Today (Monday), parliament reached a new low. The committee that is supposed to hold the DWP to account disgraced itself.
At 0930, flanked by two officials, the Minister for Disabled People took his seat opposite the Chair, who was all smiles. The three men looked wary; they coughed nervously and shifted in their seats.
The minister had a car-crash start over the Independent Living Fund: bumbling and stumbling and sounding like he'd failed to get to grips with his brief. The burly ex-guardsman even growled at 77 year-old Glenda Jackson after she'd asked one of the few testing questions of the session.
But soon it was the turn of the Conservative and Lib Dem members of the committee to ask about PIP. The pressure came off and the three men relaxed. It was like a Home Counties drawing room when the vicar has come to tea - the questions were gentle and unintrusive, and none of the panel appeared bothered about challenging the replies that followed.
One hour fifty-eight minutes into the two hour meeting, Agenda Item No.3 was reached: the Work Capability Assessment. No sooner had the first question been posed than the Division Bell sounded and several MPs got up and left. We then bizarrely heard the minister and his officials scrambling to get their main points across before the committee wound up!
So we can only hope that Margaret Hodge and the Public Accounts Committee can do their job and hold the DWP properly to account.
What useful nuggets of information can we find in today's embarrassing shambles?
- The PIP programme was confirmed as being well short of its planned trajectory: about 85% of the PIP decisions expected to have been done by now have not yet taken place, and many of those cases where decisions have been made did not involve a full face-to-face assessment.
- The WCA was an "astronomical mess" when it was picked up, according to the minister (he didn't say exactly when that was, and wasn't asked).
- The Chair wondered how medical auditors can audit reports without seeing the disabled person themselves.
- The WCA contract is a loss-making one for Atos now.
- "Board level" discussions are taking place between the DWP and Atos over the WCA contract.
- When the WCA was mentioned, it was portrayed in a negative light, even by the DWP triumvirate.
