Last week DWP announced it is
developing in-house IT capacity for the medical
assessments for Personal Independence Payments (PIP)
currently carried out by private contractors Atos and Capita,
whose contracts have been renewed for an interim 2 year period
only.
The Committee’s February report on the
assessments found that “the definition of an
‘acceptable’ report leaves ample room for reports riddled with
errors and omissions”. Despite this low bar, all three
contractors had failed to meet their key targets in any single
period to that point, and both Capita and Atos still have not.
“Large sums of money have been paid to contractors despite
quality targets having been universally missed. The taxpayer has
spent hundreds of millions of pounds more checking and defending
DWP decisions based on the contractors' reports - not least in
externalised costs in the Tribunal appeal system”.
Following publication of an internal Atos letter describing a
bonus structure for completing “extra” assessments, the Committee
wrote to all three contractors - Atos, Capita and
Maximus who carry out the ESA assessments - and disability
Minister Sarah Newton, with concerns over the potential for
further reducing the quality of the assessments of a financial
incentive to “rush”. The full series of correspondence is being
published today.
Despite all three contractors, and the Department, repeating
assurances that measures are in place to uphold quality even with
the “volume” bonus, the Committee has already established that
these “quality” measures do not actually measure the quality of
content in the report - only how they are written literally.
Those existing quality “assurances” have also, of course, not
ensured that Capita or Atos have ever met their contractual
quality target, and Maximus has only done so for the first
time recently, as described in their response.
Commenting on the correspondence, Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of
the Committee, said: “All three contractors insist that offering
their assessors extra cash to complete more assessments each day
has in no way compromised the service that claimants receive. But
we have received thousands of accounts of shoddy, error-ridden
reports that have slipped through the net. A claimant whose PIP
report stated she walked her dog daily—despite not being able to
walk nor owning a dog—is a case in point. If the contractors
cannot consistently deliver quality reports under normal
circumstances, how can they hope to do so under this extra
pressure?
“The DWP last week put PIP contractors Atos and Capita on warning
to improve, or face losing their contacts. Hopefully this will
give them the push they need to start focusing on what really
matters: delivering accurate reports and rebuilding the trust in
assessments that is currently desperately lacking.”
