DWP forced to release report that includes ‘outrageous’ revelation about sub-standard assessment reports

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that the auditors they have used to check on the quality of benefit assessment reports were seconded from the same private sector companies that carried out those assessments.

DWP has previously insisted that it sets outsourcing companies such as Capita and Maximus “challenging targets” and that it monitors their performance “closely” to ensure they provide claimants with “the highest quality service” when they carry out their assessments.

It does this through what DWP calls its “independent audit team”, which it has stated in assessment contracts is “external to the Provider and the Affiliates of the Provider”.

Now a report obtained by Disability News Service (DNS) through a freedom of information request has revealed that the healthcare professionals DWP uses to audit random samples of reports are on secondment from the same assessment providers they are auditing.

The revelation casts huge doubt on years of audits that have shown reductions in sub-standard reports, and once again raises questions about the relationship between DWP and the insurance and outsourcing industries.

DWP only provided the report – which was completed in March 2021 – after it was ordered to do so by the Information Commission.

The report examined the quality of personal independence payment (PIP) assessments carried out by phone and was completed by the Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA).

It was commissioned by DWP after a secret internal process review into the death of (or possibly the serious harm caused to) a PIP claimant found their assessment had not been of the “required standard”, and that all the available evidence was “not considered when [the] decision was made”.

Despite those concerns, the GIAA report – completed under the last Conservative government – concluded that “effective and comprehensive processes are in place to confirm and assure the quality of reports completed following PIP telephony assessments” and that the “framework of governance, risk management and control” was “adequate and effective”.

The report made only one recommendation, but it admitted that DWP and its assessment providers – at the time, Capita and Atos – were “working collaboratively to improve the quality of PIP assessment reports”.

But the report also revealed: “The IA team assesses the quality of PIP assessment reports using health professionals seconded from APs [assessment providers] for up to two years, to quality check a random sample of assessment reports…

“Quality results are fed back to providers who are given an opportunity to challenge the results.”

Concerns over the quality of assessment reports carried out by firms such as Capita and Maximus, and previously by Atos, stretch back more than a decade.

Many deaths of disabled claimants have been closely linked with inadequate and error-ridden assessment reports, but it has previously been assumed that DWP was at least using an independent audit system to try to push its private sector providers to improve the quality of those reports.

The report obtained by DNS shows that not to be the case.

Campaigner John Slater, who previously spent years using freedom of information laws to hold DWP to account for its failings, including around assessment audits, said the use of seconded staff from assessment providers to audit reports from those same providers was “outrageous”.

He remembers being told by DWP in 2019 that the “independent audit” was carried out by the department itself, which also deeply concerned him because “there’s nothing independent about the DWP auditing its own work”.

DWP is currently testing changes to its system of audits, with a DWP source telling DNS last month that the changes could see the department missing safeguarding and other serious errors, with potentially fatal consequences, and that they would benefit contractors Serco, Capita, Ingeus and Maximus.

DNS asked DWP if it would continue to use healthcare professionals from the assessment providers under the new audit regime it was testing; whether it believed it could call its existing audit regime independent if its auditors were seconded from its assessment providers; and whether it stood by the results of the years of “independent audits”.

DNS first approached DWP for answers to these questions last Friday, but it repeatedly delayed responding, until it finally produce the following statement shortly before noon today (Thursday): “We take quality very seriously and all assessments are carried out by health professionals in accordance with set standards and governance requirements.”