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
Incapacity Benefit was nothing in the regulations that inherently trapped people on Incapacity Benefit: recipients were free to relinquish their payments and seek work if they felt able to, although the meagre gains from moving into a poorly paid and insecure job were thought to act as a deterrent to doing so - a phenomenon that Working Tax Credits and Universal Credit were designed to mitigate. In 2011, out-of-work sickness benefits had an annual cost of £13billion: the Chancellor, George Osborne, called this "a very large budget". The total annual budget of the Department for Work and Pensions in 2011 was £180