By Grahame Morris MP
Work capability assessments carried out by ATOS are used to make decisions about whether people are fit to work or are eligible for benefits. The company has conducted about 738,000 medical tests on benefit claimants in the past financial year. However, around 40% of people appealed against the decisions – with 38% of those successful.
A number of disability charities and organisations have spoken out against the number of people being found fit for work when they are not, and have questioned the conduct of ATOS healthcare professionals carrying out the assessments.
The current system is failing the taxpayer and pushing many vulnerable disabled people to the brink of despair.
People are becoming trapped in a distressing and expensive cycle of appeals and reassessments. In the last two years the cost of appeals have more than doubled from £25 million to £60 million, and the average waiting time for an appeal to be heard has risen from 12 weeks to 19 weeks.
The system is clearly flawed when almost 40 per cent of people are successful on appeal.
Through incompetent testing and with so many successful appeals the Government are paying twice over for a flawed capacity assessment.
The survey of GPs by charity Rethink Mental Illness found that eight out of ten GPs have patients who have developed mental-health problems since the tests were rolled out to all claimants, with one in five reporting they have at least one disabled patient who had thought about suicide as a result of undergoing, or fear of undergoing, the Work Capability Assessment.
The Government should be overhauling the current system which is failing the most vulnerable in society.
It is beyond belief that the Government are rolling out the use of Work Capability Assessments further into the benefit system, and are rewarding ATOS for a record of failure by awarding them nearly £400 million worth of contracts to carry out assessments for the new Personal Independence Payments.
Twitter: @GrahameMorris | Website: Grahame Morris MP
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