Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment OBR confirmed that the reforms themselves had done nothing to reduce levels of welfare spending — although a simple freezing of benefit payments, so that they did not rise with inflation, had limited the extent of fiscal failure. But in fiscal year 2016-17, the budget in question had nevertheless risen to £15 billion a year. In 2016, the NAO published another evaluation of the DWP's disability assessment contracts: it said the cost of each WCA had risen from £115 under Atos to £190 under Maximus, to no benefit to the Exchequer. A former chief economist at the DWP, Professor Jonathan
Paul Litchfield own royal college). He has been given the honorific status of Fellow by both. In 2006, Litchfield was a member of the DWP's Mental Health Technical Working Group, which was set up to design a new mental health assessment for Incapacity Benefit claimants that would "identify accurately those who in spite of their condition are fit to continue in work". This work shaped the criteria used to gauge mental function in the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) that was introduced in 2008. In 2009, he co-wrote a report on mental health and the workplace for the DWP. It focussed on the