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
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment that it was "an accurate indicator of work capability compared with expert opinion". Conversely, Kent University academic Ben Geiger has made international comparisons of the test: he found “no transparent evidence that the WCA captures the demands of work in Britain today". In practice, experience has shown that the WCA usually identifies these types of claims correctly: However, the process has largely struggled to categorise claims correctly if they fall between these two extremes, particularly where mental health is concerned. In fiscal terms, the deployment of the WCA was expected to more than halve the sickness benefit bill over the