Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment the "written" guidance contained in the 255-page instruction manual issued to all assessors: The foreword to the WCA Handbook states: On 22 July 2013, the DWP announced that all Atos WCA assessors would be retrained, as part of a "quality improvement plan" that followed "a DWP audit which identified an unacceptable reduction in the quality of written reports produced following assessments." In 2006, the New Labour government set out its plans for welfare reform: over the course of a decade, it expected the deployment of the WCA to shrink the number of people on out-of-work sickness benefits by one million,
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