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,
Incapacity Benefit (WCA)". However, a decision later that year to overhaul the test's criteria delayed the start of the reassessment programme. In the autumn of 2010, with Freud now a government minister responsible for welfare reform, two pilot studies took place. 1347 people who had been on Incapacity Benefit for more than two years were assessed against the new criteria that would be used to gauge the fitness for work of more than two million such people from the spring of the following year. Professor Harrington asked MIND, Mencap and the National Autistic Society to "provide recommendations on refining the mental, intellectual