Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right: we cannot build a building on an uneven foundation. That is why we had to get state pension reform right with a single, simple, predictable state pension. That makes private saving and automatic enrolment far more effective, and I am grateful for his support for that principle.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

10. What assessment he has made of the preparedness of the universal credit IT delivery system.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The IT system to support the pathfinder roll-out from April 2013 is up and running. As Members would expect, we continue to monitor, test and learn. That system is a crucial aspect of our pathfinder approach—although not all of it, by any means—which will guarantee the careful and deliberate wider roll-out of universal credit.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but will he confirm that three of the pathfinders are not going ahead precisely because the computer system is not ready? Will he also confirm that in the one pathfinder that is going ahead, the staff have one computer screen on which to record information, and the rest of the claimant information has be written down by pen on a notepad? That is the situation, is it not? How can the Secretary of State possibly come to this House and justify that as being satisfactory, after years of preparation?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong. All the pathfinders are going ahead. The IT system is but a part of that, and goes ahead in one of the pathfinders. The other three are already testing all the other aspects of universal credit and in July will, essentially, themselves roll out the remainder of the pathfinder, and more than 7,000 people will be engaged in it. All that nonsense the hon. Gentleman has just said is completely untrue.