Health: Atos

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware of all the concerns that have been raised concerning Atos Healthcare’s conduct of the work capability assessment, some of which have already been mentioned in the exchanges that have preceded my question. Given that, can he explain why it has been appointed to carry out the new assessments for the personal independence payment? Have any lessons been learnt that might enable these new assessments to be carried out in a way which better commands the confidence of the disability sector?

[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%.