@Fred "ennis Skinner is excellent (hear the link) but he uses an unfortunate example, suggesting that a man with cancer died because he had to live on £70 a week. If Mr Skinner has a complaint on that score, he should complain to the NHS. But if the appeals procedure is very long, clearly it needs attending to; why, anyway, is the rule that an appellant loses some or all of his benefits pending the appeal ? That seems to create a possible injustice"
He said no such thing.
What he did say was it is iniquitous to stop peoples benefits immediately they appeal until the appeal is heard, which can be many many months away.
Atos, not being a government department, can ignore FoI requests for information on their diagnostic criteria, for instance. Were you aware of that? I wasn't.
Atos are sold to us as being a sympathetic and objective assessment based upon medical and clinical presentation as to someones ability to work. Their is more than a hint of a suspiciion that instead they are rather more interested in assessing people as fit for work than clinical presentation actually says, because that's what they are targeted to do - save the government money.