Disabled in Protest Against Benefit Cuts - London

Around a hundred people demonstrated in a national Day of Action outside the London HQ of Atos Origin, the company used by Job Centres to run assessments of 'ability to work' which unfairly denies benefits to the disabled. London, UK. 24/01/2011

The protest outside the offices in Triton Square, just off the Euston Road was a part of a National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, with actions around the country, including protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, near Edinburgh (Atos's Scotland HQ) and Glasgow.

Most of these protests targeted Atos, whose healthcare division runs the recently introduced 'work capability assessments' for the DWP's job centres, with some also taking place outside job centres and offices of another company profiting from the privatised provision of welfare services, A4e.

From February 2011 all those on Incapacity Benefit will be moved to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Under ESA claimants are usually called after around three months for an assessment by Atos Healthcare which supposedly tests their ability to work. Experience so far is that almost 70% of claimants are denied the ESA as a result of these interviews, and either have to claim the lower benefit rate of the Job Seekers Allowance, or in some cases are refused any benefits.

Atos employ healthcare professionals (HCP) - doctors, nurses or physiotherapists to carry out an assessment with the aid of a computer program, LiMA, to produce a report on the claimant. The program takes them through a series of questions and also provides set phrases to build the final report on suitability for work. Although the HCPs are given some training in using the system, many lack the qualifications and experience to assess many types of disability, particularly mental illness.

Many claimants feel that the use of LiMA leads to an impersonal approach that cannot take account of their particular circumstances. It also results in the HCP carrying out the assessment to jump to inappropriate conclusions and often tick the wrong boxes to get on to the next question, particularly as they are required to make complex assessments in a relatively short time.

An independent review by Professor Malcolm Harrington for the DWP, published in November 2010 made a number of fundamental criticisms, particularly that the Atos system fails to deal properly with mental health problems - which include more than a third of cases - and that it fails completely to recognise the effect of fluctuating conditions and the repeatability of tasks. A claimant may be able, for example to walk a specified distance, but the effort may tire them so much that they are unable to repeat this without prolonged rest - but the system only records their ability to walk the distance.

Professor Harrington also called for greater transparency, and in particular for all claimants to be given a plain English copy of the summary and be able to discuss and correct any inaccuracies with the job centre decision maker. The report states that in a Disability Benefits Consortium survey of around 600 who "had been through an Atos assessment, one half had seen their report but only 15% of those thought it was an accurate reflection of their answers at the interview." Often simple facts were incorrectly recorded. -

The problems raised by this official report are, as it states, reflected by the comments of many other bodies, including the Child Poverty Action Group and the Citizen's Advice Bureau as well as many claimants groups.

Further evidence of the poor quality of these assessments is the huge flood of appeals against the refusal to award ESA - around 16000 a month by the middle of last year and the success of over 40% of them. In some cases the tribunal has increased the points score of claimants dramatically - for example from 0 to 24 points (15 are needed to remain on ESA) But too often these appeals are then followed by another Atos assessment after six months which repeats the same incorrect result as before. One of the speakers at today's rally told of a friend of his who had been driven to suicide by a series of such assessment and appeals.

George Osborne in his Comprehensive Spending Review and continued statements by other members of the government continue to deliberately overstate the problems of benefit fraud - which according to the national Audit Office only amounts to 0.6% of the DWP budget. As a speaker at the rally outside Atos from the PCS branch at the nearby tax office reminded us, the cost of inflated benefit claims is a drop in the ocean compared to the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the amounts lost by them and major corporations exploiting tax loopholes. But the government is cutting the number of people investigating tax evasion and has yet to make any effort to prevent the huge losses through tax avoidance.

In spite of all the evidence and criticism and the clear unfairness of the Atos assessments (and the 135 Atos doctors in the Prospect union who carry them out have complained that the short time allowed will lead to many wrong decisions, particularly in complex cases) the DWP have recently announce a new contract with Atos worth £300 million to continue to continue them. Sums of this size can't be recouped by taking benefits from those who aren't in real need, but will hurt the sick who really need our help - people like Simon Powell in Hartlepool, a wheelchair user who needs 24 hour support but was declared 'fit for work' in an Atos assessment a couple of months ago, and lost his disability benefits. Over the next three years, around 1.6 million people will be tested, and hundreds of thousands will have their benefits slashed to satisfy the Atos shareholders.

Linda Burnip from Disabled People Against Cuts put it simply: "Benefit claimants are being forced into even great poverty to fuel the greed and excesses of corporations like ATOS making huge amounts of money by wrongly assessing disabled people as fit to work when they are not."

This morning around a dozen people from the Islington Poverty Action Group handed out leaflets outside the Archway Examination Centre in Elthorne Road, N19 from 11.30am, talking with those going into the adjoining Job Centre about the cuts and the problems of the assessments.

Among other groups taking part in the afternoon protest Disabled People Against Cuts, WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Against Poverty.

At 2pm, around 50 people met in the centre of Triton Square, a recent development of office buildings next to the Euston tower, with around 20 police and probably as many security men from this 'private' public space watching them. The police had set up a pen for the protesters well away from the Atos offices, but they decided not to carry out their protest there, and avoiding the attempts by the police to stop them, made their way to the Atos Offices.

Police formed a line to stop them entering the offices, and the protesters made no attempt to breach this, being intent on a peaceful protest. At one point an elderly man did walk through the police line, and was briefly dragged to the floor and then off to one side, but after a few minutes was allowed to rejoin the protest.

Many of those present, including most of those who were in wheelchairs took their turn in speaking to the crowd, which by this time had grown to around a hundred.

Police brought up a line of barriers to put in front of the Atos offices while the protest continued, but after a while they returned with more and began to fence the protest in. The group attempted to move back towards the square but police told them to stop and they did so. Police then told them they could only leave the pen when they wanted to end the protest and leave the area completely. Given the nature of the protest there seemed no particular reason for this, other than police pique (which I overheard one of the officers in charge expressing) that they had not originally followed the police instructions.

The protest was still continuing inside the pen when I left around 3pm.