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 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