Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on what criteria his Department based its decision to extend the contracts of Atos Healthcare and Capita for personal independence payment assessments.
The terms of the PIP Contract included the option to extend the contract term for a further period of up to two years. DWP decided to exercise that option on the basis that the alternative would have been to conduct a re-tender process that would run through 2016/17 which could have carried delivery risk, associated with potential supplier change, during the first full year of the PIP Re-assessment period.