PIP Phone Assessment (IAS)

In IAS's (delivered by Atos) booklet, under Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: Can I record my face-to-face consultation?
A: Yes - but you must let us know three days in advance of your appointment...You'll need to provide your own recording equipment, which must be able to produce two identical physical copies on CD or cassette at the end of the consultation.

They haven't written anything about my needing their "permission" to record, or that I don't have a legal right to require the f2f being recorded, or that it is down to the assessor on the day - they have written "yes" I can in their booklet. I told them in writing a while ago, ie with plenty of notice.

In their leaflet it says that if any movement they ask us to do causes us pain, we do not have to do it. Surely the same applies to fatigue (physical or cognitive)? – if whatever they ask us to do is going to make us more ill, surely we have the right to refuse to do it? especially if we have medical evidence from our practitioners who know our body better than the assessor, and especially if they are experts in our illness where the assessor is most definitely not?

Where’s the line between the assessor snooping,...and verifying things we’ve written about our home in our PIP2 eg aids/appliances? Are they allowed to open our cupboards etc?

Gordon, I so appreciate your answers and help!

I couldn't do my phone assessment because my brain was literally - physically - too ill to do it. I had made this abundantly clear in letters to IAS which they repeatedly ignored. So I decided to go ahead with it and repeat the essential bullet points from my letters of why I couldn't do it to the assessor. I also backed it up with telling her that a welfare rights advisor told me that I am entitled to refuse any activity that would cause me unreasonable physical or mental harm, such as this verbal assessment. She read out to me to confirm what she was going to tell her manager and IAS as to why I needed a paper-based assessment instead. I had to correct some things. She said she "would sort this out for me". I asked her to keep her word to me, to not lie to me about what she was going to do/say to them - she said she won't lie to me. I asked her to not be dishonest by writing that I refused to participate in the phone assessment, that she needed to write the truth which is that my head is too ill to do it. I haven't heard anything yet and it's been a week. I'm going to write to IAS and DWP to confirm in writing what was discussed and agreed, in case she has lied to me (about what she was going to do/tell IAS) and my case has already been or will be passed back to DWP and my claim potentially stopped. I'm planning on writing "To Senior Management" with both letters so that this is escalated, because I have been flogging a dead horse in my attempts thus far. I just wondered if there was a different address for 'Senior Management' in both IAS and DWP (PIP) - or if I should just use the existing addresses?