If the doctrine of ministerial responsibility means anything, the Work and Pensions Secretary should have resigned over the failure of Universal Credit long ago.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith speaks
at the Conservative conference in Manchester last month. Photograph: Getty
Images.
It’s
going to be another uncomfortable day for Iain Duncan Smith. Today’s Public
Accounts Committee report on Universal Credit is one of the most excoriating
anyone can remember. Margaret Hodge and her colleagues warn that most of the
£425m of public money so far spent on the programme is likely to be written off,
that management of the project has been “alarmingly weak”, that the DWP has
consistently failed to “grasp the nature and enormity of the task”, and that it
missed early “warning signs”, refusing to “intervene promptly”.
The
committee adds that Duncan Smith will not meet his current target of enrolling
184,000 claimants (a fraction of the original number) by April 2014 and that the
department will have to “speed up the later stages of the programme” if it is to
meet the 2017 completion date. This, it warns, poses “new risks”.
The Universal Credit pilot, which is confined to just five
jobcentres and to single people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, is rightly
derided as “not a proper pilot”. The MPs note: “It lacks the security components
needed to prevent fraudulent claims and protect individuals’ personal
information. It does not deal with the key issues that Universal Credit
must address: the volume of claims; their complexity; change in claimants’
circumstances; and the need for claimants to meet conditions for continuing
entitlement to benefit. The Department needs a revised pilot that is capable of
properly informing the full roll-out of Universal Credit.”
As
on previous occasions, there appears to have been a concerted attempt by Duncan
Smith and his allies to pin the blame on DWP Permanent Secretary Robert
Devereux. The
Times reports that at least three Tory MPs on the committee were
approached and asked to ensure that the report “heaped blame on to the Permanent
Secretary” and that “Robert Devereux was to be associated with the key
failings”. This despite parliamentary rules stating that ministers are not
allowed to influence Commons committee reports. One opposition MP tells the
paper: "It was obvious there was some kind of coordinated effort going on. Some
of the Conservative members wanted us to be much tougher on the Permanent
Secretary than the rest of us were comfortable with”.
In
the resultant report, Devereux is not mentioned by name, with only two
references to the “accounting officer”, suggesting that Labour members prevailed
over their Tory counterparts. A spokesperson for Duncan Smith says today:
"Iain was clear back in the summer about how he and the permanent
secretary took action to fix those problems. He has every confidence with the
team now in place, and that team includes Robert Devereux." But the Tories are
simultaneously
briefing that his resignation will be accepted if offered, with one
commenting: “Once again officials have been named and ministers have not, and
that will make uncomfortable reading.”
But
if the doctrine of ministerial responsibility means anything it’s worth asking:
how is Duncan Smith still in his job? He was warned from the start by multiple
groups that he had underestimated the scale of the task and that Universal
Credit would be delivered neither on time or on budget. Back in October 2010,
the Chartered Institute of Taxation noted in its
response to the government's consultation: “The document suggests that the
IT changes required would not constitute a major project, and this was repeated
by the Secretary of State [Iain Duncan Smith] when he gave evidence to the Work
and Pensions Select Committee. We are sceptical about this.”
Labour, meanwhile, has focused its criticism on Cameron, not IDS. In her response to today's report, Rachel Reeves said: "Today’s report from the Public Accounts Committee is a shocking confirmation of David Cameron’s failure and another nail in the coffin of his Government’s promise to deliver Universal Credit on time and on budget.
"Families facing a cost of living crisis need welfare reform they can trust. Instead they’ve got an out of touch Prime Minister who has presided over chaos and waste." Forget the enfeebled Duncan Smith, Labour has bigger fish to fry.
Thus it seems, defying all convention, that Duncan Smith will survive. But his original ambition to transform the welfare system in one parliament is dead. Whether Labour or the Tories win in 2015, don't bet on them picking up the baton.
New Statesman
