In an exclusive report, The Londoner has been told that government contractor Atos was fined £30 million for errors in its delivery of the work capability assessments.{jcomments on}
It was announced at the time that Atos had made a “substantial financial settlement” to the DWP, for “significant quality failures” in its reports on people’s ability to work.
Until now details of the fine have been kept hush-hush to avoid embarrassing the company, which is leaving the contract in February 2015.
When asked, the DWP would only respond:
“They are paying us a financial settlement but we can’t disclose the amount for commercial reasons”.
When Atos was asked the same question: “It’s all legally bound up, I can’t comment,” was the reply from its company spokesperson.
But is the £30 million correct? “Will you tell me who gave you the figure?” was Atos’s only reply.
What Benefits and Work would like to know is: what exactly were the problems with Atos' work? The DWP never appeared to care about the poor quality of reports before.
So, was it that Atos were putting too many people in the support group without medicals?
Were decision makers disagreeing with large numbers of Atos findings?
Or was it costing the Department too much when claimants appealed because the reports were inaccurate?
Given that claimants’ well-being is very much tied up with these assessments we have a right to know exactly what it was that was going wrong.
Read the full article in the London Evening Standard
Our thanks to JL for spotting this for us
