Personal Blogs

I was struck by the juxtaposition of 2 stories I heard on the radio this morning: the problems that some benefit claimants are facing because of delays by the medical assessment company, Atos, and a debate in Parliament about the terrorist suspect Abu Qatada. I think it says something quite worrying about the state of our society.

Atos first. If you didn't know, Atos is a private company which is contracted by the Department of Work and Pensions to assess claimants for certain disability-related benefits, such as Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), to make sure that claimants genuinely have a level of disability that entitles them to whatever benefits they are claiming.

The rules for ESA require that an assessment be done within 13 weeks of claiming. Benefits are initially paid at a reduced rate, but the rate is increased after the assessment is done, assuming that it finds the claimed level of disability is genuine (whether the assessments are done fairly is a whole other story, but one I'm not going to get into here).

But there is a problem.

Although Atos are required to do the assessments within 13 weeks, they are not doing so. There is a huge backlog. This means that many claimants are still on the initial reduced rate even after 13 weeks. The reason for this is simple: Atos are crap. Oh sure, I dare say they have their excuses: it was the wrong kind of snow, it was the Royal Wedding, etc etc, but the simple fact is that they're crap.

So what happens when an important organisation providing a vital service to government doesn't fulfil its obligations because they're crap? Does it lose the contract? Are the directors fined? Are the people in government who chose Atos in the first place sent to jail for gross incompetence?

Er, none of the above. Nothing happens.

The second story is that of Abu Qatada. The British government would like to deport him to Jordan to face trial for terrorism charges, but the European Court of Human Rights have ruled that they can't, because he would not face a fair trial. The court found that the case that would be brought against him in Jordan was based in part on evidence obtained by torture.

Now, the British government clearly doesn't have a problem with torture as they would be quite happy to send Abu Qatada to Jordan despite their use of torture if they were allowed to do so, but torture has no place in a civilised society. Not only is torture itself reprehensible, but evidence obtained by torture is completely unreliable — when you're having your fingernails pull out you're probably going to tell your interrogator whatever it is you think he wants to hear, whether it's remotely true or not — so no civilised justice system should use it.

Thankfully, however, the we have the European Court of Human Rights to remind us that torture is bad.

This didn't seem to be good enough for some MPs. I felt a sense of utter dispair listening to the debate about Abu Qatada in Parliament yesterday. One MP, Jason McCartney, suggested that the British government simply ignore the court's ruling and pay the fine, and offered to chip in £50 out of his own pocket (presumably to be claimed back on expenses). Another, Peter Bone, similarly asked the Home Secretary to ignore the court's ruling and send Abu Qatada to Jordan anyway.

I find it a matter of great concern that MPs consider themselves to be above the law in this way, and that they are making perfectly serious suggestions (which, to her credit, Thereas May resisted) that we should simply ignore the law when we don't like it. That's not how laws work. They need to be obeyed by everyone, even MPs.

I think we have a serious problem in this country with the accountability of government to its citizens. Government should be accountable to the law in the same way that everyone else is. If Atos, acting on behalf of the government, is required to assess benefit claimants within 13 weeks and they don't, then there really need to be some serious consequences. Any benefit claimants who didn't comply with the rules of the benefits system would be likely to find themselves in prison: why don't the same rules apply to those running the system?

MPs also seem to think they are above the law, no doubt heartened by how few of them faced any meaningful sanctions after more than 300 of them had fraudulently claimed expenses. Most of those who did simply offered to pay back what they had claimed fraudulently, and that was the end of the matter. Do you think the same thing would happen to someone making a fraudulent claim for disability benefit?

In a democracy, government should not be above the law. We should all be worried when our lawmakers believe that they are.