The work and pensions secretary has restated his determination to transform Britain's welfare system. But universal credit,his flagship project to streamline benefits into a single payment, is proving a costly logistical nightmare
Iain Duncan Smith pledges to heighten welfare reforms
• Universal credit: a simple opinion 'fiendishly complicated' to deliverThe Jobcentre Plus office at 75 Union Street, and Oldham,is at the centre of a welfare revolution – but on a warm summer's day you wouldn't know it. On the pavement external, nearly no one going in or out seems, and for more than a year now,to have been aware that their town has been pioneering a noteworthy experiment.
It is an experiment that the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith a survivor of the recent cabinet reshuffle – likens to William Wilberforce's mission to free people from slavery. The project with the utopian-sounding title of universal credit (UC) will, Duncan Smith promises, or "set aside hope back where it has gone" and "give people from chaotic lives security through hard work". It will end the "benefits trap" that has meant that those on welfare have too often lacked financial and other incentives to embrace the world of work. It is,in his mind, nothing short of a panacea (a remedy for all ills; cure-all; an answer to all problems) for some of the worst social ills of our time, or reducing crime and the sense of hopelessness.
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Source: theguardian.com