You must be joking surely ? "On the cheap",ATOS has cost the government so far,4 times what is lost to fraudulent claims each year.

Jiggly Bitz. wrote:
Some people are idiots and they'll never get over it.

You forget the deterrent effect. How much had been saved by deterring fraudulent claims.

I saw a statistic, which I've yet to verify, that 40% of those called in for assessment declined - and got jobs instead. Anyone know about this?

Verlander wrote: Many people who were previously in receipt of Incapacity Benefit declined to take the assessment (because it's designed to get as many people off Incap as possible) and simply went onto other benefits instead.

A trivial percentage of these people may have got jobs, but it would be extremely inaccurate to state that 40% of the people on Incapacity Benefit suddenly all found jobs because the government gave a private contract to Atos.

What should be of concern is that a tribunal service set up to deal with claims related to this policy ruled against Atos in nearly 50 percent of appeals:

mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/esa-...vour-are-increasing/

This was all planned a long time ago. I know for a fact because I read all of the documents, plans and reports related to it when it was first announced, which was nearly a decade ago. All of the workfare reports are now at least six years old as well, and the plans were made before that.

There is no doubt Atos has been a bit of a disaster. However the vast increase in the number of disability benefits claimants, over the past two or three decades, should beggar anyone's belief!

A couple of stats:

DLA claimants. 1992: 1.1million. Now: 3.3 million.

New claimants who have never had a face to face medical assessment: 94%

Verlander wrote:
No its a consequence of an aging baby boomer population.

Verlander wrote: There are quite a lot of people in receipt of Incapacity Benefit and I'm sure there are a fair few malingerers. However, this is just a politicised policy that has nothing to do with delivering value to the public or some sort of morale work ethic-driven crusade. It's not even a Tory policy; all the groundwork was put in place a long time ago when NuLabour were in government.

Many people that are in receipt of Incap genuinely cannot work and need benefits to survive. The test is not designed to take nuanced and complex conditions into consideration, it is merely designed to get as many people off Incap as possible. This has been absolutely profoundly and beyond all doubt proven by both statistical and anecdotal evidence. We're not talking about trivial numbers here, this is tens of thousands, maybe as many as a hundred thousand, people per year who Atos were quite happy to describe as ‘fit for work’, but which appeals found otherwise. They would have just been plunged into the general jobs market and potentially told to apply for jobs in factories by the Jobcentre, despite that fact that God only knows what conditions they had which prevented them from working at all.

When someone who was mentally ill has literally starved to death as a result of this policy then it really has reached a new low. But something such as this was bound to happen sooner or later given the stupidity of the assessment and the vast numbers of people being passed as ‘fit for work’ who clearly were not.

And, of course, all that happens is that the overwhelming majority of these people end up on a different type of benefit. It doesn’t save any money. What employer is seriously going to take someone on when it’s obvious that when they appear before them that they’re not fit to work? It’s hard enough to get a job for healthy folk with good CVs.

I personally know a couple of people who have been claiming incapacity-type benefits for 20+years. Both of them have cash -in-hand jobs which involve a good deal of physical activity.

This is, from what I can gather , not particularly unusual.

I am in favour of spending a lot MORE on the genuinely deserving and a lot less, ie nothing at all, on those scamming the system.

Verlander wrote:
but it wouldn't make any difference financially to you or any other taxpayer if they eliminated every single malingerer on disability benefit, they could (in theory) save a billion or so, but they wouldn't then reduce taxes or redistribute the savings to the lucky taxpayers. Ordinary taxpayers are being screwed and will continue to be screwed, wouldn't matter much if the DLA bill was halved or doubled.

Leaving that to one side, even if they do stop disability benefits to everyone who they think is a malingerer, what do they do with them then? There are simply not enough jobs to go around and even many with jobs claim benefits in the form of tax credits, housing benefit etc, as the wages are shit. So best case scenario, they spend millions to transfer a bunch of people from one benefit to another benefit, from DLA to jobseekers or tax credits, income support, housing benefit etc etc plus in the process they cause immense suffering to many who already have enough suffering on their plate.

Personally I think its all part of the plan to drastically reduce/eliminate social welfare, this is a step towards weaning people off the idea that they should expect to be looked after when sick or disabled. Within a decade or two people might look back with nostalgia at the good times, when people got free healthcare or benefits when sick

It doesn't matter if there's no services at all, they'd still tax us for it.

I'd rather see atos dropped altogether if it cost less overall but like I said, it's ideological and aimed at stupid Tory voting daily mail reading fuckwits.

Atos has dropped itself! It remains to be seen what will replace it.
The UK has built a reputation for being a soft touch on all sorts of benefits. That has got to be rectified.

I would rather the benefits budget were spent on those in genuine need rather than spread out over the genuine and the scammers.

When the number of "disabled" trebles over 20 years, something is not right.

If it's cheaper to replace it with nothing at all then that would be preferable.

Some have questioned whether any other firm would be prepared to take on the work - what with assaults on and death threats to staff!

Verlander wrote:
The govt ought to do it itself and ought to employ a small handful of investigators looking at most likely cases first.

I mean...if someone ends up on disability as a result of a fucking heart condition it would seem self evident that it's not worth looking into

Unfortunately outsourcing is the name of the game these days. It allows governments to proudly proclaim how much they have reduced directly employed staff. This has been going on since the Thatcher years.

Scrap the whole benefits system and lets have a war between poor and wealthy.

It's about time.

Who's got more to lose?

The wealthy will always win!

They can afford the water cannon.

Your what makes the UK what it is,to cowardly to confront the real thieves but willing to complain about other serfs like yourself.

Your a traitor and want to bring the country down brother serf.