Health: Atos

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one matter that concerns me a lot is the way in which Atos has been attacked. It is something that has also concerned Professor Harrington, who writes in his latest report:

“The WCA continues to be portrayed in an extremely negative light, often fuelled by adverse media coverage, representative groups and political points scoring. … Some recognition of the considerable work to date would give a more balanced picture”.

Atos’s quality target, which is to be below 5% on the quality side, has been achieved in 10 of the past 12 months and is now running at around 4%. Indeed, we are looking at whether we should now move the target figure for quality down from 5% to 4%.

[Baroness Uddin]

My Lords, given what the Minister says about the 200,000 assessments being undertaken, and to a high professional standard, how does he explain some of the figures that are coming from the disabled community about the lack of standard? What do the Government have in place to monitor the quality standard to which he aspires? Will he explain that to the House, and will he also explain why disabled people and their carers would complain about a perfectly professional, high-quality system?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the number of complaints against Atos is running at 0.57%, which compares, for example, with a figure of 3.5% for complaints about doctors to the General Medical Council. That is the level of complaint.