Every so often, when another strange case crops up of someone being declared fit as a fiddle for work who then dies a few days later, or who cannot walk, talk or feed themselves, questions are asked about how on earth the government could have got its fitness-to-work tests quite so wrong. These Work Capability Assessments run by ATOS Healthcare on behalf of the Work and Pensions department, are a cross-party mess: set up by Labour and continued by the Coalition. I’ve written before about the problems with their design and the contract between the DWP and ATOS, but another element that makes the test even messier has come to my attention this week.
The table below, leaked to Coffee House by a whistleblower, is produced by ATOS Healthcare to keep tabs on the centres that carry out the assessments (the DWP makes the final fitness-to-work decision based on the scores from these tests).
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