By Mark Smulian | 9 August 2013
Labour has attacked the administration of the benefit cap following a little-noticed admission in a parliamentary answer.
ocial security minister Mark Hoban last month said the Department for Work & Pensions was spending £1.3m on staff to manually check the IT system needed for the implementation of the cap.
He said data taken from the DWP, Revenue & Customs and local authority systems were all used to identify households potentially affected by the benefit cap, and was ‘subject to a manual check before data is sent to local authorities for capping to take place’.
Hoban added: ‘This check is to verify the benefits paid to a household and to check whether any exemptions should apply. This process will remain in place until an automated solution is developed and introduced.’
Up to112 peopleare currently engaged on the work, up from 30 in April but due to fall to 28 by next March.
Shadow work and pensions minister Stephen Timms said: ‘DWP is undergoing the most serious IT crisis of any government department in years.
‘Universal Credit is already on its knees and now the benefit cap has been infected by Iain Duncan Smith’s inability to deliver.
‘Ministers admit they don’t have a clue how or when this problem will be solved, and once again the taxpayer is picking up the bill to clean up the mess.’
A DWP spokesman said: ‘This is a necessary administrative cost to implement a reform that will save an estimated £300m over the next two years.
‘The IT to deliver the benefit cap is in place and working well. We always check our data manually to ensure the information we have from a number of sources is robust and to ensure that we're protecting people who should not be capped.’
