His party spent 13 years in opposition, planning what they would do when they finally got their hands on power again. Several of them decided to become experts (in their own eyes, at least) on particular subjects, and developed grandiose ideas about how to "reform" that area; Lansley with the NHS (he didn't last long); Gove with education (still there but making a colossal mess); and of course IDS with work and pensions. It was particularly important for IDS. Having failed as party leader, he was determined that his political legacy was going to be the "reform" of the entire welfare system. But it's not going well. One after another, his plans have hit the rocks.
- The Work Programme - intended to be the panacea for unemployment, it's been a dismal failure. £400 million was spent by taxpayers in the first 14 months to achieve nothing. Unless there's been an amazing improvement in recent months, it will have to be changed, but the pressure will increase to scrap it altogether. All the warning signs were there from the outset, but IDS refused to listen.
- Work Capability Assessments - causing huge misery. And now we learn that the number of successful appeals is rising, to 42% in the last quarter. Yet Atos got part of the contract to do the same job with people on disability benefits.
- Universal Credit - still on track, apparently, but a new man has been brought in to manage the project. When the risks were pointed out - that a very large number of people wouldn't be able to cope with it, and there would be a dangerous shambles - IDS refused to listen, claiming that those people would just have to learn. Now he has had to produce a "framework" to handle the problems, pushing the onus onto local councils.
- Universal Jobmatch - the super-duper website was going to kill two birds with one stone. It would collect all the job vacancies into one site, and it would enable JCP and WP advisers to snoop on their clients' activities. But the website itself is far from perfect, and despite announcing a few months ago that registration and conceding access was going to be compulsory, IDS has had to accept that it isn't possible without a struggle to change the law.
- Work for your benefit schemes - judged by the appeal court to have been put in place illegally, necessitating a hasty drafting of new regulations whilst IDS insists that no compensation will be paid to people who were punished for not attending these schemes while they were unlawful. Wrong advice.
- The Bedroom Tax, or whatever its official name is - warned that it would be Cameron's poll tax, IDS insists that it's fair. But faced with growing evidence of its unacceptable impact on the disabled, he has directed his people to look at ways of changing the rules.
We were told that Cameron tried to reshuffle IDS away from Work and Pensions, but he refused to go. He hates to be thwarted or disagreed with over his policies. His department has made more than 20 formal complaints to the BBC in the last year over "bias" and "inaccuracies". According to the Telegraph, "Aides say coverage of welfare reforms often feature only the plight of people who will suffer most from the changes, while measures to soften the blow often go unreported." It goes on, "Over the past few months, Mr Duncan Smith has been particularly angered by the reporting of the housing benefit reforms referred to as 'the bedroom tax' by Labour and the BBC." Then, "A source said, 'You could look at the BBC’s TV news coverage [of this policy] and think this was a change that would apply only to disabled people. We have allocated £155 million for local authorities to help soften the blow of the measure, but this never features in the BBC’s news coverage. How is it possible not to think that is biased?'"
Long may the BBC and the rest of the media continue to highlight the failing policies of this man.
