Originally posted on Campaign4Change:
As the DWP manoeuvres again to stop reports on the Universal Credit programme being published it’s worth asking: has the DWP got its 2-year legal battle to keep the reports secret out of perspective?
Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud personally signed off his department’s request to keep the UC reports secret; and his secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith seems untroubled by MPs’ criticisms that Parliament is not kept properly informed about the UC programme’s problems.
The lack of openness and transparency over problems with the UC programme is “not acceptable,” said the all-party Work and Pensions Committee in April.
The four reports would, if published, inform Parliament about how much senior civil servants knew about the problems with UC while ministers and the department were assuring MPs the scheme was on time and to budget.
This isn’t the reason the DWP does not want the reports published: it…
View original 687 more words
