Few groups have campaigned harder — or been harder treated — than those with disabilities. Activists who fight the government’s oppressive, vindictive testing regime are tough and persistent. They have to be: the testing schemes for disabled people’s benefits are cruel and unfair.

There are two main tests: the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), carried out by US company Maximus, decides whether people are entitled to Employment & Support Allowance, because they have limited capacity for work.

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is paid to people with disabilities to help them with extra costs of living whether they are in work or not. PIP entitlement tests are run by two corporations, ATOS and Capita.

Repeatedly these corporations have been found running unpleasant tests and delivering unfair judgements that are frequently overturned on appeal.

Grassroots campaigns like Disabled People Against Cuts and disability charities have all fought hard for a fairer system. They are having an effect. Amber Rudd recently announced pensioners won’t have to take repeat PIP tests. It’s a small concession, but does take 270,000 people out of the nasty regime.

Rudd also announced PIP and WCA tests will be merged into “one unified, integrated service” from 2021: that will create a massive contract. The fact that corporations are given this power over the disabled is one reason they are so embedded in UK politics.
Labour’s Harriet Harman first privatised benefits testing in 1998, in one of the first acts of the “New Labour” government.

Labour oversaw Atos taking over the service in 2003. This has since grown into a monster. According to the latest figures in 2017/8 the DWP spent £243.3m on PIP testing, giving £176.5m to Atos and £66.8m to Capita.

That’s up from £185.5 million in 2014/5. In turn Atos have used this money and bought political friends. Atos “communications” vice-president Kulveer Ranger is an active Tory who worked for Boris Johnson and was himself on the recent shortlist to be the Tory candidate for London Mayor.

I’ve seen Ranger promoting Atos at many Conservative conferences. Atos also hired former Labour spin doctor Philip Chalmers as a vice-president. He lost his Labour job after being arrested twice in Glasgow’s red-light district. In the 2000s, when Atos first took over benefit testing, their UK chairman was former Labour Cabinet Minister Lord Barnett.

Atos also hire a handful of lobbying companies, including WPI Strategy, which is run by former Cameron adviser Sean Worth. WPI also has former Blair adviser John McTernan as an “associate.”

It will be hard to dislodge corporations like Atos from off the back of the disabled, because they offer “simple” solutions to ministers and careers to political hangers-on.