Work Capability Assessment to the DWP and would no longer be allowed to recommend any claimants for the Support Group without asking for permission first. When the doctor asked an experienced assessor where these rules had come from, she replied: "DWP". Both the DWP and Atos categorically denied ever having had any target for getting claimants "off" sickness benefits. However, both eventually admitted that Support Group "norms" were being used nationwide, though they both denied that the purpose of "targeted audit" was to limit the number of claimants placed in the Support Group. Atos said that the audit process triggered by the breach
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said the test, which her party had described as "tough but fair" in its 2010 manifesto, had been "discredited" by the coalition government. In February 2018 Kent University academic Ben Geiger, who has made international comparisons of the WCA and who was also a policy advisor to the DWP in 2015 and 2016, described the WCA as having been "a failure by almost any criteria". He explained that "there is no transparent evidence that the WCA captures the demands of work in Britain today" and said the test was "perhaps the greatest