Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment for claimants, for DWP or for Atos Healthcare". In November 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published its report on the situation facing disabled people in the United Kingdom. Of the WCA, it said: In 2015, Iain Duncan Smith complained that the system gave doctors a "binary choice", not an opportunity to deliver a more nuanced opinion on claimants' fitness for work. In April 2016, the new Welfare Secretary, Stephen Crabb, said that the WCA had "never worked as intended. The WCA was a mess, it didn't recognise mental health issues and other types
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment that it was "an accurate indicator of work capability compared with expert opinion". Conversely, Kent University academic Ben Geiger has made international comparisons of the test: he found “no transparent evidence that the WCA captures the demands of work in Britain today". In practice, experience has shown that the WCA usually identifies these types of claims correctly: However, the process has largely struggled to categorise claims correctly if they fall between these two extremes, particularly where mental health is concerned. In fiscal terms, the deployment of the WCA was expected to more than halve the sickness benefit bill over the