2014: What Might The New Year Hold For Disability Benefits?

Reblogged from Work Test Whistleblower:

Personal Independence Payment

PIP's post-natal development has been slow. He was born in April 2013 but he's still not thriving, some nine months on. Only a small fraction of anticipated face-to-face assessments have taken place so far - all, as far as we can gather, in the Capita zone covering Wales and the Midlands. When will the Atos area, which covers all claimants living in London, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire, Tyneside and the whole of Scotland, get up and running? It seems to be linked to the previous problems with the WCA.


Work Capability Assessment

Day to day, WCAs seem to be chugging along, albeit at a slower pace than before. Assessors used to see seven or eight cases a day; now, because of the DWP's insistence on uber-long reports, I'd guess they are only seeing four or five a day. If my estimates are broadly correct, that's nearly a halving of output - and therefore of profits.

New providers of WCAs are supposed to be joining the circus this year. The real question is: does any firm want the contract? If they do, I doubt they will be able to find the extra assessors required, when recruitment of suitable staff has always been a problem - especially with the PIP programme running alongside.
A lot will also depend on the outcome of 'board-level talks' now taking place between the DWP and Atos over the WCA.


Global Contract Negotiations

The Minister for Disabled People told Parliament in December 2013 that his department was in top-level talks with Atos over the WCA. Whatever they are talking about is very hush-hush, but the indications are that it concerns the way reports were put together by Atos before the Great Retraining last summer. Atos seems to have become disenchanted with benefits assessments, while the DWP has a massive downer on Atos at the moment. Is a break-up in the DWP-Atos relationship going to be announced in 2014? I think the key is the subject of these talks, which presumably goes to the core of the outsourcing process: when things go wrong, who is to blame?


Outsourcing Disability Assessments

I suspect the DWP would very much prefer in principle to continue to outsource the WCA and other processes, but who are the frontrunners and which of them would the DWP prefer? The bidders would generally be the big four UK government contractors: Capita, Serco, G4S and Atos. Here are my own opinions on these firms as far as disability assessments are concerned - bear in mind I'm no expert on business analysis:

• Capita already has a slice of the pie as far as the PIP deal is concerned and it seems committed to it. The bulk of Capita's work is in the UK, a huge slice of which involves business process outsourcing from central and local government. All seems to be sweetness and light at the moment - no 'board-level talks' here.
• Serco operates in many countries but its contracts with the UK government are key to its operations. Last month Serco agreed to pay back £68 million to the Ministry of Justice following allegations of contractual irregularities and overcharging, although the Justice Secretary also admitted that his civil servants had been "found wanting" in the way they managed these contracts.
• G4S (motto: 'securing your world') has a global presence as a security company - though it is based in the UK - and it seems to lean less heavily on UK government contracts than either Serco or Capita. The Ministry of Justice has pointed the finger at G4S too over billing irregularities, but G4S seems to be less keen than Serco to fully accept the MoJ's interpretation of events.
  G4S would seem to be a strange choice at first glance for the DWP to pick to carry out medicals, given its lack of obvious expertise in this area and the inquisitorial reputation that the WCA has acquired, which the DWP is rapidly trying to shed.
• Atos is a global information technology company with only about 15% of its business in the UK, and not all of that is with the UK's central government. It has dropped the DLA contract in large part and has backed out of a pilot scheme for the WCA on the Isle of Man.

So it seems to me that on this one we have Capita very much inside the government's tent; Serco is outside but seems keen to get back through the flap; G4S is also out in the cold but it isn't clear how keen it is to share the government's fire; while Atos looks like it might consider walking off into the night.



The Disability and Health Employment Strategy

This blog gave this initiative, announced in December 2013, a cautious welcome as it heralds the eventual end of the WCA. But it could lead in effect to the end of the Work Related Activity Group too - and ultimately perhaps, the end of ESA. It might be that, in future, the Support Group for ESA is broadly the same as the group receiving PIP, while those currently in the WRAG will get practical help and support in finding work but won't necessarily receive any more financial help than what's paid as JSA.