You think ATOS are bad, wait until Serco get a hold of you

As we all know the Welfare Reform Bill is now law. The 2012 budget showed that excluding the extra set up costs for the Universal Credit, there is £5.5bn of savings (read cuts) on top of the CSR £13bn cuts in Welfare spending.

George Osborne also signalled that a new Comprehensive Spending Review would be tasked with finding between £10-11bn more ‘savings’ in Welfare spending.

So, yes things are bad, and yes things are about to get a whole lot worse.

But guess what, when all that is absorbed, all hell is going to break loose.

By common consent the much maligned ATOS are unscrupulous in their obstruction of disability campaigners efforts to highlight their wrongdoing.

Last week’s conference showed how ATOS have switched all of their appeals to a judiciary style format of court room & judge.

Well, guess what? The Tories have drafted in ATOS’s larger and uglier big brother to cause more misery on benefit claimants.News has emerged that Serco have been asked by the DWP to conduct an investigation into how more ways to cut benefit claimants’ funding can be found.

One recipient of a cold contact email from Serco was so incensed at Serco’s efforts to rope him into the process that @AlexSmithNP got in touch to show me this letter here

It clearly shows an increased role for Serco in finding more ways to cut welfare spending. Recently Serco have been scandalised throughout the developed world for their ill treatment of child detainees and their involvement in Nuclear proliferation.

They are on a banned list in Norway from applying to the Norwegian Fund that invests in long term infrastructural projects.

This is because the Norwegian government has declared them ‘unethical’.

The news that this company will be increasing its £4.5bn profiteering operation in the area of disability assessments will cause serious alarm among the sick and disabled.