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 associated statistically with the unexpected deaths of hundreds of people. There is evidence of harm in individual cases from coroners' reports, and from the DWP's own internal investigations into dozens of claimants' deaths. However, data suggesting that "thousands" of people have died has not withstood expert analysis. Officially, the DWP does not accept that the WCA or the way it has been carried out has caused any deaths. A committee from the United Nations wrote, with regard to 33 deaths investigated in secret by the DWP, that it was "not aware of any attempts at objective, thorough, open and impartial