Article by Guest Contributor - Bernadette Meaden
Atos, the company that conducts Work Capability Assessments (WCA) for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), is sponsoring the Paralympics. The irony of this is almost beyond words. A company causing fear and distress to countless disabled people is attempting to improve its image by associating itself with the achievements of other disabled people.
The devastating impact Atos is having on the lives of many individuals cannot be overstated. Take my friend Yvonne, for instance.
Yvonne is a person who has always put more into life than she expected to get out of it. She has enhanced the lives of countless people, whilst enduring more than her fair share of pain and illness.
Born with a heart and lung condition, Yvonne had a double lung transplant twenty years ago. She is now experiencing all the problems of organ rejection. Her condition is deteriorating and she knows she probably won’t live for more than two or three years. The anti-rejection medication has caused various problems, including breast cancer, for which she had surgery and radiotherapy. Her condition is such that on her frequent visits to the transplant clinic at Harefield in Middlesex she gets hospital transport from North Wales.
Yvonne was recently summoned to a Work Capability Assessment. She approached it, as she approaches everything, with a positive attitude and faith in the person who would be carrying out the assessment. What actually happened shocked her. She found the whole experience humiliating and distressing. The physical tests exacerbated the pain of a collapsed lung which she had sustained a short time before.
Yvonne has just been informed that she has been placed in the Work Related Activity Group, which means that she is required to attend interviews at Jobcentre Plus, to prepare her for a return to work. This is patently ridiculous, but she doesn’t know if she has the energy to appeal. She is now worried about paying her rent, and it seems the final years of her life may be blighted with anxiety and hardship. All she wants is the minimum support to enable her to live her last few years without fear of penury. It seems that UK plc, or Team GB, or whatever we’re calling ourselves this week, can’t afford that.
Thanks to a report by the National Audit Office, we now know that Atos is not only damaging to the wellbeing of disabled people: it is also poor value for the taxpayer.
According to Tom Greatrex MP, “The taxpayer is effectively paying for this service twice – once through the £112m a year Atos receives from the DWP, and then again through the £60m a year spent on appeals and clearing up the mess that results from Atos assessments.”
For months disabled people, their friends and families have been desperately trying to get this issue the attention it deserves, with very little help from politicians. Recently though, two TV documentaries exposed the cruel nature of the system. Panorama highlighted several individual cases, including a man with a serious heart condition declared fit for work only to die shortly afterwards.
Channel 4’s Dispatches went undercover in Atos and found that, although the official line is that there are no targets, assessors are under pressure not to put more than 12% of claimants into the ‘support’ group. This means that the vast majority of people assessed will either be declared fit for work immediately, putting them on Jobseekers Allowance, or like Yvonne, placed in the Work Related Activity Group. No matter what anybody says, this is all about the government’s austerity programme, taking money from those who can least afford to lose it.
Disabled people are organising a week of protests against Atos to coincide with the Paralympics, and lets hope they have the desired effect.
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that whilst Atos is implementing this inhumane system, it is doing so at the behest of the DWP. Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling could, if they chose, call a halt to this debacle and create a system with some humanity and compassion.
There is to be a debate on the WCA and Atos in Westminster Hall on 4th September, so one can only hope that enough politicians have enough interest, and enough compassion, to speak out loud and clear, and demand urgent change.
© Bernadette Meaden has written about religious, political and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is a regular contributor to Ekklesia.
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good article and so true. Evil evil Atos
Yet another sad, sad story. If any of these ATOS Healthcare Professionals had a shred of compassion and decency, they should walk away from this evil organisation instead of falsifying medical reports and taking their ‘thirty pieces of silver’ from the likes of IDS and Grayling. We clearly saw more examples of this on the ‘Dispatches’ documentary a few weeks ago. ATOS is clearly dancing to the DWP’s tune. This farce has gone on too long and it needs stopping now.
and there we have it in a nutshell do our mps care about the missery they cause by allowing this atos to do whot it does best by degrading us and slowly killing us nah they still scoff putting their supserdised food and drink down their throats laughing and joking ,whilst we starve and miss paying rent ex ie and a lot no bnefits this our modern glorious goverment who allow it christians where not a thought about us blair started it torys finish it jeff3
http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/rwhm7/tonight–dont-hate-us-tonight
atos trying to look good…those greedy self serving scum are only out to serve themselves…i’m sure nore of my fellow like minded folk are not going to think that sponsership of such a major event will change the fact that sewer rats have more class than the scum invovled in that’that is scheme in which people have died and they can express any kind of regret…then again why should they were only a means to an end…COWARDS ALL MAY THEY ROT IN HELL…regards…sandra
My heart goes out to Yvonne and thanks to Bernadette for sharing this with us. I am stuck for words exept ones I rarely use. And to think Camerons son , god rest him was Disabled. This has got to be deliberate otherwise who could be so inhumane.
To even go near the paralimpics is beyond me. Even Cameron being their is an insult. Yvonne whilst its not for 2 years. rest assure these idiots will never see the commons again. With that a BIG warning to ED MILLIBAND , if you support this barbaric practice then you will never be PM .
At this moment I wish IDS was within reach along with Grayling and Cameron.
God bless you both , im so sorry.