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- Member
Fri Jul 27, 2012 5:26 pm
Dr Steve Bick, a GP with 20 years' experience, applied for a job as an assessor with Atos to carry out the work capability assessment (WCA), and secretly filmed his training for Channel 4's Dispatches programme, which will be broadcast on Monday 30 July at 8pm. Undercover filming shows Bick being told by his trainer that he will be watched carefully over the number of applicants he found eligible for the highest rate of disability payments.
The trainer tells trainee assessors: "If it's more than I think 12% or 13%, you will be fed back 'your rate is too high.'" When Bick questioned how the company could know in advance the precise proportion of people who needed to be put in this category, the trainer replied: "How do we know? I don't know who set the criteria but that's what we are being told."
Bick asked: "So if we put 20% in, we would get picked up on?". He was told by the trainer that, in that scenario, his cases would be reviewed.
The DWP said it was unable to respond in detail to the programme's findings because it had not been shown a full transcript, but a spokeswoman said it was "nonsense" to suggest there were targets or expected results of any sort. She said assessors' results were monitored to make sure they adhered to an average, adding: "If individual Atos healthcare professionals record results considerably outside the average, their work may be audited to ensure quality. If no issues are found with the quality of work, no action is taken."
The trainer tells trainee assessors: "If it's more than I think 12% or 13%, you will be fed back 'your rate is too high.'" When Bick questioned how the company could know in advance the precise proportion of people who needed to be put in this category, the trainer replied: "How do we know? I don't know who set the criteria but that's what we are being told."
Bick asked: "So if we put 20% in, we would get picked up on?". He was told by the trainer that, in that scenario, his cases would be reviewed.
The DWP said it was unable to respond in detail to the programme's findings because it had not been shown a full transcript, but a spokeswoman said it was "nonsense" to suggest there were targets or expected results of any sort. She said assessors' results were monitored to make sure they adhered to an average, adding: "If individual Atos healthcare professionals record results considerably outside the average, their work may be audited to ensure quality. If no issues are found with the quality of work, no action is taken."
