Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves has criticised the Department for Work and Pensions after it has emerged that claimants in one of the regions piloting the Universal Credit scheme has disappeared from official statistics on unemployment. The news came to light after civil servants in the DWP realised that the new computer system dealing with Universal Credit was incompatible with current methods of counting the number of unemployed people in the UK.
While supporting the aims of Universal Credit, the opposition has consistently looked to criticise the implementation of the scheme, and this latest story will only add to its criticism. Reeves argued in response to the news that “this is another error by incompetent Ministers in their botched roll-out of Universal Credit…how can we have any confidence in their ability to deliver this flagship project?”
