DISABILITY campaigners have given a cautious welcome to plans by the new Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb to end government contracts with private firms as part of a radical overhaul of the welfare system.
John McArdle, co-founder of Scotland-based disability rights campaign Black Triangle, said he hoped the development would mean private companies such as Maximus no longer having a role in assessing the health and fitness of people applying for benefits.
“We hope this is not just an attempt to replace one company with another, but we hope it’s an indication the government is moving away completely from using private-sector providers in assessing people,” he said. “If so, this would vindicate our organisation’s position that businesses, whose prime aim is to make money, should have no role in assessing vulnerable people applying for benefits.”
He added that he would like to see the system restored to one relying entirely on GPs and doctors directly employed by the government.
McArdle spoke out after it was reported that Crabb, who last month replaced Iain Duncan Smith in the Cabinet post after the latter stood down in protest over planned disability cuts in the Budget, held a crisis meeting on Universal Credit, which sees six benefits merged into one.
Whitehall sources told a Sunday newspaper that one of the new Work and Pensions Secretary’s first moves would be “to get out of" problematic government contracts.
The National Audit Office (NAO) reported in January that since Maximus took on work capability assessments (WCA) in March last year the cost to the taxpayer had doubled to £579 million. It also said that one in 10 reports was rejected by the government as below standard, compared to one in 25 under Atos.
WCAs were launched for new claimants by the Labour government in 2008. The policy was aimed at cutting the benefits bill – the scheme was expected to save about £1 billion over five years but has since been mired in controversy.
Last year, a major academic research study estimated that the assessments were responsible for up to 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013.
The paper reported that Maximus was “under scrutiny” in particular over its Fit for Work contract in England and Wales.
Earlier this year an analysis by the independent think tank the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned the roll-out of Universal Credit would cut welfare spending by £2.7bn a year and hit working people on low incomes particularly hard.
Universal Credit will cover about eight million households by 2021 and is the biggest overhaul of the social security system since William Beveridge’s report in 1942.
Single parents who work and two-parent households where both work are most likely to lose out, the IFS found.
Crabb is to set out his approach to welfare in a speech on April 12.
A spokesman for Maximus yesterday declined to comment.
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