Work Capability Assessments

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving such a graphic example of the human issues that lie behind what might seem to be quite a dry subject in many respects.

I was pleased when the year 1 Harrington review recommended that Atos should undertake a pilot to test the hypothesis that audio recording would make a difference.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

This is a vital issue in my constituency. Every week my office deals with issues arising from the Atos work capability assessment. People who go in for the work capability tribunal test receive no points at all or very few points. The question they ask is: “How can they disregard my health?” Would not the introduction of audio recordings enable my constituents and the hon. Lady’s to have confidence in the system?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is exactly the point I am trying to convey. We want to improve the scheme and give people that confidence.

I was quite interested today to come across an online headline in the Daily Mail that said: “Record your builder to make sure he sticks to his word”. That was the recommendation from the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). She was suggesting that that would help to resolve disagreements in those situations.

The pilot went ahead in Atos’s Newcastle assessment centre between March and May 2011, and an evaluation report was submitted to the DWP on 4 June 2011. In a Westminster Hall debate on 1 February 2012, the previous Minister, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), set out the Government’s position. He said that owing to a lack of demand, audio recording would not be rolled out for all assessments. Specifically he said:

“We decided not to implement universal recording because, based on the trial experience, people did not want it.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2012; Vol. 539, c. 292WH.]

I am afraid that that assertion is not justified. The Atos pilot concluded that

“68% of customers agreed to the recording when contacted by telephone prior to the appointment.”

Owing to some claimants not turning up for their assessment, or eventually deciding that they did not want a recording, the figure for those whose assessments were recorded dropped to 46%. That figure is still substantial, however, and the demand for audio recordings is reflected in one of Atos’s key conclusions, which stated:

“Our recommendation would be that recording should be become routine as it is in a call centre or, for example, NHS Direct.”

Parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests have yielded another metric to defend the Government’s position—namely, that only 1% of the claimants in the pilot requested a copy of their recording. However, that cannot be regarded as an accurate reflection of demand, for two reasons. First, assessors in the pilot used hand-held devices and the recordings had to be transferred to computers and burnt to CDs after the assessments. That meant that claimants could not pick up their recording on the day but had to go to the added effort of making a request in writing. In effect, that required claimants to opt into the pilot and then opt in again to get their recording. We also do not know what the claimants thought the pilot was about. Often, when we phone helplines, we are told on a recorded message that the call will be recorded for staff training purposes. It is possible that the claimants in the pilot were not clear about its purpose.

Secondly, claimants were told that recordings would be of use to them only in the event of an appeal. Given that the report was completed just days after the pilot concluded, most of those involved would not yet have received a decision on their claim, let alone come to a view on whether they would appeal. Demand for copies might well have been higher had this metric been measured after a longer period. I therefore ask the Minister to accept that the number of claimants in the pilot who requested a copy of their recording is not an accurate reflection of demand, and that the number of people acquiescing to their assessment being recorded is a more appropriate metric to use.

Turning to what has happened in the two years since the pilot, I want to refer back to the statement given by the previous Minister in Westminster Hall on 1 February 2012. In addition to claiming that there had not been much demand for audio recordings, he said that

“we will offer everyone who wants it the opportunity to have their session recorded.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2012; Vol. 539, c. 291WH.]

In practice, however, it is hard for anyone to have an assessment recorded. The option to request recordings is not mentioned in the official DWP communications to claimants. I was reassured to see that the DWP website was updated last week, on 6 June, and that it now states that the Department and Atos are going to amend written communications. It states:

“We are working to introduce more widespread information for all claimants as soon as possible.”

However, it is now two years since the pilot, and the Department is still “working” to have this included in its communications. It does not seem to be too complicated a sentence to include in letters to claimants.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said in a debate on 4 September that even when requests are made, they are not always met because of a lack of equipment. A freedom of information response from 22 May this year indicated that Atos now has some 50 audio recording machines, but this is inadequate given that over 11,000 assessments are undertaken across the country every week. Another freedom of information request from 23 May suggests that this national roll-out may even be a temporary measure that will end later this year.

Will the Minister confirm when DWP communications will be able to inform claimants that they can have their assessment recorded? To how many audio recording devices does Atos now have access? Will he confirm whether the recordings currently taking place are part of a wider roll-out that is intended to be permanent or merely a further pilot?

The report from Professor Harrington in 2010 prompted the Newcastle pilot, and it is worth looking at what he has had to say on this issue since then. In his December 2012 report, which was his third and final one, he said:

“The pilot of audio recording of assessments has also been subject to much debate…The Review has seen little evidence from the DWP evaluation of the audio recording pilot of 2011 that the universal audio recording of assessments would improve their quality…further monitoring and evaluation work needs to be completed before a decision can be made.”

The Minister might like to interpret Harrington’s reference to “little evidence” as suggesting that audio recordings make no difference, but I would argue that what he was getting at was the inadequacy of the pilot commissioned and accepted by the DWP, which was why he called for more examination of the issue.

What the assessors did in this pilot was to take a small number of reports, review them in light of the recordings and conclude that they tallied with each other—that what the written report said and what the recording said were the same. Subsequently, to justify their policy, the main arguments from the Government have both highlighted and ignored the various metrics of demand mentioned in the report. Neither of those approaches answers the key question: do audio recordings improve the quality of assessments?

Instead, I would contend that the key performance indicator for the work capability assessment should be the proportion of decisions that are subsequently overturned on appeal. A more robust pilot would have involved taking larger samples of both recorded and unrecorded assessments and examining the proportion of successful appeals for both. If they were the same, it would have been fair to conclude the recordings make no difference; but if there were a smaller proportion of successful appeals from those that were recorded, it would be equally fair to conclude that they were worth while.

We need to be clear, too, whether the current roll-out is actually just another pilot still to be evaluated. If it is to be evaluated, it would be useful to know what is going to be evaluated. This has a relevance beyond the employment and support allowance because the DWP now says that it will make a decision about audio recording of personal independence payment assessments after the evaluation of the ESA experience. That is despite the fact that one of the companies tendering for that PIP assessment, Capita, originally offered to audio record all its assessments. Asking the right questions about what the evaluation is for is crucial.