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
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