8 questions Iain Duncan-Smith must now answer

In November 2011 Iain Duncan Smith promised – one million people would be on Universal Credit by April 2014. Three years on fewer than 18,000 people are receiving Universal Credit.

Despite over £600million being spent on the new benefit the programme is beset by chaos, waste and delays. This afternoon Iain Duncan Smith was forced to appear before the House of Commons to answer questions about this failing programme. But once again he refused to answer the simplest of questions about his Government’s flagship welfare reform programme:

1) This morning the DWP issued a press release saying: “the current business case assumes for planning purposes the bulk of this exercise will be complete by 2019.”

What on earth does he mean by “the bulk”? Is this something we can appeal to the National Statistics Authority for clarity on? More importantly, given the issues and the amounts of public money at stake, can he not be more precise about how many people he expects to be left on legacy benefits after 2019? Which claimants will these be? When can we expect them to be transferred?

2) Can he confirm that his claim of last month that Universal Credit will deliver £35 billion in gross benefits by 2023-24 remains correct?”

3) Why did Iain Duncan Smith claim on the BBC Today Programme this morning that “almost 40,000” people are “actually claiming” Universal Credit when the latest figures show the current caseload as 17,850?

4) Can the Secretary of State tell us how many families he expects to be receiving Universal Credit by the end of the year, and by May next year? Will only families where both parents are out of work be able to claim? Will families including a disabled member be able to claim?

5) Will the Secretary of State leave in the House of Commons library a full list of the “1 in 3” Jobcentres who he expects to be handling Universal Credit claims by the spring? And can he confirm that they and their local partners are aware of this expectation and will be ready to organise the necessary support systems?

6) Will the extension of Universal Credit to families with children, and to this larger number of jobcentres, be on the new digital platform being developed by the Department, or will it still be running on the old system that we know is inadequate for handling large scale caseloads?

7) Would the Secretary of State care to repeat his claim that this programme is “on time and on budget”

8) How can members and the public ever be confident in his assurances that this programme and the money being invested in it will ever deliver value for money?

These are simple and fundamental questions about a programme that was held up as this government’s flagship welfare reform on which Iain Duncan Smith has already spent more than half a billion pounds of public money. It’s increasingly clear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has completely lost control of Universal Credit. But rather than facing up to the problems and getting a grip of the mounting waste and delays he is responsible for he’s trying to hide from the mess that he’s created.

Maybe tomorrow’s much anticipated National Audit Office (NAO) report will give the project a clean bill of health and confirm that all its problems now lie in the past. But today’s exercise in distraction and denial suggests that the “good news culture” is alive and well at the DWP and that Iain Duncan Smith is hoping we won’t read it too closely.