Sema Group Plc, the Anglo-French computer services group, has just landed itself with what could be the most unpopular outsourcing deal in town. It has won a ú305m contract, spread over five years, to run medical services for the UK’s Department of Social Security. These services are at the center of a storm of controversy over proposed governmental reforms to disability and sickness benefits, claimed by 6.5 million people. Sema will be responsible for the business processes at the Benefits Agency Medical Service (BAMS) which carries out over one million medical assessments a year relating to claims for benefits such as the Disability living allowance (DLA) and Incapacity benefit. These medical assessments, currently performed by an army of 200 civil servants and 3000 independent doctors, will be at the heart of the UK government’s plans to cut benefit costs. Any reduction in benefits like the DLA will probably be linked to a medical assessment of the degree of a claimant’s disability level. A Green Paper on welfare reform by Frank Field, social security minister, is set to be published soon and last month disabled demonstrators threw red paint to simulate blood while chaining themselves to the railings of Downing Street to protest. The bill for the sick and disabled in the UK has trebled since 1979 and now stands at over ú23 billion. But Sema Group’s managing director of UK business systems, John Tilley, insisted that Sema would only be involved from an administrative perspective. Asked if he was worried about potential bad publicity from the reforms process, Tilley said he couldn’t comment on how people might misinterpret the facts. He said that Sema was keen to cut out excess bureaucracy from the administration process, particularly by minimizing file transfers and clerical duplication. Bureaucracy shouldn’t be hard to find at BAMS with the Disability living allowance constantly featuring high on the list of annual public complaints to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about poor treatment from the government. Staff currently employed by the Department of Social Security will be transferred to Sema, but Tilley would make no estimates as to the number of redundancies which will result from the deal.
