New assessors for benefits announced - our reaction in The Independent

3 August 2012

Our chief executive Steve Ford is quoted in The Independent today, following news that private company Atos has been chosen to carry out assessments for the new Personal Independence Payment.

In Steve's letter to The Independent, he says that Atos winning the contract to assess another crucial benefit for people with Parkinson's is "hugely concerning".

Atos IT Services UK Ltd is the company who operates the controversial Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) 'fitness to work' tests.

Multi-million pound contract

Atos has been given a multi-million pound contract to assess claimants of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), including people with Parkinson's.

PIP will replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) from April 2013 for new claimants.

And between October 2013 and March 2016, existing working age claimants on DLA will be invited to apply for PIP instead.

On Monday this week, documentaries from Channel 4's Dispatches and BBC's Panorama revealed pressure on government-contracted assessors to keep down numbers of people declared as too ill to work.

Stressful appeals and retests

In his letter to The Independent, Steve Ford says:

"Assessments carried out by Atos have led to many people being forced to appeal against decisions that are plainly wrong.

"We want the companies operating the new tests to promise to do a much better job over new benefit assessments for Personal Independence Payment."

We strongly urge Atos and the other selected contractor, Capita Business Services Ltd, to commit to the Disability Benefits Consortium's pledge to ensure that the tests are operated fairly, openly and accountably.

This would save money on bureaucracy and avoidable costs.

Fitness for work tests under scrutiny

After all this publicity, it's really important that people with Parkinson's let us know their experiences.

There is an independent review of the Employment and Support Allowance Work Capability Assessment currently taking place.

Let us know what you think of the ESA fitness to work tests to feed into that review.

And behind the scenes we are doing our best to improve the actual tests the assessors use.

In 2011 we published a report with other charities on how to improve tests for those with fluctuating conditions, such as Parkinson's.

Read the report: Employment and Support Allowance Work Capability Assessment review - Making it work for fluctuating conditions (PDF, 610KB)

Now the Government has asked us to develop our ideas into something they can trial against the current assessment.

This trial will test how our changes would really benefit people with fluctuating conditions. This is great news but it's very early days, so watch this space.

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