The government’s Universal Credit program is not launching smoothly. The first “pathfinder” scheme launched on Monday with just 300 people expected to start claiming, after the other three trials were delayed. As it was, not one claimant actually turned up in person on day one, leaving staff at the Citizens Advice Bureau “unable to say what the rest of the form was like because they had not seen the live version”, according to the Guardian‘s Amelia Gentleman.
Faced with this teething trouble, the government’s spin machine is whirring up. Not to make the service sound like it works – that’s a task beyond even Malcom Tucker’s ken – but to make the failure somebody else’s fault. Rachel Sylvester in the Times quotes one government source shifting the blame on to the civil service:
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