Thursday 2 August 2012

#ATOS Contracts: Sick Joke, Or Rewarding Incompetence?


It seems the reward for all the heartache and suffering that ATOS have inflicted on disabled people over the past few years, the bonus for getting one assessment in six so wrong it is overturned in front of a judge, for wasting £50m/year of taxpayer’s money in those appeal tribunals, is the right to inflict precisely the same kind of abuse on millions of disabled recipients of Disability Living Allowance as the government axes that successful benefit in order to exclude 20 to 25% of current recipients.

In the same week that ATOS has been pilloried by back to back Dispatches and Panorama documentaries that revealed staff who consider their job toxic, who spend their time looking for ways to not think about the consequences on the patients they swore an oath to protect, while celebrating that they are never called before the tribunals who have to put right their failure, and who seemingly find nothing wrong with asking a suicidal patient why they haven’t succeeded yet (not to mention the absolute triumph of finding a sectioned, catatonic man fit for work), the government has seen fit to reward their execution of the WCA contract with the majority of the contracts to conduct the DLA to PIP migration. The other contracts have gone to Capita, an outsourcing company, because clearly managing office cleaning is everything you need to know to conduct complex medical assessments of disability (or maybe it was their work as bailiffs which drew Grayling’s eye). The terrifying thing is it could have been even worse, G4S were competing for the PIP contracts until they reduced Olympic security to a farce.

You have to wonder what IDS was thinking when he signed off on this. Was he rewarding incompetence, or rewarding ATOS for their demonstrated ability to ignore facts, humanity, ethical obligations and even sheer common sense in pursuit of the mandated cuts?

7 comments:

  1. "You have to wonder what IDS was thinking when he signed off on this."

    As always ... he wasn't. It's not his job to think.

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  2. I'd guess IDS was thinking they'd give him a very nice kickback. I bet they will, too.

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  3. This is totally obscene. Having just had result of WCA overturned by Appeal Tribunal, it seems I'll be meeting atos again when my DLA higher rate mobility is re-assessed.

    This can't really be happening, can it?

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  4. Urgent!

    Did any of you see the article on page 17 of the SUN on Thursday August 2, top right hand corner? It throws light on what IDS said about the Judges at Appeals making the "Wrong" decisions.

    Article reads. Clamp on the cheats. Bogus benefit claimants are to be stopped from abusing lengthy appeals so they can carry on drawing money while avoiding getting a job. Instead of a costly tribunal, anyone unhappy at losing handouts will have to argue with Whitehall direct.Ministers hope the crackdown will stop people running rings round the system to put off getting job. Claimants loose almost seven out of ten appeals at tribunals. But a quarter of cases take more than 33 weeks to complete - with millions in benefits paid out along the way.

    There is no attribution to the article.

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  5. To be honest, how can we be surprised at this? There are no depths these tory scumbags will stoop in their aim of getting rid of benefits.

    What I would like to know is:

    Why aren't the unions out on strike over this?
    Where are the bloody labour party? Cat's got their collective tongue?

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  6. They're doing what the government want at the end of the day, it's a sad truth...

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  7. Evil people that need bringing to book !!

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