& (ampersand) breaks parser with error

I am trying to parse XML that is generated by a third party. Ampersands that aren't escaped break XPath Parser for example:
<Classification ValueID="6215">I.T. & Communications</Classification>

Causes a failure with the message:

xmlParseEntityRef: no name on line 14. Error code: 68

I know that an unescaped ampersand isn't valid XML and that this isn't great, however I cannot control the feed I recieve. Has anybody else experienced this problem? Has anyone tried to patch the module to make it tolerate imperfect XML?