After the publication of the National Audit Office’s excoriating report on Universal Credit, Iain Duncan Smith could hardly deny that the project hasn’t gone to plan.
Of Universal Credit, which will replace six of the main benefits and tax credits with a single payment, the NAO states that “throughout the programme the Department has lacked a detailed view of how Universal Credit is meant to work”, that the 2017 national roll-out date is in serious doubt, that the department “has not achieved value for money”, with £34m of IT programmes written off, that the current IT system “lacks the ability to identify potentially fraudulent claims” and that the DWP repeatedly ignored warnings about the viability of the project.
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