Unlike the unfolding social catastrophe caused by the work capability assessment, the public might be quicker to notice the unfairness of micromanaging and stigmatising working people who live on the breadline.
Now suicides and premature deaths of sick and disabled people targeted by the work capability assessment and other cuts are described by campaigners as "genocide by the back door".
Anita Bellows, of campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: "It comes as no surprise for DPAC and confirms anecdotal evidence that we have been receiving on a daily basis of people being placed under intolerable stress, misery and hardship by the work capability assessment.
Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, appears to be unwinding some of the policies of his predecessor, Iain Duncan Smith, by reconsidering the work capability assessment.
The BBMH service has been pushed to the limit by the increased workload caused by appeals against the work capability assessment (WCA).
The claimants' solicitor, Ravi Lof-Beer, of the Public Law Project, said: "Today's ruling confirms what disabled people have been saying for years – although ignored by ministers – that the work capability assessment process is not fit for purpose.
The Department for Work and Pensions announced in the summer that additional providers would be working alongside Atos by the summer of 2014, to administer the work capability assessments, following a government review that admitted some reports by Atos assessors were of unacceptably poor quality.
This week Prof Malcolm Harrington, who was appointed by the government to review the work capability assessment, told BBC's Panorama that the test was "patchy" and needed improvement.
Until now its line has been that "the work capability assessment inherited by this government was not entirely fit for purpose and that is why we have continuously reviewed and refined it".
"The lack of previous analysis in this area is indicative of successive governments' disregard for the effectiveness of ESA and the work capability assessment, compounded by indifference to the rights and concerns of sick and disabled people," says the Spartacus researcher Caroline Richardson.
Atos was given the contract to perform the work capability assessment (WCA) by the last Labour government, and its team of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists are responsible for carrying out a computer-led test that looks at the claimant's ability to perform a range of functions (walk 200 metres, sit down for extended periods, use their hands, for example).
