Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment thereby saving £7billion a year. A reassessment of long-term recipients was expected to start in 2009 but the start was delayed until 2011 while the test's criteria were reviewed. In 2012, the DWP's handling of its contract with Atos was the subject of a critical report by the National Audit Office (NAO). The Public Accounts Committee heard that in that year the DWP had paid Atos £112m to carry out WCAs. The chair of the committee told the BBC that the DWP got "far too many decisions wrong on claimants’ ability to work" and that this came at a "considerable
Incapacity Benefit welfare budget. In 2015 the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found that no savings had been made to date: the sickness benefit budget remained at more than £13billion a year. Furthermore, because many more claimants than forecast were being placed in the Support Group, the government's fiscal watchdog "raised" its estimate for spending on sickness benefits by one billion pounds a year. In 2016 the OBR said that the reforms had still made no impact on the level of welfare spending — although a simple freezing of benefit payments, so that they did not rise with inflation, had made some