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
Work Capability Assessment work' decision overturned. During 2012, Parliament's Office of Science and Technology analysed the WCA's performance and found that "the number of fit-for-work decisions being overturned on appeal has led to questions about the reliability of the assessment process". In the same year, a parliamentary committee heard evidence from welfare advisors that, in nearly two out of three successful appeals to tribunals against fit-for-work decisions, appellants were seeing their points rise from "zero" in the original assessments — meaning that the original WCA had detected no relevant disabilities at all — to at least 15 points after the tribunals had independently