<P> In 1995, the Department of Social Security abolished Invalidity Benefit for new claims and introduced Incapacity Benefit instead . The main difference was that the new benefit would only be paid if the claimant was unfit for any job, not just their old trade . The department then began to commission independent medical assessments using its new All Work Test . However, only a minority of fresh claims were actually assessed in this way; the rest were still gauged by a government official using information provided by the claimant's GP . </P> <P> In 2000, five years after it was introduced, the All Work Test was replaced by the Personal Capability Assessment . This new test was used by government - approved doctors not only to assess some fresh claims but also to reassess some established recipients, at the behest of a government official . </P> <P> In its last term of office New Labour began to phase out Incapacity Benefit and replace it with Employment and Support Allowance . At the same time the Work Capability Assessment became the gateway to the new out - of - work sickness benefit . The policy objectives for the new test were: to accentuate the positive by "looking at what you can do, not what you can't do"; to take into account new disability legislation, changes in the workplace and developments in occupational health; to make the test more stringent; to assess most new claims in person rather than on paper; and, once the new test had bedded in, to use it to re-evaluate virtually every established sickness benefit recipient . To facilitate these last two objectives testing capacity was increased fivefold by employing nurses and physiotherapists to work alongside doctors, and a semi-structured interview technique based on a computer - generated template was used for the first time . </P> <P> The WCA went live in 2008, assessing only fresh claims, but the sickness benefit caseload went up--partly a consequence of the banking crisis and its effect on the economy and on jobs . An overhaul of the test began soon afterwards and the new version was deployed in 2011 by the coalition government led by David Cameron . The WCA then became the fulcrum for a reassessment of all recipients of Incapacity Benefit and all disabled people on Income Support--a major Whitehall project that was supposed to save billions of pounds a year from the welfare budget, in a new age of austerity . </P>

Who carries out work capability assessments for esa