Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment awarded, Atos said: In August, the whistleblower expanded on his allegations in a first-hand account published by the "British Medical Journal". He suggested that the DWP's alleged actions might have been at least partly driven by pressure to "reduce government debt". The DWP's senior doctors made no reply but the clinical director of Atos did respond. In relation to the claim that some Atos assessors had been led to interpret the test's criteria too harshly, she did not deny that the "bogus rules of thumb" had been used in training talks but she said that assessors were expected to follow
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment cost to the taxpayer" because the independent tribunals that corrected the wrong decisions, funded by the Ministry of Justice, added a further £50m a year to the costs. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found that in the period up to 2014, no savings had been made in the sickness benefit budget, which remained at more than £13 billion a year. In 2015, because many more claimants than forecast were now being placed in the Support Group, the government's fiscal watchdog had to raise its estimate for annual spending on ESA by at least one billion pounds. In 2016 the