MINISTERS are fighting the benefit-test company Atos over more than £1m paid to the firm for work which was never completed, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
The Scottish Government agency Disclosure Scotland is wrangling with Atos after handing over the money as “the first milestone payment” of an unfulfilled contract.
The figure is revealed in the new accounts of Disclosure Scotland, the agency which carries out criminal background checks on people working with children and vulnerable adults.
Disclosure Scotland hired Atos in May last year to handle its Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) programme, after years of problems with the original system supplier, BT.
The contract was supposed to run for 30 months, with options to extend it another two years.
At the time, Atos boasted it would host the PVG system “in a highly secure environment which meets the highest levels of government security accreditation”.
It was supposed to receive and scan completed application forms from employers needing background checks on potential recruits, then print and mail certificates to them.
Gavin Thomson, Atos Senior Vice President in Scotland, said the French IT giant, which employs 1500 people in Scotland, would “deliver a successful transition programme”.
The switch over was meant to take place in December, but didn’t happen as planned.
Forced to protect its “business critical operations”, Disclosure Scotland stuck with BT short-term, then awarded the company a longer “care and maintenance” deal in April.
In its 2014-15 accounts, Disclosure Scotland admits it “made a payment to a supplier [Atos] during the course of 2014-15 of £1.1million, representing the first milestone payment of a contract that subsequently did not complete.”
The agency added it was “in discussions” with Atos “around the non-completion of the contract... and is unable to quantify any amount claimable or payable at this time.”
The dispute was mentioned by spending watching Audit Scotland in July in a report on troubled government IT projects, but the sum involved has only now been made public.
Atos became notorious through its subsidiary Atos Healthcare, which had £500m worth of contracts with the Department of Work and Pensions to carry out work capability assessments tests on sick and disabled benefit claimants and assess mobility benefits.
Critics said the fit-for-work tests were flawed, degrading and inefficient, with one in six of those passed winning an appeal against the decision.
Amid growing public pressure, Atos Healthcare quit the contract a year early in 2014.
A Disclosure Scotland spokesman said: “Discussions continue to be ongoing and there is no further update at this juncture.”
Atos said: “This is a commercial matter and subject to confidentiality, so we cannot comment at this time.’’
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