Guy Opperman
Main Page: Guy Opperman (Conservative - Hexham)Department Debates - View all Guy Opperman's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Lady, of course, misrepresents the position. [Interruption.] The money that we were talking about yesterday, the write-offs, is for technology that will not be used, and the write-down is equipment we will be using over the next 12 months. The other value she mentioned is for equipment that will be written down over a period of years, once we start to use it. We cannot write it down until it is actually in use.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
The situation is that welfare required reform and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) made clear, work was not paying. I welcome the phased roll-out of universal credit, but I am still at a loss as to the Labour position. Can the Secretary of State advise my constituents in Northumberland why he chose to test, learn and then roll out a project of such a large scale that it will be truly transformative?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is exactly right. The point is that we intervened early when we thought there was a problem, and we did not deliberately drive it through to roll-out. Quite frankly, we will have got this right because, unlike Labour, we are testing the system and learning first, and then finally implementing it. My hon. Friend is right: we have no idea what Labour Members really want. They just want to criticise but they have no other proposals.