Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment thereby saving £7billion a year. A reassessment of long-term recipients was expected to start in 2009 but the start was delayed until 2011 while the test's criteria were reviewed. In 2012, the DWP's handling of its contract with Atos was the subject of a critical report by the National Audit Office (NAO). The Public Accounts Committee heard that in that year the DWP had paid Atos £112m to carry out WCAs. The chair of the committee told the BBC that the DWP got "far too many decisions wrong on claimants’ ability to work" and that this came at a "considerable
Incapacity Benefit (WCA)". However, a decision later that year to overhaul the test's criteria delayed the start of the reassessment programme. In the autumn of 2010, with Freud now a government minister responsible for welfare reform, two pilot studies took place. 1347 people who had been on Incapacity Benefit for more than two years were assessed against the new criteria that would be used to gauge the fitness for work of more than two million such people from the spring of the following year. Professor Harrington asked MIND, Mencap and the National Autistic Society to "provide recommendations on refining the mental, intellectual