Work Capability Assessment

Lord McAvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord McAvoy]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many people were awaiting a Work Capability Assessment on the latest date for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

As of 30 September 2014, there were around 580,000 cases awaiting work capability assessments at Atos Healthcare, down from 616,000 at the end of August. These figures do not include cases where the claimant has yet to return the claimant questionnaire.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm the number of disabled people who are waiting for their first work capability assessment? The figures show that the suffering of hundreds of thousands of disabled people is being increased on a daily basis by a Government who are failing in their duty of care. The Minister is quite keen to say how he is clearing up this mess. Does he not also owe an apology to the people affected?

[Lord Freud]

The service that we provided is not where we want it to be—we have been clear about that. We are pulling down the backlog; it is down by 20% since February. We announced in March that Atos would be leaving the contract, and we were able to announce last week that Maximus Health and Human Services is taking it up from that date.