IDS loses legal challenge to keep Universal Credit problems secret
Iain Duncan Smith has lost his latest attempt to keep potentially damning Universal Credit documents secret.
If this sounds a little familiar, it's because this isn't the first time the department has been ordered to publish these papers. In fact, it's now the third.
In 2012, Tony Collins and John Slater separately fired off Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for several reports relating to the early stages of Universal Credit. The documents detail any problems Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) staff imagined could arise from the programme, information about issues which did occur, and the outcome of a high-level review. Their requests were flatly refused.
The pair complained to the Information Commissioner who decided that all but one of the reports should be published. The DWP then started what has become a lengthy and costly legal battle to keep them hidden. Four years on from when the FOI requests were first sent in, a second judge has now demanded that all the papers are released.
So just what does IDS have to hide? We can only guess but there is a good chance the reports will reveal his department were misleading the public about the progress of the programme. To find out a bit more it's worth looking back to what was happening around the time the FOI requests were being dealt with.
In November 2011 the DWP issued a press release announcing that over one million people would be claiming universal credit by April 2014, with 12 million claimants moving onto the new benefit by 2017.
So just what does IDS have to hide? We can only guess but there is a good chance the reports will reveal his department were misleading the public about the progress of the programme. To find out a bit more it's worth looking back to what was happening around the time the FOI requests were being dealt with.
In November 2011 the DWP issued a press release announcing that over one million people would be claiming universal credit by April 2014, with 12 million claimants moving onto the new benefit by 2017.
As far as I can tell Universal Credit is now dead in the water. It is massively over budget and behind schedule, IDS was the only cabinet minister who supported it and David Cameron was the only one who supported IDS.
