Labour says ministers in disarray as leaked documents reveal two options for saving project to merge benefits and tax credits.
Ministers attempting to put the troubled universal credit welfare reform programme back on track have been presented with a radical plan to restart the scheme and write off £119m of work over the past three years.
The proposals would create a much more web-based system, reducing the need for jobcentre staff, but putting the whole scheme back to "phase one".
The plan is detailed in more than 150 pages of leaked documents that present two options for rescuing the huge project to merge six major benefits and tax credits into one payment. The other plan would attempt to improve the existing system and build on the investment already made. Both plans were drawn up by civil servants at the direction of Department for Work and Pensions ministers.
The documents include a risk assessment of each option, which criticises both plans and warns that a maximum of 25,000 people – just 0.2% of all benefit recipients – will be transferred on to the programme by the next general election, whichever route is taken.
The risk assessment warns that the plan to start again, the "design and build" web-based scheme, is "unproven ... at this scale". It says the plan to fix three years of work on universal credit is still "not achievable within the preferred timescales", describing it as unrealistic.
The scheme has suffered management and computer problems since work began in 2010, causing Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, at the start of the year to push back the timetable for rollout. Labour says the scheme is in "total chaos".
Continue reading at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/31/universal
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