Benefit medical tests flawed, warn MPs

Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money may be being paid out wrongly in sickness and disability benefits because of the failure to carry out proper medical examinations, MPs warned today.

The Commons social security committee said the contracting out of medical eligibility tests to a private firm, the Sema Group, had raised suspicions that "standards are coming second to profitability".

"If this is happening, it is not only unfair, but it is also an inexcusable waste of taxpayers' money," the committee said in a report published today.

Since Sema - which had no previous experience of medical operations - took over in 1998, the number of medical tests carried out to check claimants were really eligible for benefits had dropped sharply.

The government said that the fall was due to the better targeting of tests.

However the committee said the there were concerns that the way the Sema's ?300 million contract was drawn up had given an "in-built incentive" to issue more "paper" approvals for benefits claims and carry out fewer actual tests.

The MPs called on social security secretary Alistair Darling now to renegotiate the contract with Sema to tighten up its provisions.

"The inference could be drawn that Sema is profiteering, although we note their insistence that they do not use this method to increase profits," the report said.

"But what is entirely unacceptable and of particular concern is that the contractual system allows such a suspicion to be possible.

"We recommend that the contract be renegotiated in such a way as to ensure that there can be no question of profits being increased as a result of a policy which could cost the taxpayer millions of pounds through the payment of benefits which should not be made."

The committee also expressed concern that doctors carrying out the tests were not consistently treating claimants with the level of professionalism they were entitled to expect.

Complaints included uncomfortable and painful examinations, rude and brusque treatment, inaccurate recording of information, unacceptably long waits for tests and appointments cancelled at short notice.

The committee also criticised the "cultural insensitivity" of some doctors towards ethnic minority claimants, including in one case the reported "racial stereotyping of Irish clients" who were assumed to have a drink problem.