In February this year the Committee concluded a major inquiry
into the PIP and ESA
Assessments carried out by DWP contractors Atos, Capita
and Maximus. Since publishing the two reports of that
inquiry, the Committee has been engaged in work on ongoing
concerns and issues around delivery of both benefits:
comments on update to ESA
underpayment claims
Committee concerns over
DWP contractors’ cash incentives to rush already “shoddy,
error-ridden” PIP and ESA reports
PIP assessments: Atos and
Capita on notice to “start delivering, or else”
ESA claimants 'failed by
DWP over period of years'
- and wrote back to the Department on June 12 asking it to
acknowledge and specifically address the concerns set out in
its PIP and ESA claimants’
stories report, published a week ahead of the final report
(PIP, ESA trust deficit
fails claimants and the public purse) in recognition of
the unprecedented response from thousands of individual
claimants, which the original Government
response had failed to do.
The Committee is today publishing the Government’s second
response, attached. While the tone is generally more positive,
the pace of change in regards to the recommendation Government
has accepted appears regrettably slow. The response indicates
that Government has not yet, for example, commissioned the
promised research on improving the claim forms that many
claimants reported difficulties with. There is no update on video
recording of assessments, which the Chair argued “would go so far
toward increasing transparency and restoring trust it beggars
belief that this is not already a routine element of the
process”. The Committee will be writing again to the
Minister demanding a progress update on these and other key
recommendations.
Commenting on the response, Rt Hon MP, Chair of the Committee,
said: “There is a welcome change of tone in this response which
seems to finally begin to acknowledge the deep distress and
difficulty PIP& ESA claimants have experienced. But that
counts for little when it still refuses to engage with the huge
problems in quality control - the reports riddled with errors and
omissions, the huge numbers of overturned decisions, the
outsourced contractors that rarely or never hit their targets -
and when the pace of the change it is making is painfully slow.
Claiming a benefit to which you are legitimately entitled should
never be a humiliating, distressing experience. Government must
move now, faster, to make this right.”/ENDS
