Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment ideation being described on the claim form. The coroner wrote to the DWP in January 2014. She was concerned that neither the Atos doctor nor the DWP decision-maker had sought information from Michael O'Sullivan's own doctors. The DWP wrote back, referring to the guidance issued to the Atos healthcare professionals who, before face-to-face assessments, scrutinised the paperwork submitted by claimants — guidance called the "Training and Development ESA Filework Guidelines". The DWP confirmed that suicidal thoughts had been described on Michael O'Sullivan's application form but said "further evidence was not requested in line with the stated policy [in the "Training
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment department was about to publish it anyway or it would not be in the public interest because the data might be misinterpreted. But in August 2015, the DWP was forced to reveal that between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,380 claimants had died after being declared fit for work. However, as Dr Ben Goldacre has explained, an imprecise question in the original FOI request and an unhelpful DWP response — which Goldacre characterised as "essentially a PDF and an excel spreadsheet full of red herrings" — meant that no firm conclusion could be drawn from these figures alone about whether