Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 19 October 2009.
I am grateful for that answer, but my experience from my constituency case load, and the experience of the Inverness citizens advice bureau, is that the new rules for ESA are being used to exclude far greater numbers of people than were excluded from the previous benefit. In one case, a former member of staff at the Department for Work and Pensions was rendered unfit for work and retired on the grounds of ill health thanks to an assessment by an Atos Origin doctor. That same doctor then gave him a nil score for ESA. There is huge inconsistency in the process. Can the Minister assure me that Atos Origin doctors have not been instructed to-