Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Begg and Mike Penning

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

There is no doubt that the Atos contract was taken out by the last Labour Administration. I would love to know exactly what the backlog was, but, as an incoming Minister, I am not allowed to see the figures. Perhaps Her Majesty’s Opposition would be happy to release them. If those documents were published, we would all know exactly what the backlog was before the present Administration came to power.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

The backlog does not involve only ESA. There are also huge backlogs of decisions relating to personal independence payments and universal credit. Only 7,000 universal credit claimants have been dealt with, although at this stage the number should be about 1 million. In comparison with figures such as those, the passport fiasco pales into insignificance. Does the Minister not think that his Department has bitten off far more than it can chew?

[Mike Penning]

No, I do not. As the Chair of the Select Committee knows, there is no universal credit backlog, so her statement about that is not particularly helpful. I think that we need to concentrate on ensuring that benefits go to the people who deserve them. That is what is most important.

Incapacity Benefit Migration

Debate between Anne Begg and Mike Penning

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mike Penning]

I am not certain that that would work, not least because decisions that had been made would also have to be reversed. The decision must be based on the evidence that is before the decision makers. I agree with many of the things that the shadow Minister has said, but it is crucial that we remember that this is not about diagnosis. The diagnosis has been done by the clinical experts. In response to the shadow Minister’s concern about a drain on NHS doctors, a lot of the assessments are done not by doctors, but by trained clinicians.

Like other hon. Members, as a constituency MP I have had correspondence about the matter, so when I took on this portfolio a couple of months ago I desperately wanted to dig down and look at it. Dr Litchfield’s report came out almost simultaneously with my arrival in post. One of the first things I did was to go off to a tribunal and listen, as a member of the public can do, to two cases being put before the tribunal judges. As I left the building, I said to my officials—I have said this in the House before—“Clearly, we are not getting decisions right.” The first case that I listened to should not have been at the tribunal; we should have sorted it out before. In the second one, interestingly enough, the Department had not seen the evidence until the morning of the hearing. Extra evidence was produced, and the judge had used his autonomy to waive the four-week rule and allow it to be presented.

I have been urgently looking at how we get the right decisions by ATOS professionals being sent to our decision makers. The final decision is made by the Department, not by Atos; Atos makes a recommendation and we look at it. I looked carefully at the quality of the decisions that were coming from our contractor, which in this case was Atos. I have said on the record several times that I was not happy at all about the quality of the decisions. Before I arrived, the Department had been putting pressure on Atos to improve quality, so we were also starting to get an ever-increasing backlog. So many cases that could have been decided through paper assessments were instead being assessed face to face. Even then, people were appealing, and because we were getting the assessments wrong, we were losing the appeals.

We will always lose some appeals, as the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), knows. It is for judges to weigh up what the will of Parliament was in making regulations, and apply that to the case before them. I was keen to make sure that we got this right, because we are talking not only about taxpayers’ money, but about individuals. The shadow Minister described the welfare system as a safety net. For some people, it will be there from birth onwards, and for others it will come into play because of circumstances, events, traumas and illnesses over the course of their lives.

The shadow Minister was quite right to say that there will be things that I will be unable to answer, and other things that I will not be able to discuss because of confidentiality within contractual obligations. Regarding Atos’s decision to exit its contract early, I was pressurised by colleagues from both sides of the House to remove or sack Atos. One of the shadow Minister’s colleagues said that I should sack Atos. The problem with that was that because of the form of the contract, we would almost certainly have had to pay compensation to Atos, and I do not think that anybody inside or outside the House would have wanted us to do that. We have negotiated an early exit for Atos and have arranged for a team to work alongside its management as it continues to do the work while we exit it. I cannot simply turn off the tap, because we would have no capacity. The biggest issue with Atos has been with its management controls, rather than with its front-line decision making.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Under the original time scale, the migration from incapacity benefit to ESA was meant to have been completed by now—I believe the date was the end of March 2014—but a sizeable number of people have yet to be migrated from IB to ESA. The original contract must have worked to the original time scale, so Atos surely was not still contracted to carry out the migration, even though it was contracted to do the reassessment. Surely, an automatic break must have been built into the contract; otherwise, Atos would still have been employed even when there was no work to be done, because it was meant to have been finished by now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Begg and Mike Penning

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Last week, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions published a report that recommended that the backlog for the PIP assessment should be cleared before the Government continued with the migration from the disability living allowance to PIP. Will the Government accept that? Will the fact that Atos has now lost the contract for the WCA have an impact on PIP? What action has the Minister taken to speed up new claims for PIP?

[Mike Penning]

Atos leaving the WCA contract will have no impact on the PIP part of the contract. We are making sure that we speed it up as we go. Interestingly, as the Chair of the Select Committee knows, I have turned off the tap on reassessments so that we get the initial backlog done first. The backlog is taking too long, in my own Department as well as in the two providers, but we will get it right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Begg and Mike Penning

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

Since we came into power, we have been warning Atos of the need to improve its service. We are seeking agreements with it to ensure that that is done, some of which have not come to fruition. If we terminate the contract today, as the Opposition have suggested, the financial consequences would fall on the taxpayer and not on Atos, which would be absolutely wrong and something that I will not accept.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I am not sure whether the Secretary of State is glad that he is here rather than in my area where there is a clash of the Cabinets. At least, he has managed to avoid the travel chaos.

Atos has acted as a lightning rod for all that is wrong with the work capability assessment. However, it is delivering a Government contract to Government specifications. What guarantee has the Minister got that any new contract will recognise the problems and the flaws of the system and the sheer misery that Atos has caused in delivering its contracts to ensure that they are not repeated?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Begg and Mike Penning

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The Department’s officials and the contractors, Atos and Capita, are working closely every single day. We need to ensure that we get the decisions right. In such situations as the one brought to the House’s attention by my hon. Friend, we will work closely. If my hon. Friend contacts me later, we will look exactly at that point.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

When the Minister appeared in front of the Select Committee, he admitted that there had been very long delays in getting PIP assessment determinations. People had applied in the summer and still did not have a determination by December. We are a month further on and they still have not yet heard anything. I am now receiving e-mails from people across the whole country, as well as from my own constituents, who have been waiting for more than six months since they had their face-to-face assessment. They still have not heard whether they will get the benefit or not. What is the Minister doing to ensure that people find out whether they qualify?

[Mike Penning]

The evidence I gave to the Select Committee—the Committee’s questions were useful to me and I hope the evidence I gave was useful—is that the key to this is that we roll it out until we get the decisions right. The next part of the roll-out is taking place today in south Scotland. If we get it right, it will be a much better benefit for everybody. As we know, there are delays, but they are based on getting the quality and the decisions right. We are working very closely and very hard to make sure that decisions are correct when they are put out.