Public Accounts Committee says Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit project is guilty of “shocking failures in management” and is an “unmitigated disaster” (video)

“Not clever enough”: IDS is an unmitigated disaster and a ministerial failure

Today the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, said that Iain Duncan Smith‘s flagship policy, universal credit, was:

“an unmitigated disaster of extraordinary proportions in every aspect of the programme so far”.  

To add insult to injury, today’s Times newspaper printed a story that alleges that IDS and members of his ministerial team approached Conservative party members on the PAC to request that they “point the finger” of blame for the cost overruns and mismanagement at the permanent secretary (the top civil servant) Robert Devereux – a charge that has been denied.

The universal credit project has its fifth new project director, Harold Shiplee and he has undertaken yet another review, its nineteenth in eighteen months. If you are interested to know some of the problems that have arisen during the project then you should listen to this edited edition of BBC Radio 4’s The report from 10 October 2013.

I think that we are beginning to understand why George Osborne is reported to have said that IDS is just “not clever enough” to be a cabinet minister.

Background:

£334m Written-off Or Mismanaged By Iain Duncan Smith In Universal Credit “Disaster”

Related articles

• Corporations are legally defined as people except when they commit a crime
• Regulation is why the Canadian banking system has had no financial crises in 150 years
• What has Goldman Sachs got in common with the new version of the Monopoly board game?
• Right-wing ideology: “government should never interfere with the free market (except when it suits conservatives)”
• Where Are The British Daily Show And Colbert Report?
• RNC claim thirty-five thousand ‘possible’ cases of voter fraud justifies their racist reforms but they’re wrong (again)
• Biased US supreme court strengthens wealthy donors’ influence on political parties
• Supreme Court declares racism is dead in America…..but they forgot to tell Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy…
• Thomas Piketty – Why we need a global wealth tax
• Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart on the 60 minutes gaff
• If you don’t like gays, don’t run a bed and breakfast
• The end of net neutrality is why everything that you enjoy on the internet is about to cost you more
• Gun Control Works and the Australian Experience Proves It
• This is how a highly regulated banking system works and it is what global banking should look like
• NRA Conference Speakers Message To America: Fear Everything And Everyone
• The 24 hour news cycle gives us all heat but very little light
• Irrational Debate And A Misinformed Public: Wealth Inequality And Other Things We Don’t Have To Learn From America (Updated)
• Capitalism: serving God and Mammon?
• If you thought that 1,700 applications for 8 coffee shop jobs was bad you ain’t seen nothing yet!(imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• James O’Brien shows UKIP supporters why facts matter
• Fruitcake or loony? Nigel Farage and UKIP get a kicking on Have I Got News For You
• ‘Matt’ from York is Ill-Informed and Angry but I Don’t Blame Him I Blame the BBC (And The Daily Mail)
• How banks have hoodwinked you over high frequency trading
• David Cameron let’s the cat out of the bag about Maria Miller
• Evidence not ideology: The signal and the noise or lies, more lies, even more lies and government statistics
• Iain Duncan Smith: “On time and on budget” just one more lie from a man who has lied to the public for years (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Public Accounts Committee says Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit project is guilty of “shocking failures in management” and is an “unmitigated disaster” (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Updated With Video: Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister says he ‘believes’ to be true? (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister believes to be true? Part 2 (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Do you want the truth from your government or just what a minister believes to be true? Part 3 (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Migration Myths (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Are You Stupid? What Has Happened To Rational Debate Over Immigration? (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Are You Stupid? What Has Happened To Rational Debate Over Immigration? (Part Two)(imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Faisal Islam’s (not) looking for answers (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• “Murdoch’s World” and praising fox like you should! (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Lord Saatchi: Capitalism isn’t working (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Irrational Debate And A Misinformed Public: “Red Ed” – Is It Really Back To The Future? (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• The “Rank Hypocrisy” Of Political Donations (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Truthiness: The Telegraph is guilty of lazy and biased journalism but, as ever, it’s all the fault of the BBC (imincorrigible.wordpress.com)
• Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism