At last, the big bucks to be made out of forcing disabled people through
humiliating tests to cut their benefit are out in the open, thanks to detective
work by a member of the Scottish parliament.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has consistently refused to
publish details of its contracts with French IT firm ATOS who are pushing two
million people through benefit cut tests, claiming commercial confidentiality.
Nevertheless, Kevin Stewart, member of the Edinburgh
parliament for Aberdeen , made a demand under
freedom of information to see papers relating to the ATOS contract for Scotland and northern England
A risk assessment document produced by ATOS arrived in his in box with
the figures removed as usual. But by transferring it into a different text
format – bingo, the truth popped out.
And so it transpires that if ATOS can push 15% more people than their
target through the humiliating and meaningless tests, their profits will soar
to £40m on a £207m contract. Even if they fall 15% below target they will still
make £28m.
The total value of ATOS UK-wide contracts is £400m. That suggests that
they will make a profit of between £55m and £82m on the whole contract.
The ATOS profit of £82m alone would pay disability living allowance for
more than 20,000 people a year. If you take the value of the whole contract, it
could pay for 22,000 people for five years.
The government must be looking for a huge number of people to be forced
off benefit, if the whole process is to be worthwhile. The DWP has always
refused to put a figure on it, but campaigners believe the government wants to
reduce by half the 3.2 million who currently receive the benefit.
So that’s the cost-benefit-risk analysis – which shows there is
absolutely no risk at all for greedy ATOS. But what about the actual real-life costs:
More than 40% of appeals against ATOS rulings succeed, and when you look
only at those who appealed with help from the Citizens Advice Bureau, that
rises to a staggering 70%.
The decisions being made are beyond belief:
Aaron Moon lost his leg when a soldier in Afghanistan
Colin Traynor was deemed fit for work. He had never been able to get a
job because of his frequent epileptic seizures. His appeal was upheld, but by
that time Colin had died from a massive seizure – his parents say his condition
was exacerbated by stress.
From Facebook posts we find a man who this week is in hospital having
treatment on his injured spine – and next week he will hear whether his appeal
has been successful.
Another woman posts that she had her eighth heart attack on the way from
the test centre to the taxi rank. During the test the doctor said the blood
pressure machine must be broken, because “you look fine”. The women got home
from hospital 10 days later to find she had been deemed fit for work and her
benefits stopped.
Last year, 1,100 people who failed the test never managed to get a job
because they died.
Remember it was a Labour government that replaced incapacity benefit and
income support for new claimants with Employment Support Allowance in 2008. And
Labour will continue the attack on welfare if it wins the next election.
Communities need to unite to defend people from these cruel tests. But
the truth is that even a universal boycott – people refusing to go, DWP staff
refusing to implement the decisions – will not prevent the government from
forging ahead, though action on this issue by benefits and health professionals
is long overdue.
We need to make a political change, to a democratic society where every
citizen is supported to make the best of their life, to contribute what they
can, and everyone receives enough of society’s shared resources to live well. Removing
the power of vulture corporations like ATOS to profit from misery would be a
crucial step towards this.
Penny Cole
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