That this House has considered 10 years of the work capability assessment in relation to employment and support allowance and universal credit.
This feels like such an inadequate environment to describe the work capability assessment and its brutal consequences. I wish that every single person affected by the system could be here with us in the Chamber and look in the eyes of those who defend the system. I hope that when they have heard what I am about to describe, Conservative Members—there are not many of them—will feel shame, and that in this debate we can do justice to the experiences of those subject to the work capability assessment.
The work capability assessment for the employment and support allowance and universal credit should be a simple concept: people who have a physical or mental health problem or a disability that means that they cannot work or have a limited ability to work will receive a replacement income from the state. I will talk about the face-to-face application process and the assessment, which are draconian, elicit fear, deny justice and have, in some circumstances, ended up contributing to the end of life. As Frances Ryan wrote recently in The Guardian, suicide is becoming a feature of the system.
Everyone in the Chamber will know someone who is unable to work for whatever reason. Those with personal wealth are often able to avoid having to prove that they are worthy of income replacement. Because they have that personal wealth, they are safe from having to share every single detail of a condition or illness, and do not have to wonder if they will be believed. People without savings, on the other hand, are only one step away—one accident or one conversation with the doctor—from being subject to that system.
Let me set out some of the elements that we believe are wrong with the system; this is based on evidence gathered from my constituents when they come to surgeries, on submissions by professionals, and on the vast number of submissions I have received from people currently applying for this social security payment. In both the application form and the face-to-face assessment, the descriptors that enable a score to be given to assess a person’s ability to carry out tasks are essentially a functionality test. They cannot capture the fluctuating nature of physical and mental unwellness or disability and how that could prevent or limit the ability to work. People often describe feeling punished for telling the truth. Yes, perhaps they could go out unescorted on a journey somewhere, but the test is not interested in, for example, the panic attack before leaving the house, or the emotional recovery afterwards. Perhaps venturing to the supermarket will have been their only trip out that month, but making that journey could lose them their entitlement.
In reality, one day someone may be in the depths of despair, and the pain from their condition may be unbearable; the next day, they may be able to have a laugh over a cup of tea with a loved one. The question is, should they lie about that laughter or feel shame about it because they might get points deducted? Does that laughter render meaningless the pain felt the day before? Fundamentally, does that have any bearing on someone’s ability to work? I think not. The test ignores the complex reality of living with long-term or fluctuating conditions.
Many people have told us that they do not feel accurately represented by the reports written about them. Advisers have openly claimed that they see copy-and-paste jobs. A constituent read that they were apparently happy and confident during the assessment, when in fact they were crying and shaking. No wonder as many as 74% of ESA decisions are overturned at appeal, according to Citizens Advice. That, of course, is one of the consequences of using a private company to assess the medical conditions of people who need support. Not having people qualified in the condition or illness with which assessors are presented is also a huge issue.
It is claimed that Maximus incentivises health professionals through the number of reports they complete. Logic says that that could directly lead to a proliferation of inaccuracies. Ultimately, profit should not be made from ill health; it leads to corner cutting and misplaced priorities. To defend the marketisation of the process is obscene.
I am not sure whether the Government or Conservative Members realise just how truly terrified some people are of the brown envelope from the Department for Work and Pensions. They know that they will be forced through a long and extremely difficult process. They will have to attend an assessment, and the decision notice they receive about the outcome of their work capability assessments is often inaccurate and misleading, leading to a long and stressful appeal process of up to 18 months; that is 18 months without the entitlement that those people deserve and need.
The process exacerbates poor health, and the Government make things worse. When people, because of their physical or mental health condition, ask that their assessment be carried out at their home, the answer given is almost always no. My caseworkers and agencies have sent substantial evidence to private contractors to show that my constituents would have severe difficulty attending the assessment centre. The stock response is, “If the claimant can get to their GP or to the hospital, they can attend the assessment centre.” How cold-hearted is that?
Does my hon. Friend not agree that there is a difference between someone going to a location quite close to their home, which they are familiar with, and an assessment centre that may be many miles away and difficult to get to unless they have their own transport?
Laura Pidcock
That is right, and in a place like North West Durham, where we have an inadequate and expensive transport system, it is unjustifiable not to have assessments carried out at home if someone is feeling unwell and faces stress in having to go to that assessment.
If the person does manage to get to the assessment centre, the assessor uses that as evidence of their ability to travel, walk, sit comfortably and cope with social interactions. One person got in touch with me to say that they had to sit in the assessment centre waiting room in soaking wet clothes due to their incontinence issues. Is this a system anyone can really defend? Is anyone really comfortable with a private provider forcing people to attend assessments in pain and with worry, to be degraded by the DWP?
If a person is found fit for work when they are not, that can have a huge impact on their mental and financial wellbeing. It can have a direct impact on their entitlement to housing benefit and council tax benefit, plunging them into destitution, and resulting in increasing debt, risk of eviction and untold stress. People wrongly found fit for work are then expected to do job searches and training, and are even sanctioned. It came as no surprise to any of us Opposition Members that in 2016 the UN concluded that the Government had committed “grave and systematic violations” of the rights of people with disabilities. That report should have seen an end to the Government, but they limp on.
For people who do go on to win at appeal, reassessment is too frequent. No sooner have they won than they are being reassessed—even people with terminal illnesses have to endure that. Imagine the retriggering of mental health difficulties when people have to describe, in assessment after assessment, historical sexual abuse to which they were subject.
Let me mention some of the contributions from people who got in touch. One person said:
“The process feels like psychological rape, expressly designed to make you feel that you are the absolute property of the state, that you are not a human being and that your continued survival is basically an affront to society.”
Another said:
“When you are disabled, you are defined by the able-bodied by what you cannot do, rather than what you can do. No disabled person wants to be a burden on society. They want to be an active contributor but are denied this by society”,
and that
“The whole thing should be abolished as it’s a cruel and pointless exercise in ideology.”
I thank the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) for her moving and impressive speech. We will have an informal limit of seven minutes from now on. If right hon. and hon. colleagues could adhere to that, I would be grateful.
Thank you for calling me, Sir Henry. I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) on presenting the case so well, with the passion and belief that we all know she has for the subject.
To say that the difficulty with ESA and the transition to universal credit is evident in my constituency is a gross understatement. I have talked to the Minister about this on a number of occasions. His door has always been open and he has told me to bring any issues I have to him. I have done that, and found him responsive and helpful. I hope that at the end of the debate, when we have all made our contributions, the Minister will be able to address some of the issues that I and others have, and put our minds at ease.
The difficulties that people face are astronomical. My comments will not be a surprise to anyone here; I am known as a man with a very soft heart. When I look at a person who is clearly ill and vulnerable, who has tears in their eyes because they simply do not understand what is happening and feel that they are alone and helpless, it is hard not to be upset and angry for them at a system that puts so much stress and pressure on the most vulnerable in our society. I am all for getting people up and out to work, giving training and helping to build and boost confidence to start a job. I do not want to see one able person out of work in Strangford, but in seeking to weed out the few who could work but will not, we are mentally exhausting and physically injuring those who are not capable of working.
I want to give an example that exemplifies all my comments. My staff recently dealt with the case of a young man who was living in his car. It became clear to me that this young man was broken; there is no other way to describe it. I called my parliamentary aide into the meeting. She is a sympathetic person and she had her arm around him, telling him that he was important, that he mattered and that we would help him get a fresh start. This was definitely a man on the edge, whose only companion was his dog. I do not know how he got to that position or what mistakes he had made, but I do not need to know that; I just needed him to know that we would help him.
The hon. Gentleman mentions compassion, but is it not also correct that there must be professionalism? Linda Hending in my constituency set up a support group for people with myalgic encephalomyelitis. She found that, while 10 of those 11 people had either been found fit for work or had insufficient points for the Personal independent payment, all those decisions had been overturned on appeal. While it is inevitable that there will need to be some assessment, is it not critically important that those decisions are got right the first time, so that people do not have to go through the strain of an appeal, even if it is successful in the long term?
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have a number of girls in my office, and one in particular who does nothing but benefits. She works full time on ESAs, PIPs and DLAs as the turnover goes for income support and all those other things. She works full time on benefits, and the other staff fit in work with that as well. We win a number of appeals because of the advice that is given. To be fair to the Minister, I have suggested to him that we need staff who are professional and able to advise in the way they should.
Yes, there are those who take advantage—I know that that happens sometimes—but I want to talk about those who need the help. Ten years into this, I still do not think we have the balance right, and that is part of many people’s mental health struggles. In the short time that I have, I want to mention that we need compassion for those with cancer who are claiming universal credit. Alongside the physical and emotional impacts, cancer brings with it a real risk of financial hardship. Macmillan Cancer Support has found that four out of five people with cancer are, on average, £570 a month worse off because of their diagnosis. Last year, Macmillan’s support line advisers received 26,500 calls from people seeking advice on applying for universal credit.
The first problem is access: people who are hospitalised often do not have access to the internet, and navigating a long and complex online application form is a horrendous thing to go through at a time when their body will not let them attend to it. Those who are undergoing treatment or have a terminal diagnosis have also had to attend the jobcentre, which can be distressing, and in some cases go against medical advice.
The initial five-week waiting time for universal credit is causing problems for people with cancer, many of whom have had to give up their work completely due to their condition and treatment. That even applies to people with a terminal illness, meaning that people who may have less than six months to live now spend more than one month of those six waiting for their benefits. Under the old system, people with a terminal illness could expect to get paid as soon as their claim was processed. The Minister knows, because I have spoken to him about it, but I believe we need to address these delays. Some 67% of people are not receiving their full payment on time.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I reiterate the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) on an excellent speech, outlining some of the range of problems that we have with this work capability assessment process.
This feels like déjà vu: we are here, yet again, to argue that the current system of work capability assessment is not fit for purpose. We can use the latest available data that tells us that nearly three out of every four claimants who appeal their assessment decision telling them that they are fit for work will have the decision overturned. We can reference the five reviews of work capability assessment over the past 10 years, which have repeatedly raised problems with the assessment process, ranging from medical reports being mislaid to blatant lies in assessment reports. We can look at the Work and Pensions Committee’s report from last year on ESA and PIP assessments, which saw an unprecedented 3,500 individuals share their experience and what they had been through, as my hon. Friend described.
We can discuss the death rates for people on ESA and, before that, on incapacity benefit. In 2013 that death rate was 4.3 times that of the general population, increasing from 3.6 times in 2003. That shows the level of sickness and ill health of people in this group. As has already been said, this is a poorly group of people who deserve to be listened to and respected. We can talk about the peer-reviewed research that estimated that between 2010 and 2013, work capability assessment was independently associated with an additional 590 suicides, 280,000 cases of self-reported ill health and 725,000 additional anti- depressant scripts.
However, anyone watching this debate will be thinking, “What on earth is the point?”, because to date the Government have taken not a jot of notice. Little has changed. We know how this is affecting people, as we have already heard: people living in fear and dread of the envelope dropping on their doormat, inviting them for their work capability assessment.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I thank the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) for securing the debate. I pay tribute to my parliamentary casework team, and to Citizens Advice and Money Matters, local organisations that work with the casework team to ensure that people who are going through the ESA and PIP system or who have other issues get their social security. The assistance that they provide to my constituents is invaluable. Without those organisations, it is quite clear that more people would suffer.
I will confine my observations to a Work and Pensions Committee report. As a member of that Committee, I can say that, such was the level of interest in PIP and ESA assessments, 200 organisations submitted evidence and there were 3,500 individual submissions. That tells us more than anything else the level of interest, and the pain and suffering that people are going through as a result of these assessments.
Let us look at the Department’s own statistics. There have been 3.1 million ESA applications, with 1.7 million assessments completed, but with payments and awards issued to only 1 million people. That suggests low confidence and trust in the assessment system. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) quite rightly said that it is important that the Department and the assessment process are correct first time. However, that is not the experience of far too many people, which is why I am delighted to take part in this debate secured by the hon. Member for North West Durham.
The simple fact is that claimants can have multiple health conditions, which can mean that they have severe limitations. There was a recommendation to commission and publish independent research on the impact of the application and assessment processes of both ESA and PIP on claimants’ health. Will the Minister tell us whether the Department accepted that recommendation and will take it forward?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) on securing the debate and on the excellent way in which she introduced it, covering a range of issues. I felt compelled to speak because many of my experiences with constituents are similar to those we have heard. I have received the clear message—I hope the Minister receives it as well—that improvements to the assessments process are very much needed.
Some constituents who have attended assessments have raised concerns with me about the fact that assessors carry out the assessments very quickly and do not listen to their answers. We have touched on the refusal to conduct home assessments, sometimes despite medical evidence that they are necessary. On one occasion, a constituent suffering from agoraphobia was refused a home assessment. Surely the need for one in that situation was obvious.
I note from an overview of the work capability assessment mandatory reconsideration and appeals process that, from October 2013 to June 2018, 33% of assessments were closed by the claimant. That is 1.3 million people—not a trifling number. The Government line may be that all those people pulled out of the process because they were fit to work, but I doubt it is as simple as that. My worry is that there are people within that 1.3 million who would be entitled to ESA but did not go through with the process because they were too anxious or worried about the assessment or because they simply could not cope with the idea of having to discuss their intimate medical issues with a stranger. I would like to know from the Minister whether any research has been done into those 1.3 million people, the reasons why they withdrew and whether people in genuine need have been failed.
The study goes on to say that 15% of all applicants go on to register a mandatory reconsideration, which is 370,000 people within that five-year period. Some 85% of those reconsiderations stick with the original decision, and 21% of those people then go on to submit a formal appeal. There is sometimes a misconception that the mandatory consideration is the appeal stage, and that there are no further opportunities to challenge. However, those who carry on to launch an appeal have a success rate, according to these figures, of 63%, although we heard from my hon. Friend that, according to the CAB, it is more like 74% or 75%.
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It is about ideology, isn’t it? This system, with its complexities, its high thresholds and the way in which employment and support allowance and higher rates of universal credit have been denied to so many, cannot be seen outside the context of almost 10 years of austerity and budget cuts, which have literally taken money from people who are disabled, unwell or dying.
What are the worst consequences, the ultimate results, of this brutality? Jodey Whiting, who lived in Thornaby, not too far from my constituency, took her life 15 days after her benefits were stopped for missing a work capability assessment when seriously ill. The independent case examiner found multiple failings on the part of the DWP, including it simply not following its safeguarding procedures. Her mum, Joy Dove, is campaigning for an independent inquiry into benefit death and I am sure everyone on this side would say “All power to her” in that campaign.
Stephen Smith, aged 64, who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, osteoarthritis and an enlarged prostate that left him in chronic pain, failed a work capability assessment in 2017, which meant that his employment and support allowance payments were stopped. Anybody who saw Stephen’s emaciated body on social media will have been horrified. Stephen died last Monday. Jeff Hayward, who won his appeal seven months after his death, had a debilitating skin condition and spent his last 18 months fighting a “fit for work” decision. Michael O’Sullivan, aged 60, from north London had long-term mental health problems, and the coroner found that the benefit process was a key trigger for his death.
These are the real-life tragedies of a broken system. I do not think I can bear to hear the Minister say, yet again and as his predecessor did, that we should come to him with our individual problems with the system. They are not individual problems; they are systemic failings, and a consequence of privatising social security and making £37 billion in welfare cuts.
Let us be honest: this is institutionalised bullying and harassment of sick and disabled people. I have no doubt that administrative ineptitude is part of it, but when the issue is on this scale, there can be no other conclusion. By deliberately stripping people of their rights, in order to disrupt the welfare state and the very concept of legal entitlement, the Government have trodden all over the expectation of citizens that they will be looked after in their hour of need. And what for? To replace the state with private and family provision, to boost the coffers of private insurers, and to replace legal rights with charity, subject to moral judgments of deservingness.
It does not have to be like this. How can our social security system be about security and not about punishment? The Labour party has rightly committed to scrap the work capability assessment. That will be a big step forward and will no doubt be welcomed by disability rights groups and welfare rights agencies alike. In the meantime, why do the Government not start rectifying injustices in the system by taking the vast amount of evidence from medical professionals, including GPs, consultants and nurses, into account? Testimony should be fundamentally believed. The culture permeating the DWP is one of disbelief that looks cynically on those who request help. Stressful, face-to-face assessments should be used only if there is an absolute necessity, such as a lack of evidence on which to decide on entitlement. Assessments should be a last resort.
The system should be designed by people who are experts through experience. Experts who understand how conditions affect the ability to work should be employed. Any social security system that replaces the work capability assessment as it exists today should not be a functionality test with arbitrary rules that do not account for the fluctuating nature of a person’s condition, disability or illness. There needs to be a revision of the assessment criteria, so that they are linked much more closely to the real world of work, or the work that the person was doing. Knowing whether someone can move a carton of milk with one hand cannot allow us to understand a person’s comfort or ability to work in a specific environment. Any process should include an assessment of the additional support that person would need to ease them back into the workplace. Recording of assessments should be standard, unless a person asks not to be recorded. The Government are dragging their heels on that recommendation.
Private outsourcing of the assessments has to be scrapped. The market has failed all aspects of the social security system, placing company profit before the needs of the people interacting with the system. When will the Government understand that private enterprise and illness are incompatible, and inevitably lead to the injustices that we see today?
When people are dealing with the stresses of not being in full health and of needing support for their disability or mental health condition, they should fundamentally not be subject to further stress, degradation and even abuse by the state. The system should be designed on the presumption that people are telling the truth when they come to see the assessors. They should not be forced though a humiliating and exhausting process that often results in them winning appeals at tribunal, with the help of the excellent but underfunded advice agencies and many of our caseworkers. For many people, their last fight on this earth is not with their illness, but with the state, and that fact alone should lead us to scrap this dreadful system.
We spoke to the phenomenally helpful Elizabeth, who is the manageress at our local jobcentre, who worked her way through the issues with his benefits and helped him. He could not face people, so he was outside the system. We had to take him and do everything for him. We spoke to the housing executive who managed to sort out hostel accommodation for him in the short term and now he has his own flat; that all happened at the meeting we had.
We spoke to the local food bank, based at Thriving Life Church in Newtownards, who provided him with food and sanitary products. We spoke to all these people. He was so low and so down that he could not have spoken to them because he had not got the ability to socially interact with people. We spoke because he could not speak for himself. The staff in my office were able to help him and get him out of the dark hole that he was in.
When I think of this young man—a man who could not even look us in the eye that day, who I knew was on the precipice, at the point of no return, and was expected to work in that state, with no mercy shown—I am reminded of the role that we have in this House. As MPs, we are blessed and privileged to represent those people and to try to help them in the times when they need help.
There are too many people living in their cars who cannot get a break and do not know where to turn. Too many people have been pushed to the edge of darkness and feel alone, and that tells me that we need more Elizabeths and Lees in our jobcentres. We need more Owens and Irenes in our housing executives. We need more Natalies and Susannes in our food banks. Those people could not wave a magic wand to make it all okay, but they played their part to see this young man, over a few weeks, into a position where he could look me in the eye and thank me. What a turnaround that was!
Unfortunately, that was only one example. In that three-week period, there were a number of people who were under the radar, who had slipped out of touch with the benefits office and were not in touch with the Executive or with others. We need to task all civil service staff with the fact that compassion is as much a qualification as an English GCSE.
This year, the Government will pilot the managed migration of people to universal credit. It is welcome that this process will be piloted before Parliament is asked to make a final decision; I welcome that and it is good that we have that process, but it will not solve the problems for people already receiving universal credit. We need to do this better, for everyone’s sake. I look to the Minister at this point: we need a sea-change of attitude, with compassion at its heart, working its way from this place to every level of public service. Young men such as Michael and others will simply not survive without it.
The Government have said they want to amalgamate the work capability assessment and PIP assessments by 2021. They say they want a more personalised approach and will involve disabled people in this process. I ask the Minister which disabled people’s organisations have been involved in the decisions. I appreciate that charities may have been involved, and it is important that they be involved, but what DPOs and disabled people have been involved? Were they involved in the decision to put the contracts for this new assessment process out to tender? That has already happened; we had one week, and then the contract for this new process went out to tender.
What are the Government going to do in the meantime, while this Government-orchestrated harm—it is a Government policy—continues? I am really concerned, and I hope the Minister can respond, because to date there has been little but warm words and platitudes.
As we have heard, on Monday we learned that Stephen Smith, the Liverpool man whose emaciated body was reminiscent of someone found in a concentration camp, not in 21st-century Britain, had died as a result of multiple organ failure after being found fit for work. We know he is not the first. My hon. Friend mentioned Jeff Hayward, who died in 2018 of a heart attack, seven months before a tribunal overturned a decision that he was fit for work.
Also in 2018, Jimmy Ballentine committed suicide after being found fit for work, as did Amy Nice, Kevin Dooley and Brian Bailey. Jodey Whiting, my hon. Friend’s constituent, Elaine Morrall, Daniella Obeng and Brian Sycamore all committed suicide in 2017 as a result of being found fit for work. In July 2017, Mark Scholfield, a terminal cancer patient, received no universal credit before he died, in spite of his illness. Chris Gold, in 2017, was found fit for work following a stroke. He was facing foreclosure when he died as he could not work. Lawrence Bond died in 2017, collapsing and dying on the street after being found fit for work.
Julia Kelly committed suicide in 2015, as did Ben McDonald. Chris Smith, who had terminal cancer, was found fit for work right up until his death. David Clapson died in 2014, as did Michael Connolly. “George, from Chesterfield” died that year as the result of a heart attack, again after being found fit for work. Robert Barlow, another terminal claimant, died after losing his ESA. David Barr, Trevor Drakard, Shaun Pilkington and Terry McGarvey also died in 2014. Lee Robinson, Robert Christian, Jacqueline Harris, Nicholas Peter Barker and David Groves died in 2013.
That is not an exhaustive list, but those names are an indictment of this Government and their policy, and so is the lack of change that has happened as a result of those deaths. There needs to be an independent inquiry, as Jodey Whiting’s mother says, into the deaths of claimants found fit for work. Until then, there should be a moratorium on all reassessments; for new assessments, as has been said, medical evidence should be the primary data used, not the blatantly flawed assessment processes.
Sir Henry, I am sure you agree that any Government’s first duty is to protect their citizens, but our disabled citizens have been spectacularly failed by this Government. Like millions of people across the country, I condemn the attacks in Sri Lanka, and I share concerns about the emergency that is climate change, but the deaths of disabled people as a result of Government policy are nothing less than a scandal. I challenge each and every one of us, in this room and outside, to rise and say to the Government, “Enough is enough!”
Claims are often made by telephone, Sir Henry, and you and others will be aware that one campaign I launched since I got here was to abolish the telephone tax. I am delighted to say that the Government finally listened, and that the telephone tax was abolished. It is ludicrous to suggest that it should cost claimants phoning a telephone helpline 55p a minute, and I am delighted that that has now gone. However, as a result of health conditions, there are claimants who require communications in specific formats—I think particularly of those with hearing impairments—and we need to make sure that there are other methods for them to apply for ESA or PIP and the like. I hope that the Minister will update us on that.
The hon. Member for North West Durham was absolutely right on home visits. Maximus told the Select Committee that decisions on any request for home visits that they would carry out would be based on medical fact, not medical opinion. I hope that the Minister will say a bit about the guidelines on home visits that the Department gives to assessors. That brings us to the assessors and their knowledge; they can have partial knowledge or no knowledge at all of specific conditions. I still remember asking Maximus and Atos who a claimant with multiple sclerosis and a history of depression would see if they were to visit an assessment centre. The answer came back that they would see a general occupational therapist. If the assessment process is to have that conditionality, which I personally oppose, claimants must see people at the assessment centre with some knowledge or expertise on specific conditions.
We really need to improve understanding among healthcare and social care professionals and claimants about what constitutes good evidence, including measures, monitoring and reporting, and the supply of evidence. For far too many people, the assessment process has become a lottery. I agree with the recording of assessments, because we really need to end the mistrust around assessments. The fact is that appeals are upheld based on oral evidence given at the original assessment, not at the appeal. That is why recording is a must, and I hope the Minister will tell us that there has been progress on that.
A full copy of the report should be given, to increase transparency, and the quality of reports really must improve. We have contractors who have not once hit their targets for acceptable reports. If they cannot hit that target, we have to ask why they were given the contracts in the very first place. If a contractor failed to hit targets in any other part of the public sector, they would have that contract taken off them. I hope that the Minister can tell us what feedback and quality control measures the Department has put in place, because far too many people are suffering under this system. We have to ensure that it improves. I am delighted that the Scottish Government will do away with private contractors to undertake assessments. The Westminster parties should consider that too.