Atos were in the I newspaper again yesterday following accusations by MPs that the company got the contract through deliberately misleading statements about providing access for disabled claimants in the tender document it submitted to the Department of Work and Pensions. Atos claimed that over 700 healthcare providers, including 56 NHS hospitals, had agreed to provide accommodation to claimants at the place of assessment. This would create a ‘hyper-local’ network, which would mean that no claimant would be more than an hour’s journey away from the assessment centre.
The Public Accounts Committee, however, were told that in fact Atos had contracted less than 100 hundred healthcare providers to provide claimants with the accommodation they needed. As a result, since the scheme was launched, 40 per cent of all claimants had been forced to travel for more than an hour to get to an assessment centre.
The company, naturally, claimed that they had done nothing wrong, and said that they had the written agreement of all the trusts referred to in the document that they could be named.
The last statement does not refute the point made by the Public Accounts Committee. They may have had the agreement of the trusts they mentioned that they could be named, but Atos has not said that the trusts had contracted to provide accommodation. So, more lies by a company now notorious for its mendacity and deliberate deceit in throwing claimants off benefits.
And they’ve won yet another government contract, this time to provide the childcare support vouchers. Yet another example of how nothing exceeds like failure, corruption and incompetence in modern Tory Britain.
Tags: Accommodation, Atos, Child Care Vouchers, Conservatives, Department of Work and Pensions, Healthcare Providers, Parliament, Public Accounts Committee
March 22, 2014 at 9:58 am |
Reblogged this on Vox Political.
March 22, 2014 at 10:33 am |
Though Atos has been particularly and rightly criticised for their record,this whole business of outsourcing etc has led to what I would call the crisis of “Agencyism”.I have following related matters for some years now and the system leaves itself wide open,not just to issues of democratic accountability,but also downright corrupt practices.
March 22, 2014 at 11:47 am |
Reblogged this on jaynelinney and commented:
Another blogger disgusted by the Governments decision to award ATOS with yet another contract
March 22, 2014 at 1:21 pm |
Reblogged this on Mentally Wealthy.
March 22, 2014 at 3:46 pm |
[…] Atos were in the I newspaper again yesterday following accusations by MPs that the company got the contract through deliberately misleading statements about providing access for disabled claimants … […]
March 22, 2014 at 4:20 pm |
An absolute disgrace, Atos shouldn’t ever be in the running for Government contracts as they have shown just how unreliable they are!
March 22, 2014 at 4:21 pm |
Reblogged this on Jay's Journal and commented:
More Atos
March 23, 2014 at 9:53 am |
The Tories looking ahead to the 2015 Election,talk in terms of a Labour victory in terms of “handing back the keys to those who crashed the car”.
Be ready for them and tell them that handing the Childcare Subsidy administration contract to Atos is a prime example of this,after their involvement in the 2012 Border Agency and their involvement in the Work Assessment fiasco at the DWP!
March 23, 2014 at 11:26 am |
Sound advice, wrjones.