UK.gov set to burn half a BEELLLION POUNDS on one-dole-to-rule-em-all IT, claims PAC chair

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The UK government's deeply troubled Universal Credit omni-dole project is expected to lead to IT write-offs of more than £500m, according to Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge.

In an interview for a special BBC Radio 4 programme on welfare reform, the Labour MP said that she believed money blown on the taxpayer-funded, "outrageously weak" scheme would balloon way above the £34m IT write-off figure revealed by the government's spending watchdog in September 2013.

The cross-party PAC claimed in November last year that the Department for Work and Pensions had lost at least £140m due to major technology failures with the new system, which to date is only processing around 14,000 benefit claims.

By December 2013, the DWP had admitted that £40.1m in IT assets had been written off, while a further £91m in software assets was expected to be worthless by 2018.

As we've reported previously, Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith – who has repeatedly defended the seemingly doomed project despite multiple setbacks – has been forced to bring in new bosses to oversee Universal Credit, only to watch them exit early.

Just last month, Howard Shiplee quit his post prematurely. He was originally expected to lead the project until May 2015.

Hodge told Radio 4 on Sunday:

Consistency of leadership is vital. I don't think there's been ownership of the project by the senior officials in DWP. I think they and ministers have only wanted to hear the good news, I think the management of the IT companies has been abysmal.

And I still believe, though I haven't got officials to admit to this, that after the General Election we will probably be writing off in excess of half a billion pounds on investment in IT that has failed to deliver.

The politico added that DWP claims that much of the IT it had written off would be reused elsewhere were misleading.

"It's not fit for purpose, the system simply cannot cope," she said.

When asked how the next government – which could potentially be a Labour administration – might handle the botched Universal Credit programme, Hodge said of the DWP:

"Chaos. I'm sure it's a really demoralised department."

The MP said the next government should "really choose the things you want to focus on, do it properly and deliver." ®

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