By Richard Johnstone | 4 February 2014
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has defended the government’s controversial Universal Credit benefit reforms, telling MPs he remained very confident the scheme would be successfully implemented.
Questioned by the work and pensions select committee yesterday, Duncan Smith denied that problems with the project had been ‘swept under the carpet’ by the department.
The implementation of the scheme, which will merge six existing benefits into one has recently been criticised by both the National Audit Officeand Public Accounts Committee.In addition, the Department for Work and Pensions has written offmore than £40m of computing systems following problems, and it is expected the rollout of the reform will not be completed by 2017 as planned.
Duncan Smith told MPs the writedown came after ‘the most detailed impairment review of anything done by government’. The level of the write-off in the programme – which has a budget of £2.3bn – was ‘much lower than most private companies engage in’, he said.
‘Look at private sector IT programmes ¬– they write off between 30-40% of information technology development.
‘When [a programme] is being developed it is not an exact and totally perfect process. You will eventually find that maybe something doesn’t work as intended, you may have to make a change. An element of the programme may not work as you thought [and] it may have not value, you have to write it off. But does the overall programme go on? The answer is yes.’
He told the committee that Universal Credit was currently progressing in line with the revised implementation plan agreed last year,with the rollout continuing across Britain until 2018. An up-to-date business plan would be submitted to the Treasury in the next couple of weeks. ‘I still remain very confident about how successful it will be,’ he said.
In a combative session with MPs, Duncan Smith also denied he had not been honest with the committee about the problems in earlier hearings, as the programme was being ‘reset’ by the department.
‘I don’t agree we have been anything but open and honest about what the issues are as we’ve identified them and what we would do about them,’ he said.
‘When we found something wrong we went back and sorted it out and, as we sorted it out, we made clear the direction of that.’
• The government should create a new range of accounts with the Post Office to help people who will receive Universal Credit plan their monthly budget, consumer organisation Consumer Futures said today.
Over a quarter of people surveyed by Consumer Futures worried they would find it more difficult to budget.
New ‘budgeting accounts’ should be created through the Post Office to protect people from missing bill payments, Andy Burrows, the head of Post Office and essential community services, at Consumer Futures said.
‘Our research shows that 67% of benefit claimants wanted banking solutions that could help them recreate tighter restrictions on their spending and maintain strict control over their budgets. This includes accounts that could help them avoid the risk of being charged a penalty fee for unpaid direct debits.’
