Cutting In the Middleman

Atos Healthcare, the private company which Iain Duncan Smith pays to deprive people of benefits, has subcontracted its assessments in Scotland to the National Health Service: a move so surreal as to cause a certain dim disquiet even among Members of Parliament. Lanarkshire NHS will be helping Atos to assess the workshy for a new and reduced disability benefit which the Government hopes to start denying people from next year. The agenda behind the move seems to be twofold: first, "it means that consultations will take place where people feel most comfortable", which will provide a much-needed façade of cosiness to the business of squeezing the disabled for profit; second, the consultations "will be conducted by health practitioners that have first-class expertise in dealing with the needs of disabled people", something Atos Healthcare and Iain Duncan Smith have apparently not considered necessary until now. The chair of the BMA's Scottish general practitioners' committee expressed the public-relations nature of the exercise with the hope that NHS involvement would mean "a reduction in the number of patients who feel that an unjust decision has been made", since obviously a reduction in the mere number of unjust decisions would undermine the Department of Work and Pensions' entire theological basis.