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 associated statistically with the unexpected deaths of hundreds of people. There is evidence of harm in individual cases from coroners' reports, and from the DWP's own internal investigations into dozens of claimants' deaths. However, data suggesting that "thousands" of people have died has not withstood expert analysis. Officially, the DWP does not accept that the WCA or the way it has been carried out has caused any deaths. A committee from the United Nations wrote, with regard to 33 deaths investigated in secret by the DWP, that it was "not aware of any attempts at objective, thorough, open and impartial