Still think it's about saving money and not class warfare?

Welfare reform plan deemed 'staggering' waste of money by Labour
Government under fire as figures show universal credit scheme is costing £225,000 per claimant to implement
Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
theguardian.com, Wednesday 5 February 2014 23.16 GMT


Duncan Smith admitted last year that he would miss his original deadline of placing all existing and new benefit claimants on universal credit by 2017.
Photograph: Allstar/Geoff Newton


Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reform plan is costing £225,000 per person to implement, according to new figures, which prompted the Labour party to accuse the government of wasting money on a "staggering" scale.

In the latest blow to the universal credit scheme, which has fallen behind schedule and will not be fully implemented until halfway through the next parliament, the figures show that £612m has been spent on introducing the new system since 2010.

Just 2,720 people claimed universal credit in October 2013, giving the figure of £225,000 per claimant. The department is way behind its original target of ensuring that 1m claimants would be moved to universal credit by April this year. If 1m were claiming universal credit the start up costs would be £612 per person.

Duncan Smith was forced to admit last year that he would miss his original deadline of placing all existing and new benefit claimants on universal credit by 2017. It is being introduced in stages and is now "live" in seven areas. It will be introduced in Bath and Harrogate this month and in Shotton later this spring.

Esther McVey, the work and pensions minister, disclosed how much had so far been spent on UC in a parliamentary reply to Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary. McVey said that the government had spent £612m of the £2bn earmarked in 2010 for implementing universal credit. The government spent £100m in 2011-12, £320m in 2012-13 and £192m in 2013-14.

Chris Bryant MP, the shadow welfare reform minister, said: "Iain Duncan Smith's flagship policy has been plagued with delay after delay from the outset and millions of pounds have been wasted. We were once told universal credit would be on time and on budget and that a million people would be on the system by April this year, but this has come to nothing. It is staggering that the government has spent £225,000 per person on this project.

"With poor initial decisions by ministers and endless indecision from Downing Street putting the whole scheme in jeopardy, it is increasingly difficult to have any confidence in the government's handling of welfare."

A spokesperson for Duncan Smith said: "If Labour think universal credit can be brought in without spending any money up front it's no wonder they cost taxpayers so much by botching the introduction of tax credits so badly. Over 6m people will be claiming universal credit by 2017, which will bring a £35bn benefit to society, and our safe rollout continues with more people claiming every day."

Duncan Smith was heavily criticised by MPs over universal credit, which brings together six existing benefits, when he appeared before the commons work and pensions select committee earlier this week. MPs accused the work and pensions secretary of hiding failings in the IT system after he disclosed in his department's annual report – the day after he gave evidence to the committee – that £41m had been written off.

The National Audit Office (NAO) challenged Duncan Smith's claim that the IT failings had only cost £41m. It said that the DWP had been forced to write down £91m of software assets three times more quickly than had been planned. The department said it had written down, rather than written off, the £91m.




www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/05/...ith-universal-credit

There was nothing wrong with the way it was, you would think the 'conservative' thing to do would be to leave it alone.

It's never been about the money. It's ideological.

www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA11-022AB.pdf

See page 2:

This report was written years ago, earlier than even the publication date of 16th February, 2011. Anyone could have reported on this at the time, but we see far too little real journalism.

andyh wrote:
conservative-averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values:

www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/conservative

terrorism-the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims:

www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/terrorism

You decide.

I hate to say anything that supports these cunts but I always look at all the evidence to hand....

Child Poverty Action group compiled all the data on the benefits cuts. They have taken £2.3bn a year off claimants. That means that Universal Credit will pretty much pay for itself within a year. That's a good statistic to be honest (from a purely practical standpoint of course. They are still cunts).

What people should be focusing on is the fact that so much money has been taken away from the needy, the EU has declare the Welfare Reform Act 2012 basically illegal and if multinational corporations paid their sodding taxes we could totally wipe the deficit in 43 years rather than the 1,100+ it would take by attacking those on benefits.

"It was obvious to all men that beggars and thieves were everywhere. And we found the cause was that they were idle; and the cure must be to make them work... by providing work ourselves, so that the strong and sturdy vagabond may be made to earn his living. For this we need a house of work."

This is a long tradition in England, you can see it as far back as Tudor times with the influence of Religion and the sense of entitlement/privilege amongst the "nobles".

This was a punishment passed by parliament in 1597:
"“Every vagabond or beggar... shall be stripped naked from the middle upwards and publicly whipped until his or her body be bloody, and forth with sent to the parish where he was born... If any vagabond or beggar return again, he shall suffer death by hanging”

"In the late 19th century Arnold White a great British Statesman, who's expertise would be welcome in the current political climate – argued that only one in five jobless Britons were ‘genuinely unemployed’. Another 40 per cent were simply ‘feckless and incapable’, while the remaining 40 per cent were wholly degenerate. "

What a nice guy.

I think this is some religious thing, "The devil makes work for idle hands" and all that, maybe it's a fear thing on the part of rulers?

They can't have people lying around doing what they want all day, it would reflect badly on them?

The rich NEED unemployed people, they keep wages down.

Its also easily affordable as the middle classes can easily cover the 3% of the DWP budget needed for JSA.

Ofc they give the impression that its the unemployed who are costing 'us' so much money somehow and not the wars in the middle east, donations to foreign countries who don't need it, paying off central bankers and bank bailouts and not forgetting the 32 trillion dollars untaxed sat in the cayman islands....

Divide and conquer while they go laughing all the way to the leeds.

Why do you think the rich need unemployed people, surely they can just outsource or replace humans with technology nowadays?

simulacra wrote:
Eventually gradually, yes.
Not overnight, during the period of automation as more and more human labour becomes redundant they need to prevent uprisings and unrest. Social welfare is just one of the tools, just as tax credits top up low wages to do the same thing.
The big picture would include media brainwashing, poisoning food and water supplies, chemical dumbing down and educating people to accept authoritarian principles by primarily withholding information that would result in people getting pissed off.

Eg the 32 trillion in the caymans which the media didn't bother with, instead its doleys,imigrants,doleys,immigrants,doleys,immigrants and on and on and ariston.

One of the opinions expressed by the less rational comment writers in the Telegraph was for a return to the 19th Century social structure. This would mean a return to the rich having servants, the poor forced into workhouses, only the wealthy able to vote or have education, absolutely no social mobility and a two tier legal system.

When these wingnuts talk about a return to Victorian values and making Britain "Great" again they are expressing this desire in code but if one enquires deeper, they will confess to holding the ambition described above.

Propaganda like Downtown Abbey or Brideshead Revisited is pretty much this wet dream and the lesson of the great Charles Dickens who actually bore witness to that society, have altogether disappeared from our screens.

mikey mikey wrote:
They couldn't do that without ending up on the wrong end of a rope,bullet or knife basically.
They can fantasise all they want.

mikey mikey wrote:
Brilliant,easier to put poison in their food.

It's in the water

As i pointed out in the thread with the pie chart that shows each individual type of benefit at the moment,when universal credit is country wide it will hide all the unemployment figures etc so it's probably worth it to the people in the square mile and parliament to pay for such a valuable tool of deception.

No more unemployed or sick just universal credit customers along with pensioners and poor payed workers.

It was also my thoughts that Local Authoritys were getting a bit vocal about how much housing benefit/LHA is being paid out.
& it's only going to rise. The housing bubble cannot be allowed to burst

Another for those that care for the stats is that centralising housing payments via UC will help hide the fact the housing is unaffordable for many.