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 Professor Paul Gregg, an economist and one of the original architects of ESA, warned that the WCA was "badly malfunctioning" and urged further pilot studies before the new version was used to retest existing sickness benefit recipients. Three months later, six experts in mental health — including the chief executive of MIND, who was already a senior advisor to the DWP on the WCA — wrote to "The Guardian" to say that the test was "deeply flawed". In 2013, the DWP published an 'evidence-based review' of the WCA. The department said "a steering group of experts chaired by Professor Harrington