Listening to the Disabilities Minister and his senior officials at the W & P committee a couple of days ago, I began to see how the DWP is now trying to frame the question of the WCA's flaws. The latest explanation goes something like this:
- The Coalition inherited this "astronomical mess" from New Labour in 2010
- Officials have known for ages that there were flaws in the WCA programme
- They've been trying to fix it for years.
- From at least 2010, we've been aware that the system is flawed
- And
- In the middle of 2013 we suddenly realised that all was not well, so we ordered Atos assessors to be retrained, called in PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and said we were going to bring in other organisations to work alongside Atos.
"We acknowledged the problems years ago"
Disability campaigners will greet this claim with outright disbelief!
The DWP has consistently boasted about the WCA's robust design and reliability. Up until this summer, it has vigorously defended the WCA's implementation and said: Atos health care professionals undergo a thorough training programme that is quality-assured by the DWP; they make independent decisions on fitness for work; and they apply sound medical principles when making those decisions.
When disability groups have asked the courts to adjudicate on specific problems within the WCA, the DWP has aggressively contested these moves.
Campaigning MPs such as Tom Greatrex have complained about DWP ministers' unwillingness to answer questions relating to allegations of serious flaws in the WCA, while Sheila Gilmore MP has persistently drawn attention to the DWP's misuse of figures and statistics in relation to claims of success resulting from the IB and ESA reassessment programme.
"In June 2013, thanks to our sharp-eyed officials, we suddenly realised it had all gone Pete Tong"
As a former Atos assessor myself, this just doesn't stack up: this explanation, that was trotted out in July 2013, tries to suggest that it was only as a result of a targeted investigation earlier this year by DWP officials that a shortfall in performance by Atos was uncovered. But consider these points, gained from my experience working at Atos from 2010 to 2013:
- Teams from the DWP have been auditing Atos reports for years. A manager told me in 2011 that the DWP selects reports at random, then specially trained DWP auditors - not those who work for Atos - grade them according to quality: A (Good); B (Satisfactory); or C (Unsatisfactory).
- Every single Atos report is read by a DWP official. Every WCA report is sent to a DWP decision maker. They read the report and base their final decision on it. They are Executive Officers in the Civil Service (the rank structure starts at Administrative Assistant then goes through Administrative Officer to Executive Officer, so they are broadly equivalent to a sergeant in the police or army).
- There is an established mechanism for dealing with unsatisfactory reports, known as asking for a 'rework'. Here, the decision maker sends the report back to Atos for clarification or asks for a fresh assessment - the reason would usually be that there were important internal inconsistencies within the report, or that the report was so garbled that it was impossible to understand.
They can't both be right. I don't think either is.
For more on the history and politics of the WCA have a look at "Benefit Scrounging Scum" or "Diary of a Benefit Scrounger"
