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Concerns raised about Whitehall's ability to deliver welfare reforms, while at the same time cutting £2.7bn from the DWP
The public accounts committee has raised concerns about Whitehall's ability to deliver welfare reforms, while at the same time cutting £2.7bn from the Department of Work and Pensions.
The warning comes as the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith braces himself for the start of major resistance from the Lords over his welfare reform bill.
Lord Freud, the DWP minister in the Lords will, at the bill's second reading, offer peers some reassurance on the impact of the bill on disabled groups, but will not set out how the government's planned universal credit will protect the cost of child care for parents.
Peers have been bombarded by pressure groups setting out how they will lose from the changes designed to make work pay and deliver savings to the Treasury.
But the report from the PAC casts doubt on the department's ability to make the reforms said it had no clear plan to make the savings. It notes that the transition toward a universal credit system would depend heavily on the development of a new IT system to a very tight deadline. "This Committee's experience is that such projects are rarely delivered to time, budget and specification, and any delays could put the Department's ability to deliver savings at risk.
"We are also concerned by the extent to which running cost reductions depend on the Department's optimistic assumption that, in future, 80% of Jobcentre Plus customers will deal with their claims online, even though at the moment only 17% do so."
The Department intends to achieve over half of its £2.7bn administration reduction costs in 2011-1, but the PAC states " We are concerned that the Department lacks a clear plan to deliver these savings".
It adds: "There are insufficient contingencies in place and services could be adversely affected if things do not go to plan. Too often this Committee has highlighted examples in other government departments where IT systems or projects have gone off track and emerging problems have gone unchallenged by staff."
The welfare bill will face resistance in Lords over the impact of changes to child care, the employment support allowance on the disabled, especially cancer victims, and the planned cap on benefits for those out of work. The bill introduces a univeral credit collapsing a host of existing tax credits and benefits.
Ministers have always said that under universal credit they will invest at least the same amount of money into childcare as in the current system. They will also be pressed on suggestions that parents of errant children should lose child benefit.
Patrick Wintour
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