Reblogged
from Vox Political:
The National Audit Office has published its ‘early progress’ report
on Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship Universal Credit scheme – and it is
damning.
The
report states that, after years of development in which £425 million was
spent on the scheme, the Department for Work and Pensions does not even
have a detailed view of how Universal Credit is supposed to work.
I should just stop there and spend the rest of this article discussing that
one piece of information. After months and years of listening to ‘RTU’ ranting
about how Universal Credit was going to be a revolution in benefit claims, we
now know that he does not know – and never bothered to work out –
how his revolution was going to be delivered!
Nor does Howard Shiplee, the ‘director general’ who has been talking it up on
the media over the last few days.
Universal Credit is an attempt to “simplify” six major areas of social
security into one streamlined payment system. They are: Income Support,
income-based Jobseekers Allowance, income-based Employment and Support
Allowance, tax credits (child and working), housing benefit and budgeting
loans.
However: “Poor control and decision-making undermined
confidence in the programme and contributed to a lack of progress,” the report
states. This is directly attributable to the Secretary of State - it is
his failure.
The report – and we should remember that this is from an organisation
concerned with whether the government is spending our money wisely – concluded
that the DWP has not achieved value for money.
The department was over-ambitious in both the timetable and scope of the
programme, the report states. This is interesting in itself. How can its
scope be “ambitious” if nobody even knew how it was supposed to
work?
According to the NAO: “The Department took risks to try to meet the short
timescale and used a new project management approach which it had never before
used on a programme of this size and complexity. It was unable to explain how it
originally decided on its ambitious plans or evaluated their feasibility.” In
other words, from its employees right up to its ministers and Secretary of
State, the DWP could not justify the risks it took with taxpayers’ money
and never bothered to investigate the likelihood of failure.
“Given the tight timescale, unfamiliar project management approach and lack
of a detailed plan, it was critical that the Department should have good
progress information and effective controls. In practice the Department
did not have any adequate measures of progress.”
The report singles out for particularly strong criticism the computer system
intended to run the new benefit. “The Department is not yet able to assess the
value of the systems it spent over £300 million to develop… Over 70 per cent of
the £425 million spent to date has been on IT systems,” it states.
Then it says, “The Department, however, has already written off £34
million of its new IT systems and does not yet know if they will
support national roll-out.” So the systems are not – to use a favourite
DWP phrase – “fit for work”.
In fact, some parts don’t work on any level at all: “For
instance, the current IT system lacks a component to identify potentially
fraudulent claims so that the Department has to rely on multiple manual checks
on claims and payments.” Meaning: In the single Job Centre where UC has
been introduced, employees have been working out claims on
paper.
“Such checks will not be feasible or adequate once the system is running
nationally.” It seems amazing, but Iain Duncan Smith probably needed to see
that, written down in black and white, or he might never have considered the
possibility.
Problems with the IT system have delayed the national roll-out of the
programme (and for that, considering all of the above, we should all breathe a
long-drawn-out sigh of relief). “In early 2013, the Department was forced to
stop work on its plans for national roll-out and reassess its options for the
future… The Department will not introduce Universal Credit for all new claims
nationally in October 2013 as planned, and is now reconsidering its plans for
full roll-out.
“Instead, it will extend the pilots to six more sites with these new
sites taking on only the simplest claims. Delays to the roll-out will
reduce the expected benefits of reform and – if the Department
maintains a 2017 completion date – increase risks by requiring the rapid
migration of a large volume of claimants.”
The DWP intends to spend £2.4 billion on Universal Credit up to April 2023.
To put that in perspective, that’s twice as much as the government loses on all
benefit fraud - not just those being bundled together here – every year. And
this will “increase risks”.
The spending watchdog found that the DWP took some action at the end of 2012
to resolve problems, but was unable to address the underlying issues
effectively.
“The programme suffered from weak management, ineffective control and poor
governance,” said Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office.
Despite all this, the report incredibly states that “the programme still has
potential to create significant benefits for society, but the Department must
scale back its delivery ambition and set out realistic plans”.
Liam Byrne will no doubt seize this as an opportunity, yet again, to offer
Labour’s help to find a way forward and bring Universal Credit back on track. He
should be discouraged from doing so. This ‘flagship’ hasn’t so much
sailed as sunk.
Universal Credit is a FAILURE.
It should be SCRAPPED – before that idiot Smith wastes any
more of our money on it.