Work Capability Assessment people on ESA said they had "ongoing concerns about the accuracy of the WCA". And in 2014, Atos announced that it had come to the conclusion that "the WCA is not working 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.
Incapacity Benefit declared 'fit for work' formally appealed against the decision, at which stage 40% of decisions challenged were overturned and the claimant moved onto ESA, not JSA. By May 2017, fewer than 3000 people were still receiving the old payment. The number of claimants of sickness benefits increased rapidly from the mid-1980s. The trend was investigated in a series of studies commissioned by the government in 1991 and published in 1993. Several possible causes were identified: The House of Commons research paper that summarised the studies' findings in the 1990s concluded that the number of new claims and their general pattern