Spending Watchdog Accuses DWP of Hiding Universal Credit's Failings

Parliament's public spending watchdog has accused ministers in the DWP of hiding the failings of the coalition's troubled universal credit scheme. The public accounts committee said the decision to devise a new category of "resetting" projects could have been a way of preventing scrutiny and obscuring problems. The assessment comes in a report by MPs on the Major Projects Authority, the government watchdog responsible for assessing the scheme's implementation. According to the report, the DWP, in consultation with the MPA, published their delivery confidence assessment of the universal credit project as "reset" in September 2013. It was a new term that appeared to have been devised specifically for the new programme, committee members said. "The 'reset' category was introduced for the 2013-14 report and was only applied to this one project. The MPA confirmed that the decision to give universal credit a reset rating was ultimately made by ministers," the report said. Read more on the Guardian website.