You state that "Atos has become the lightning rod for widespread public anger over the health test, known as the work capability assessment" (Atos may be ousted from fit-for-work contract, 18 February). After working for Atos as a medical assessor for 10 years I recently resigned, exasperated by increasingly unrealistic auditing of my reports both by Atos and the Department for Work and Pensions. This oppressive scrutiny, often requesting me to alter my opinion, was due to the excessive number of claimants (600,000 mentioned in your article) going to appeal. In my opinion the explanation for this huge number of appeals is the unrealistic criteria, set by the DWP, for a claimant being awarded employment and support allowance. Yes, it may be possible to work if you use a wheelchair, have an epileptic seizure once a fortnight, or have lost an arm, but how likely is such an applicant likely to be given a job interview? Atos is obliged to submit reports based on these DWP criteria, and it is not surprising that it has become the scapegoat.

Dr Giles Youngs

Drinkstone, Suffolk

• Whether Atos or any other private sector company is doing the work capability assessment (WCA) is not the important issue. This is because it is focused upon the symptom – the poor experience of many people of the WCA as a process – of a set of more fundamental concerns. These relate to the treatment of chronically sick and disabled people in an unequal society in which they are held to be a burden and responsible for many of its economic and social problems. It is this attitude – symbolised in the aims and structure of the WCA to exclude people from being defined as sick and disabled for benefit purposes – that is the problem, rather than who is judging capability for work.

Dr Chris Grover

Senior lecturer in social policy, law school, Lancaster University

• Instead of "commissioning other private firms" such as A4E, Serco, G4S, and Capita to replace Atos, the government should scrap work capability assessments. In 2011, 10,600 people died within six weeks of having support withdrawn due to these tests. Since then corresponding figures haven't been published.

We should be cutting bankers' bonuses, not benefits – and Labour councils should be taking the lead. For example, they could refuse to implement the bedroom tax and council tax benefit cuts, which have affected disabled people also hit by WCAs. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) will be joining protests outside Atos assessment centres across the UK on Wednesday. And we will be standing candidates in May's elections opposed to all attacks on benefits.

Clive Heemskerk

TUSC national election agent

• I would feel bereft if I couldn't afford the £16 a week it costs to have the Guardian delivered to my home. How I would feel if I couldn't afford the extra £14-£22 a week to live in it doesn't bear thinking about (Bedroom tax blamed for rapid surge in rent arrears, 12 February). Labour has said it will abolish the bedroom tax if it wins the next election, but presumably even more people will have been evicted by then. Is there an organisation I can make a donation to and help stop this happening? If those of us who could afford it gave a weekly amount of £14-£22 from now until May 2015 then hopefully no one else will have to be forced from their own homes.

Sarah Daniels

London

• Hidden away under all the news about floods were Ministry of Justice figures showing that a record number of 37,729 public and private sector tenants were forcibly evicted from their homes by bailiffs in 2013 in England and Wales. That cannot be explained as an unintended consequence of welfare reform. It is the intention of the coalition to force single tenants out of their public sector homes to free up spare bedrooms for tenants in temporary accommodation. It is also the intention of the coalition to force large families whose benefits come to more than £500 including housing benefit to move to cheaper accommodation. That is done by cutting the housing benefit so the rent cannot be paid, hence eviction. Private landlords have soaked up ever increasing billions of housing benefit from the taxpayer, £9.32 billion in 2013, but it is the tenants who are being punished.

Rev Paul Nicolson

Taxpayers Against Poverty