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 department was about to publish it anyway or it would not be in the public interest because the data might be misinterpreted. But in August 2015, the DWP was forced to reveal that between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,380 claimants had died after being declared fit for work. However, as Dr Ben Goldacre has explained, an imprecise question in the original FOI request and an unhelpful DWP response — which Goldacre characterised as "essentially a PDF and an excel spreadsheet full of red herrings" — meant that no firm conclusion could be drawn from these figures alone about whether