Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend is exactly right. All our reforms—reducing the workless numbers and ensuring that the economically inactive are going back to work, saving money for the Exchequer and for taxpayers—are in play. Every one has been opposed by the Opposition and we have had no answer about what they would do instead. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has said, they dance around on all the issues and the truth is that they have no policy. The welfare party is bankrupt.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Under the section of the report containing the key findings, paragraph 18 states:
“Throughout the programme, the Department has lacked a detailed view of how Universal Credit is meant to work.”
Will the Secretary of State explain how that happened? Does it not show that he lost control of the project from the very beginning?
Mr Duncan Smith
The original plan to have an “Agile” process meant that by 2011 the plan would be formulated and could be delivered against. In 2011, I was concerned about the failure to deliver—that was meant to be part of the process—and that is why I instituted the changes in 2012. We will have that plan ready. It will be announced to Parliament, it will be stuck to and it will deliver in time and on budget, so the NAO is right and I fully agree with it.