Atos And The DWP: Is Their Marriage On The Rocks?

Reblogged from Work Test Whistleblower:

2013 has been a difficult year: the DWP has been criticising Atos in public; Atos has become almost mute. Former partners of Atos, like the Labour Party, have been urging the DWP to dump it. Meanwhile the DWP has called in professional help to try and find out what went wrong, yet is openly flirting with other 'providers'. Has Atos now had enough?

Consider these points:

• In May, Atos was planning a new WCA contract on the Isle of Man. By July, it had lost interest.
• In swathes of Britain that were earmarked for PIP assessments to be carried out by Atos, the process has stalled.
• And now the Disability News Service has revealed that Atos has given up on virtually all of Britain's DLA assessments.

The DWP says it is worried about the quality of the WCA reports written by Atos disability assessors. But few people really believe that's the root cause - it is a truth universally acknowledged (and has been for ages) that many of the reports are badly written.

So why does the DWP really have such a downer on Atos all of a sudden? It's either:

• Atos has been seriously underperforming, and the DWP has only just found out about it, or;
• Atos is being made to take the flak for problems that are really the fault of the DWP.

Or maybe - as is usually the case - it's a bit of both.

So what's the next step? I reckon it could be:

•  They part on good terms and the DWP finds another partner.
• They have an acrimonious split and the DWP finds another partner.
• They have an acrimonious split and the DWP struggles to find another partner.

I suspect the Secretary of State's unscheduled trip to Paris last week included an attempt to part on good terms. I hope he took a bottle of Le Piat d'Or.