Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment OBR confirmed that the reforms themselves had done nothing to reduce levels of welfare spending — although a simple freezing of benefit payments, so that they did not rise with inflation, had limited the extent of fiscal failure. But in fiscal year 2016-17, the budget in question had nevertheless risen to £15 billion a year. In 2016, the NAO published another evaluation of the DWP's disability assessment contracts: it said the cost of each WCA had risen from £115 under Atos to £190 under Maximus, to no benefit to the Exchequer. A former chief economist at the DWP, Professor Jonathan
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said in 2016 that despite previous modifications to the WCA, it still paid too little attention to "personal circumstances and needs, and barriers faced by persons with disabilities to return to employment, particularly those of persons with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities". In its reply to the United Nations, the DWP stressed the efforts it was making to bridge the 'disability gap' and boost the number of disabled people in work. In 2016, Iain Duncan Smith described the WCA as having been "unbelievably harsh" when introduced under New Labour; the Labour