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 course of a decade but it increased it by two billion pounds. The government has said there is no causal link between the WCA process itself and the deaths of people found fit for work. A medical expert who played a lead role in selecting the test's mental health criteria in 2007 later told MPs that the DWP had been "forced into rushing the design of the WCA". In February 2018 a former Conservative minister at the DWP, Baroness Altmann, said: "The extent of the appeals clearly indicates that something is seriously wrong with the system". In the same month