DWP can handle welfare IT changes, says minister

The minister is understood to have won the political support of Downing Street to press ahead with welfare reform built around a new universal credit that will eventually save the taxpayer billions despite its initial start-up costs, reports the Guardian . In a sign of his confidence, Duncan Smith told the work and pensions select committee on 15 September 2010: "We have to make savings, that is clear, but we will make savings better by reforming the system." He confirmed that the universal credit – a merger of a host of benefits and tax credits – was his favoured reform, adding that it was "the idea with which he had come into the department". He said he was now trying to prove to the Treasury that the system would work, adding that the IT implications were only middling and would anyway be administered by his department, which had a good track record on IT. He said the modelling revealed that the cost of the scheme was lower than previously thought, since a less complex benefits system, combined with more generous tapers, made it easier for claimants to realise they would be better off in work. His permanent secretary Leigh Lewis told the committee that due to the current complexity of the benefits system, he had personally seen experienced jobcentre staff take 45 minutes to work out whether a single parent would be better off in work. Duncan Smith said a universal credit would give the DWP real-time information on household income, as opposed to the current out-of-date information on an individual's income. Discussing the attitude of the chancellor, George Osborne, he said: "He wants me, quite rightly, to be able to demonstrate the reforms that I propose work – I believe they do – and that they will ultimately improve the situation in the sense that we have a better process for getting people back into work." Detailed modelling is now being made available by his department. He projected that one-quarter of the 2.2m claimants on incapacity benefit would be deemed fit for work after they completed a new round of medical tests. The DWP is beginning to test existing IB claimants at a target rate of 10,000 a month over the next three years. His estimate implies that at least 500,000 people on IB at present are fit to work. He also projected that a further 58% of the group would be able to undertake some form of work-related employment. A further 19% would be unable to do any work. On 16 September, DWP minister Chris Grayling told Parliament in a written answer that he has approved extra spending of £59m with Atos Healthcare "for the retesting and transition of incapacity benefit claimants to employment and support allowance to be added to the existing medical services contract," to August 2012.