Complaints about the system to test whether people are entitled to incapacity benefits or are capable of work have been growing relentlessly in the six years since the French company Atos was awarded the £100 million a year contract to assess claimants for the Government.
Teething troubles could have been expected and even excused if they had resulted in lessons learned and adjustments made. Quite the opposite appears to be the case. So many claimants are now going to appeal tribunals that extra sittings are being held on Saturdays across the UK (including Hamilton and Dundee) to deal with the growing backlog of cases.
That number is multiplying as the success rate of appeals grows. Citizens Advice Scotland now wins 69% of appeals at tribunals. This partly reflects their growing expertise at recognising flawed decisions but if it is obvious to a third-sector advice agency that so many of Atos's cases have been mishandled, it must be possible for the company to review its procedures to ensure the correct outcome. The greatest difficulty centres on assessing whether people currently on incapacity benefit qualify for its replacement, Employment Support Allowance. It has become disturbingly clear that people are being judged fit to work even when suffering from cancer or Parkinson's disease.
Last year, The Herald revealed that two people from West Dunbartonshire who had lost incapacity benefit had died from their long-standing conditions while waiting for appeals to be heard. Now Tom Greatrex, the Labour MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, has established that 29 other people in this situation have died in the last three years. This fact alone must bring about a greater flexibility in the system.
The disabling effects of many chronic conditions, particularly mental illnesses and degenerative diseases, are not always apparent in a short interview and they are least likely to be recognised when the broader purpose underlying the assessment procedure is to reduce the number of benefit claimants.
Those who cheat their fellow taxpayers by attempting to milk the system must be identified and stopped but when the rules are applied so crudely that large numbers of cases go to appeal and a high proportion of those are upheld, the additional costs also rebound on the taxpayer. Meanwhile, genuine claimants are subjected to additional strain and financial hardship. If the number of appeals continues to rise at the present rate, the administration costs alone will reach £60 million over this financial year.
It is in everyone's interest to have an efficient welfare state but that can only be achieved by recognising that efficiency and welfare are not mutually exclusive but constituent parts of the whole. It is time Atos was subjected to a rigorous work capability test because on current performance it should no longer qualify for employment support.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article