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The government has awarded five-year disability assessment contracts worth more than £560 million to the outsourcing giant Capita, on the same day that a safeguarding review linked the company to the death of a young disabled mum. Last week, the safeguarding […]
A young disabled mother who took her own life had been left with stress and “debilitating anxiety” by the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its contractor Capita, an inquiry has found. A safeguarding adults review into […]
MPs are calling for an urgent government investigation into the use of “covert surveillance” of disabled people by the private sector companies paid to assess eligibility for disability benefits. It comes in a report by the Commons work and pensions committee, […]
Contractors likely to be bidding for new five-year contracts to test eligibility for disability benefits are still producing a “shockingly high” number of sub-standard assessment reports, nine years after they first won contracts to carry them out. An audit of assessment […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has still not decided which companies will be paid a share of £2.8 billion to carry out health and disability benefit assessments, nearly two years after it first published information about the contracts. The […]
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been forced to abandon an investigation into claims that its contractors were carrying out covert attempts to trick benefit claimants, after the Tory MP who sparked the probe failed to co-operate. Dr Ben […]
Disabled people have backed up an MP’s claims that government contractors are deliberately putting lifts out of order and attempting other “covert” attempts to trick claimants waiting to be assessed for their disability benefits. Last week, Conservative MP Dr Ben Spencer […]
Private sector contractors are deliberately putting lifts out of order and removing cups from beside water coolers as part of “covert” attempts to trick disabled people waiting to be assessed for their benefits, MPs have been told. Conservative MP Dr Ben […]
The minister for disabled people has told MPs it is too expensive and too much effort to produce statistics about key parts of an assessment system linked to hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths over the last decade. Chloe Smith told […]
The boss of a private sector contractor has told MPs that he gives his company a mark of seven or eight out of ten for its performance in carrying out disability benefit assessments, despite it being closely linked to the death […]