I misunderstood the first headline

From The Dail Mail, via MSN:

Minister calls petrol crisis a lesson in abandoning fossil fuels

I initially thought that somebody had seen sense and admitted that the petrol crisis is a good lesson in the futility and nigh-impossibility of abandoning fossil fuels, but I was sorely disappointed:

Environment minister Zac Goldsmith has said the ongoing petrol crisis is a 'good lesson' in the need for the dependence on fossil fuels to end.

But hopefully I haven't misunderstood the second headline, hinting that IDS actually cares about welfare recipients::

Ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith launches a last ditch attempt to save £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift as he urges Boris Johnson to keep the extra cash in place over the winter.

Go IDS! If they want to cut the welfare bill, the first priority must be to phase out Housing Benefit for private tenants.

Killer Arguments Against Citizen's Income, Not (27)

From The Independent:

51 per cent of the public also support a universal basic income, "where the government makes sure everyone has an income, without a means test or requirement to work". Just 24 per cent are unsupportive of the idea, with 9 per cent saying they do not know how they feel.

The idea a basic income has been backed by dozens of MPs from across the political spectrum as a solution to workers falling through the cracks of the current government support scheme - including the self-employed. Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has however criticised the idea, suggesting it would be a disincentive to work during the crisis (1) and would be badly targeted (2).

Christ on a crutch.

1) The whole point of the lock down is to disincentivise people from working! If you are furloughed, you are forbidden to do work for your employer. (Note: I got talking to a builder recently who is on furlough from a large construction project; he's now working part time for his dad instead. Good for him). The majority of adults are still in paid work; receiving a state pension; or are already on some state benefit or other. They clearly wouldn't get anything extra.

2) Compare the UBI with the Furlough Scheme, which his own government introduced. The cost to the taxpayer of a furloughed worker on an average wage is £1,260 per month - the more that person was earning beforehand, the more they get now - a kind of negative means-testing. Means-testing is bad enough, but negative means-testing is worse. That's really badly targeted. A sensible UBI would be in the region of £300 - £400 per month, just enough to live off, assuming there is a rent/mortgage freeze, i.e. very well targeted. It does the job at minimum cost.

"Duncan Smith outlines plans for pre-paid pension cards"

From the BBC:

The government is to introduce pre-paid cards to stop pensioners spending all their money on alcohol, tobacco or Lottery tickets.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said it would help those "on the margins break the cycle of poverty". The cards could only be used for some items in some stores, and would not be valid in betting shops or off licences.

The scheme will be initially piloted on a voluntary basis and will be targeted on those with spending problems. The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said government sources said the move was aimed at helping pensioners who smoked or drank and protecting their spouses.

An estimated one in 5 pension claimants in England suffer from addiction to tobacco products, such as cigarettes or cigars, while an estimated one in 4 pension claimants consumes more than the recommended maximum daily intake of alcohol.

It must have had IDS experiencing a "Victor Meldrew moment" ....

surely becoming aware that  (a) some idiot had organised a staff attitudes survey amongst staff working on his "flagship project" [not of course to be confused with any other DWP "flagship project" like the Work Programme] and (b) then allowed the results to leak into the public domain  had our normally unflappable Secretary for Work and Pensions shouting "I don't believe it!" ....

One civil servant writes of "a near complete absence of anything that looks like strategic leadership in the programme". Another says: "There is a divisive culture of secrecy around current programme developments and very little in the way of meaningful messages for staff or stakeholders explaining what will happen and when."

Taking a direct swipe at managers, another civil servant says: "I have never worked somewhere where decision making was so apparently poor at senior levels … and communications from that level was totally nonexistent. This programme should be a case study for how not to engage with your people to get the most out of them."

Comments included: "After 29 years of service this has been the most soul-destroying work I have done," and: "There is too much dishonesty and no one ever admits to making a mistake."

Another said: "This is the third review in 16 months, no rollout plans, no confidence in going forward and stakeholders losing confidence in our ability to deliver."

In an email to [Universal Credit] programme staff on 23 July, the business change director, a senior civil servant, admits that the initial findings from the survey revealed that there was "much room for improvement".

"I'm a believer" declares himself proud of his achievements ... and is still happy to quote "industry figures" ...

But one suspects this "everything is firmly on track, but we are doing some of it at a slower pace than we might have suggested to make sure it is all done properly" is, with a post summer recess "getting ready for 2015" reshuffle in the offing, written to try and forestall yet another round - as was the case at the last reshuffle - of renewed whispering from his close colleagues that the great man has obviously achieved much but risks suffering from burn out and deserves to be given something quieter to do...

or possibly suggestions from some of them, with an eye on exactly how much of that deficit has been trimmed by 2015 and how bad it might look if on top of not having addressed that to any great degree they have also failed on the "welfare revolution" and "curing unemployment", that "measured against his own promises he has failed and has to go, now, before the whole project goes pear shaped..."

Questions have been raised about whether the dramatic pace of our reforms is too difficult to implement. But these doubts ignore my department's proven track record of delivering change and show a lack of ambition from the people raising them. Look at what has already been achieved.

We promised a benefit cap and it began, on time, in April in four London areas. It will be completely rolled out by September. We introduced the new personal independence payment as planned and on time. Automatic enrolment started last year, and now 1 million people have been registered into a workplace pension. People are using our Universal Jobsite website for more than 5m job searches a day. Our Work Programme has launched and the industry tells us that so far 321,000 people have found a job through it.

I am proud of this record. But my main concern about the delivery of our reforms is that we bring them in safely. I have no desire to follow in the disastrous footsteps of the last Labour government and rush out changes to meet an artificial timetable, only to be forced to scramble to sort it out when it goes wrong.
I find it nothing short of amusing that the opposition is now calling for universal credit to be delivered faster.

While I welcome its support for this radical transformation – following its rejection of all our other reforms – I won't take lessons from a party that brought us tax credit chaos and oversaw the decay of the welfare system".

Ignoring for the moment whether it is true or not,

given recent DWP form on "statistics" but just assuming it is true, what was it that the Job Centre staff told these people?   Was it "if you get a job the cap simply won't apply to you at all, but if you don't get a job, it will?"

"The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) said that 12,000 claimants have found jobs over the last year, after being contacted by job centres.

The job centres warned them they might have their benefits capped if they did not find employment".

Benefit cap 'encourages job seekers'
More than 12,000 people have moved into work after being told about the benefits cap, the government says.

And just a little aside, because it bears being brought to everyone's attention, Labour having previously given the impression that "the cap" was desperately unfair, today their shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne was at pains to make clear that what is wrong with the cap is that it simply isn’t tough enough ...

"Liam Byrne MP, Labour's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to the benefit cap roll out today, said:

The benefit cap is a good idea in principle but its already fallen apart in practice. Ministers have bodged the rules so the cap won't affect Britain's 4,000 largest families and it does nothing to stop people living a life on welfare. The Government needs to go back to the drawing board, design a cap without holes and put a two year limit on the time you can spend on the dole, like Labour's compulsory jobs guarantee".

But not exactly as a "front page splash"

in fact, there ought to be a prize for anyone who can actually find it in the on-line version of the Mail ..

Daily Mail corrects misleading benefit statistics as DWP prepares for MPs' grilling**

An jolly tale from the New Statesman on how some Iain Duncan Smith arranged "scrupulously honest data" which was anything but was used in 6 "benefits bashing" articles by the Mail, which just goes to show the benefit of someone dreaming it up.
 
Oh and if you get tired of trying to track down that "correction", which NS readers will now be aware of but DM readers probably not, it is here.

Well it was at the time of posting, but being aware of what can happen I have also taken a screen grab in case it is needed as "evidence" later ... 

** the Department is scheduled for 2 Select Committee "grillings" tomorrow -

9.30am  Work and Pensions

 

Subject: Universal Credit: follow-up

 

Witness(es): Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions, Lord Freud, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Welfare Reform , Howard Shiplee, Universal Credit Director General and Suzanne Newton, Real Time Information Programme Director, HM Revenue and Customs

Location: The Grimond Room, Portcullis House

 

and

 

2.30pm   Work and Pensions

 

Subject: DWP Annual Report and Accounts 2012-13: DWP Statistics

 

Witness(es): John Shields, Director of Communications and David Frazer, Director of Information, Governance and Security Directorate

Location: Room 5, Palace of Westminster

 

It is the latter grilling that the New Statesman article is referring to.  

 

Oh come on now - do play fair!

Guardian Headline: Jobseekers challenge benefits block

Guardian sub-heading: Lawyers say Iain Duncan Smith undermined jobseekers' rights with legislation allowing DWP to ignore court judgments

Iain Duncan Smith and parliament have conspired to undermine the basic rights of hundreds of thousands of jobseekers by enacting retrospective emergency legislation, according to the contents of a legal filing sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Lawyers acting on behalf of three jobseekers including Cait Reilly – the unemployed graduate forced to work unpaid in Poundland – are hoping to overturn a controversial law introduced by the DWP in March which allowed the department to ignore court judgments awarding more than £100m in benefits rebates to a quarter of a million jobseekers.

DWP eh?  Iain Duncan Smith eh?   Say no more!   Er, hang on a minute though...

With support from Labour, the jobseekers (back to work schemes) bill was rushed through parliament in just three days in order to strike down a ruling from three appeal court judges who found that half a dozen of the government's employment schemes, which made jobseekers work unpaid under threat of having benefits stripped, were operating outside of the law.

With support from Labour? Surely not!

"some significant doubts about the quality of the new regime statistics"

Spare a thought for Iain Duncan Smith,  and indeed his junior ministers at the Department of Work and Pensions,  who, as if they aren't burdened enough by having to deal with one needless problem getting in the way of their broadcasting  their success in the mission to solve unemployment, and also having to contend with running needless enquiries into the non-existence of targets up pop two more.

First up some damn fool members of the judiciary have decided  that members of the public ought to be allowed to know which employers and organisations are being public spirited enough to provide work experience places, something which says the DWP the employers and organisations doing it, no doubt through reasons of modesty, do not wish to publicise.

And secondly; having gone to the trouble of establishing beyond peradventure via a rigorous internal enquiry that there aren't any "targets" of any sort operating on the matter of "sanctioning benefit recipients and claimants" the department has now it seems uncovered a few possible inconsistencies in some data it was due to publish on the impact on the issuing of "sanctions" following changes to its procedures last October, and has had to delay publication of these for an as yet unspecified period. 

A similar fate appears to have befallen the data it collects on Employment Support Allowance - the replacement for Incapacity Benefit - claimants and recipients, and the fate of former IB recipients on being given the Work Capability Assessment by Atos, to see whether they qualify for either of the two tiers of ESA, or were simply pulling a fast one all along, something the present government and indeed their predecessors who actually brought in Atos and the WCA have repeatedly said at least a million IB recipients were and are.

So, tough times at the DWP.   On the matter of that judicial decision that despite the wishes of the work experience providers to remain so far as possible anonymous, the public should be allowed to know who they are Iain Duncan Smith might wish to seek another special out of the way meeting with his opposite number in the Labour ranks, Liam Byrne about "another deal” around having some hurriedly introduced retrospective legislation that puts every single aspect of the Work Programme firmly out of the reach of meddling members of the electorate and the damned judiciary...

... and possibly Parliamentary Select Committees too... a matter on which under the deal Labour will once again have a "whipped abstention" on the legislation to ensure it passes quickly and without fuss which Liam will explain via an article on his personal website has been done in order to extract a concession from I D S whereby anyone on the Work Programme breaching the new "confidentiality rules" that will be brought in as part of that retrospective legislation which bar them from ever letting anyone at all know where they are doing or have done some "work experience" that anyone who fails to abide by those confidentiality rules wont have their benefits suspended for more than 12 months as a punishment.

On the matter of those damned stats, well the call has gone out for someone experienced in the matter of presentation to come lend a hand.

Wow, talk about being pointlessly picky ...

The chair of the UK Statistics Authority Andrew Dilnot  has been openly mocked by the Department of Work and Pensions for having “an obsession with provable and verifiable statistics” after issuing what is described as ”a feeble and totally unjustifiable complaint about Minister’s at the DWP making things up.”

The spat centres around the DWP’s increasing use of what Dilnot refrains from describing as ”figures pulled from the air in order to be supplied to the media and used in speeches and statements in support of claim’s made about the effect of policies initiated by the department”.  Dilnott, who in his complaint also steers well clear of suggestions that DWP Minister’s might be guilty of untruths or deliberately misleading parliament and the electorate, also observes that he made a similar complaint not that long ago, and believed he was given assurances that everyone at the DWP had been given clear and unequivocal instructions not to be caught doing the things that Dilnot has been at pains not to spell out in simple and direct language again.

A spokesman for the DWP said the anecdotal responses of junior ministers and members of the Employment Related Services Association who were presently benefiting from the Work Programme and wished to continue to do so to the letter from Dilnot fully supported Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s Iain Duncan Smith's open contempt for “bureaucratic  pedantry”.

"The secretary of state has long held the position that actual verifiable statistics would have an adverse impact on the public’s perception of how effectively he and his Minister’s are dealing with shirkers and scroungers” he said.

"As the minister for employment made clear in a recent interview, ERSA members are telling us the made up figures policy is especially effective for them too, and they are more than happy to supply us with made up figures of their own at the drop of a hat, which we can then, with their blessing, disseminate as our own made up figures.  Imagine how terribly depressing it would be for us, and ERSA, if we were forced by some faceless bureaucrat supported by some typical New Labour red tape legislation to only publish proper verified statistics.” 

He added “we at the DWP are very much wedded to the ‘What Works’ philosophy and quite clearly telling the odd porkie is ‘What Works’ - well it works for us."

Your most 'umble and obedient servant...

From The Daily Express:

 

I BELIEVE you can judge a government's values by how it treats the groups most likely to vote for it.

 

The last Labour government spoke endlessly about looking to restore the link between the level of welfare payments for any particular age group and the likelihood of people in that age group voting, but when it came to it, foolsihly did nothing. Within weeks of walking into the DWP we introduced the "triple lock" to provide a proper mechanism by which we increase welfare payments to core voters.

 

We believe this was the right thing to do for people who have spent their lives doing the right thing – turning up to vote for whoever gives them the most generous handouts. Now there is a debate about whether regular voters should continue to receive benefits like the winter fuel payment, free bus passes and TV licences.

 

The vast majority of our core voters are relaxing at home without a care in the world apart from putting a cross on a bit of paper every year or two. For many, retirement is about careful budgeting and trying to persuade their families to help out. So their votes are relatively cheap to buy and I'm amazed that Labour weren't more keenly aware of this. Again, how government responds to this is a mark of their priorities - like being re-elected.

 

It is that desire to buy votes as cheaply as possible which was behind the Prime Minister's pledge to protect universal voter benefits for the lifetime of this parliament and that's what we're doing. I make no apology for it.

 

For some, the winter fuel payment is not a necessity. The free bus pass an unexpected and welcome extra. But for others these represent valuable lifelines. Ensuring the heating is turned up in winter so that they stay alive to vote for us again the next spring. Making it easier to get to the polling station. For people who would vote for us even without the winter fuel payment and want to return it, then they can do that.

 

But as I made clear on the Today programme this week, I am not asking nor demanding anyone to do this. The policy has not changed. Pensioners have contributed our hold on power throughout their working life and they deserve a kick back in retirement. This government can be proud of having done this simple electoral calculation, of what it has done and continues to do for our core supporters. This is a measure of what we think is important, not only as government, but as a group of self-serving insiders.

 

And if you behave nicely, who knows? Maybe one day you'll start receiving interest on your savings again.

 

Your most 'umble and obedient servant

 

IDS

"Never mind living on £53 a week. How would IDS cope with the system?"

Over at systemthinkingforgirls.com:

Now that the petition calling for Iain Duncan Smith to prove he can live on £53 a week has been handed in to the Department of Work and Pensions by Change.org, we should start planning his experience of claiming benefits in more detail. Because it’s not just about the amount of money, is it? It’s also the absurd, unfair and unpredictable bureaucracy that goes with it at a time when you are least able to cope with it.

What follows is the experience I think the Jobcentre should arrange for him.

Day 1

• His benefits should be stopped suddenly for no reason...

Fun Online Polls: R-Patz, K-Stew & Universal Credit

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

R-Patz and K-Stew...

On - 1%
Off - 7%
On - 4%
Off - 5%
On - 3%
Who or what are you talking about? - 80%

Well, we were all wrong.

As it turns out, the R-Patz/K-Stew saga took another interesting twist a couple of days after I launched the poll, so maybe they are still on their third "off" or maybe they are already on their fourth "on".

Who knows? Who cares? Kids, bless 'em, is all I can say. The whole thing would be even funnier if turned out that Saunders is actually a werewolf.
---------------------------------------------
And lo, the ground breaking roll-out of the massive shake-up etc (TM New Labour) of the Coalition's flagship policy started today, which applies initially only to non-disabled childless single people living in Ashton-under-Lyme who start claiming unemployment benefit in future. I admit that BobE and I invented the bit about it only applying to people who like listening to King Crimson, flower arranging and home baking.

IDS keeps saying that the glorious new system "will mean people are always better off in work than on benefits" which might or might not be true, and it is probably slightly less untrue than under the current welfare system, which will continue for claimants everywhere else in the country (or to existing claimants in Ashton-under-Lyme who are either in a couple, have children or are disabled) for the next few years.

But how much better off will UC claimants be if they manage to find a job? Will they have a marginal withdrawal rate of 65%, 76%, 79% or 85%? In other words, will they keep 35p for every £1 they earn, 24p, 21p or 15p? A couple of clues here.

Place your bets here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Sorry! It was just a joke that appears to have backfired slightly.."

Using a cheery grin to try and disguise his embarrassment Iain Duncan Smith apologised to Sunday Telegraph reading 3rd Agers over comments he had made during an interview with the newspaper, which he said had been wildly misinterpreted.  "I was just having a bit of a laugh after a particularly boisterous Saturday night out with the boys" he said "and unfortunately my remarks were taken as being a serious threat of an intended government crackdown on a section of society which was and is wholly undeserving of it".  He added "Obviously I am a more convincing joker than I had ever given myself credit for being, and I apologise fulsomely for any distress I may have caused by my remarks" continuing " I have promised the Prime Minister I will not do it again, and will concentrate my energies on attacking those that deserve it; which is a long list indeed, but pensioners certainly aren't on it, as as since yesterday I have crossed them off it."   

"We are coming for you next" Iain Duncan Smith warns Sunday Telegraph reading 3rd Agers ...

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Telegraph the Work and Pensions Secretary informed its elderly readers that if they could afford to pay for the Sunday Telegraph they obviously had far too much money and should not expect to receive "something for nothing handouts from the state" for much longer. 

"It's all very well these people claiming that without Winter Fuel Payments, and free Bus passes and TV licences, they wouldn't have the money to afford to buy the Telegraph" he said "but why should the state be subsidising this stay at home, cosy chair by the fireside reading what is undoubtedly the finest newspaper in the land as a prelude to watching Countdown lifestyle ?", adding "and why should the state provide the means whereby they are able to indulge in reckless gambling by giving them free bus passes to take them to and from Bingo? It's madness."   

In a further indication of how serious a problem he regards it as Duncan Smith also said "Poor Widows in Mansions, I have had them up to here.  I'm going to means test them all in respect of everything until the pips squeak.  Thanks to UC I've now got all the technology to do it you know."

The interview came to an abrupt and unscheduled end when Mr Duncan Smith was suddenly collected by some rather burly gentlemen who said they had been sent from Number 10 to escort him to an urgent meeting with the PM.  Mr Duncan Smith was heard to be muttering something about "pensions triple lock, my arse" as they led him away.

As I was saying yesterday...

... in the context of the £500 a week benefit cap (of which I am broadly supportive; in practice it is a cap on Housing Benefit paid to private landlords):

... the notion that because of the cap loads of people have suddenly found themselves a job is absolutely fanciful. Out of 5,000,000 welfare claimants, if 8,000 find a job over a period of a few months, that proves f- all.

BobE emails in a slightly more sophisticated analysis and rebuttal in The Guardian:

Iain Duncan Smith has been accused of misrepresenting government statistics in order to claim his cap on benefits was driving people to find work.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on Friday released figures showing the number of people expected to be hit by the cap – which comes into force this week in London before being introduced across the rest of the country – had fallen from 56,000 to 40,000, with 8,000 claimants finding work through JobCentre Plus. (1)

The work and pensions secretary hailed the figures, saying the cap had provided a "strong incentive" for people to look for jobs, even before it had started to affect their incomes. "Already we've seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact," Duncan Smith told the Daily Mail.

But Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and a former chief economist at the DWP, said there was "no evidence at all" that the cap had affected people's behaviour.

"The actual analysis published by the Department for Work and Pensions makes it quite clear that they do not attempt to analyse any impact of behavioural change and that there is as yet no evidence one way or the other that there is behavioural change," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. "It may be that the benefit cap has indeed had the effect that Iain Duncan Smith would like it to have. That is perfectly possible but without doing the analysis – and it has not been done – you simply cannot say that and you shouldn't say it."

Portes said it was part of a "consistent pattern" which threatened to undermine public confidence in official statistics.

"I think it is very unfortunate. These statistics are very important. Government analysts, economists statisticians work very hard to produce and they provide important information to the public. It is very important that ministers should not seek to misrepresent what those stats actually do or don't show. That detracts from the public's faith in the analysis produced by government statisticians. This is, I am afraid, a consistent pattern of trying to draw out of the statistics things which they simply don't show."

1) Ho hum, that might well be 8,000 people who were terrorised into taking an unpaid job via the silly "back to work" scheme, making the comparison even less meaningful.

Tories debunk one of their own myths...

The Tories came up with the fundamentally good idea of capping Housing Benefit payments to "private" landlords, both

a) directly via the £400 weekly upper limit, which still seems far too generous to me and

b) indirectly by capping the total welfare payments which any household can receive at £500 a week. Except in the most unusual cases/outright fraud, no workless household gets anywhere near £500 a week in income support, Child Tax Credits etc, so effectively this means that Housing Benefit (which rather bizarrely is considered to be a welfare payment to the household, not the landlord) will be capped at £200 a week or so (which seems "about right" to me).

Now, somehow unable to sell this simple but fair proposition (perhaps IDS realised he wouldn't be able to smuggle it past the Home-Owner-Ists?), they came up with the myth that millions of workless households were getting £500 a week in benefits as part of their divide-and-conquer approach to government, cue dozens of outraged readers' letters and angry pub conversations etc.

IDS now finds himself under attack for the apparent harshness of this measure (having oversold it) and is backtracking wildly. From the BBC - click and highlight to see how many such households there really are:

The number of households that will be affected by a new £500 a week benefit cap has fallen by over a quarter, the Department for Work and Pensions says.

The government initially estimated that 56,000 households would see their benefits reduced by the policy, losing on average around £93 per week. It now expects 40,000 households to be affected.

Liam Byrne or Iain Duncan Smith?

Click here to find out:

That's why we need a different approach [to welfare] founded on three principles.

First, people must be better off in work than living on benefits. We would make work pay by... supporting employers who pay the living wage. Second, we would match rights with responsibilities. We would ensure that no adult will be able to be live on the dole for over two years and no young person for over a year. They will be offered a real job with real training, real prospects and real responsibility...

Third, we must do more to strengthen the old principle of contribution: there are lots of people right now who feel they pay an awful lot more in than they ever get back. That should change. We should start by letting councils give priority in social housing allocations to those who work and contribute to their community.

We believe Britain can only overcome the enormous challenges we face if all of us – from top to bottom – play our part.

H/t Bob E.

'I can barely scrape by on £1,581 a week': Iain Duncan Smith defends his salary

From The Daily Mail:


Iain Duncan Smith today insisted he needs every penny of the £1,581 a week he receives as his MP's and Minister's salary as he defended wide-ranging increases to MPs' salaries which take effect today.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said the Coalition's salary reforms would allow politicians to 'break free' of dependency on lucrative non-executive directorships and 'consultancy' work. But when challenged on whether he could live on £225..86 per day, Mr Duncan Smith replied: 'If I had to, I would.'

The former Conservative leader told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We MPs are in an economic mess, thanks in no small part to The Telegraph. We inherited a problem where we simply do not have the money to spend on all the things we would like to. What I am trying to do is get this instead of spending money on stuff that doesn't seem important to us.'

"there are no problems with UC and it will roll out as planned"

The delay appears to be an admission by the Government that they do not have the training, computer programmes and experience in place to avoid embarrassing mistakes which could lead to people not receiving the benefits to which they are entitled.     In its announcement of the delay the Department of Work and Pension made no attempt to explain why it was unable to proceed as planned.

Absolutely not so, as a government spokesperson quickly made clear :-

"Now look here, when will you naysayers and disbelievers stop "reading between the lines" like this ...  UC is on track, it will remain on track, we are simply slowing down a bit, giving ourselves time to assimilate important new information, like that the f-ing IT doesn't in a lot of cases exist yet, and where it does exist the f-ing software stuck on it doesn't f-ing work and ....  er sorry about that, ignore the last few comments please, it is a really tiring and stressful job being a spokesperson for the DWP what I meant to say was, and on this you can quote me, this decision has only been taken because ..."

"it was 'sensible' to start with one area* before rolling it out to the other three in July.  It will allow us to make any changes that we feel we need to make and see what works and what doesn’t.”

*that area being "a single job centre in Ashton-under-Lyne".

Not so Universal Credit: Government puts the brakes on new benefits programme trials