Well this is rather interesting… a top tribunal judge states that the DWP says there will be NO universal credit appeals between now and 2019; now why would that be? Answers on a postcard please.
A
senior tribunals judge has thrown doubt over the future of universal
credit after it “disappeared” from Department for Work and Pensions
forecasts on the number of predicted appeals.
Judge
Robert Martin, who retired as president of the social entitlement
chamber at the end of last month, queried whether the government’s
flagship reform of the benefits system “might prove just too
impracticable to implement in full”.
Writing
in the Judicial Information Bulletin, which goes out to all tribunal
members, Judge Martin revealed that the DWP is no longer predicting that
there will be any universal credit (UC) appeals between now and 2019.
He
states that in its April 2013 forecast the DWP expected there to be
1,355 UC appeals in 2013-14 and 77,926 UC appeals in 2014-15. However,
by the end of March 2014 there had been only three appeals.
Three
times a year, the DWP provides the tribunals service with estimates of
how many appeals there are likely to be over the next five years.
In
its most recent forecast, the DWP estimated that there would be:
393,000 appeals in 2014-15; 456,000 in 2015-16; 622,000 in 2016-17;
553,000 in 2017-18; and 340,000 in 2018-19.
But Judge Martin noted that none of the predicted appeals are for UC.
“The
unhappy development of UC has been recorded in reports from the
National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee,” Judge Martin
writes. “The Secretary of State has not moved from the original planned
end-date of 2017 for the completion of implementation.
“In
its April 2013 forecast DWP estimated that HMCTS (HM Courts &
Tribunals Service) would receive 1,355 UC appeals in 2013-14 and 77,926
UC appeals in 2014-15. By March 31 2014, HMCTS had actually received
three.
“In later forecast reports, ‘universal credit appeals’ had disappeared as an entry.”
Judge
Martin said it was “not credible” that the government – now or in the
future – could afford to abandon or even scale back the programme of
welfare reform.
But,
he added: “Universal credit, which was heralded by DWP as delivering
£35 billion of savings, might prove just too impracticable to implement
in full.”
