Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment thereby saving £7billion a year. A reassessment of long-term recipients was expected to start in 2009 but the start was delayed until 2011 while the test's criteria were reviewed. In 2012, the DWP's handling of its contract with Atos was the subject of a critical report by the National Audit Office (NAO). The Public Accounts Committee heard that in that year the DWP had paid Atos £112m to carry out WCAs. The chair of the committee told the BBC that the DWP got "far too many decisions wrong on claimants’ ability to work" and that this came at a "considerable
Criticism of the Work Capability Assessment Portes, has described the use of the WCA to reassess long-term recipients of sickness benefits as "the biggest single social policy failure of the last fifteen years". The WCA's designers acknowledged that being found fit for work and ineligible for sickness benefit could, in some circumstances, harm a recipient's physical or mental health. For this reason, one of the WCA's eligibility criteria — the descriptor Substantial Risk — applies where there is, on balance, more than a small risk of harm if the claimant were to be declared 'fit for work'. The deployment of the WCA since 2010 has been