Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment the "written" guidance contained in the 255-page instruction manual issued to all assessors: The foreword to the WCA Handbook states: On 22 July 2013, the DWP announced that all Atos WCA assessors would be retrained, as part of a "quality improvement plan" that followed "a DWP audit which identified an unacceptable reduction in the quality of written reports produced following assessments." In 2006, the New Labour government set out its plans for welfare reform: over the course of a decade, it expected the deployment of the WCA to shrink the number of people on out-of-work sickness benefits by one million,
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment investigation regarding those deaths by an independent body". In October 2018, the Scottish National Party used Prime Minister's Questions to ask Theresa May about the WCA and the suicide or self-harm of people going through it (an issue that is covered in detail on the Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment page). Polly MacKenzie is the director of the think-tank Demos. Previously, she helped draw up the Coalition Agreement in 2010 that foresaw the Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme going ahead and she was Nick Clegg's director of policy until 2015. In 2018, she was quoted by "The Observer" as saying