will then be the expediter of the
government’s hidden programme. A programme that has a compound objective:
- To choke off the outflow of public money to the sick and disabled, and, as a direct consequence, deter people from perceiving themselves as ill, worthy of support, and therefore inhibiting their take-up of entitled benefits. But possibly incentivising them to take up private insurance instead. (See Unum below)
- To pull away the safety net of social security, without disturbing the inflow into government coffers of National Insurance contributions. (Another magician’s trick, coincidentally UNUM’s choice of visual metaphor for their ‘Backup Plan‘ tv ads -’Whip away the tablecloth, but leave the crockery undisturbed’)
- To change the very definition of sickness/disability itself, limiting qualification for benefits to only the most, and I mean most, seriously impaired – the paraplegic, those with only six months to live (I struggle to find any other categories deemed worthy, at this point).
And meanwhile, even more public money is directed
into corporate coffers, through the commissioning of ‘consultants’
Price-Waterhouse-Coopers, brought in to ‘provide independent advice’ on this
purported ‘quality-assurance’ issue.
Does anyone really think this government agenda,
this pogrom programme is going to be affected in any way by cleaning
up a few reports, improving grammatical and ‘reasoning’ skills? Its more akin in
actuality to a further sharpening of the blade that is already being used to
cull the sick. This is what Grayling meant when he resolved to address the
problem of so many overturned decisions at tribunal. Its not about getting the
decisions right at assessment stage, as any reasonable person would conclude.
Its about making the bad decisions stick.
Atos are the necessary blind that disguises
government intent. The sad thing is that all that is required is to draw back
that blind and the intent is there for all to see, in the government’s own ESA
Regulations. “No need for bending, kneeling in the modern workplace”.
I’ll leave you to contemplate that absolute gem of contorted, deluded thinking
by your government, and consider whether you think it meets the rigours
of your own experienced reality.
