Friday 26 April 2013

DWP issues “simple rules” for Universal Credit launch


“I really wouldn’t bother applying, if I were you” says DWP spokesperson, adding “as so few of you are likely to qualify
 

The new information on the stringent qualifying criteria for Universal Credit (UC) came as the DWP confirmed that it was about to run the first stringent pilot test of the new systems that have been introduced in the DWP and HMRC to manage “many benefits under one label” UC, which will replace a number of currently separate benefits. 

Setting out the new criteria in detail the spokesperson explained that "UC will only go to single people; with no disabilities and no children, who are fit and able to work" quickly continuing “Who are not entitled to Housing Benefit or mortgage interest support, have been unemployed for no more than six months, do not have parents or siblings or partners with whom they are living in sin for whom they exercise any form of caring responsibility, and who were born in the Tameside area, preferably on a Tuesday in a year the digits of which are exactly divisible by 4 and who like listening to King Crimson and home baking and flower arranging"

This radical redefining of who can qualify for UC is fully expected to deliver the immense savings in welfare expenditure Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has constantly been assuring Chancellor George Osborne UC would deliver, ever since the Chancellor agreed to provide the DWP with the countless hundreds of £millions extra funding required to deliver the IT hardware and software which UC required.

The DWP spokesperson also stressed that the pilot exercise would start shortly, as soon as “the pilot claimant” had been identified, adding that after several weeks work by a crack DWP investigative team bolstered by support from Tameside CID the department felt it was “close to identifying our man”.

The “pilot test” is likely to involve a “parallel running” exercise involving processing the pilot claim on both the new IT systems and manually, to see which works and which is quickest.  The DWP spokesperson said that should it prove in both cases to be the manual system that should not be regarded as “bad news” because it meant the full national roll out of UC could proceed whilst the Department concentrated on getting that new IT system up and running, without its unavailability hindering the garnering of the massive savings that UC will deliver, whilst adding that the DWP might have to run a swift recruitment exercise to ensure sufficient “paper and pen familiar” staff were on-hand to “process the claims from people who had given up trying to actually lodge an on-line claim, and simply printed the screen details out and walked them into their nearest JCP+”

(with thanks to MW for the steer)

5 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Good news! They finally found the one potential claimant this afternoon.

Even better news! She's starting a new job next week!!

The search for a live test case goes on...

Woodsy42 said...

You must be mistaken. Nobody likes King Crimson AND flower arranging. Must have been a fraudulent applicant.

Mark Wadsworth said...

W42, thanks! That proves it then. All UC claimants are fraudsters and charlatans the whole welfare system can be shut down tomorrow.

Bob E said...

MW - it shouldn't be that difficult to adopt the information provided by Woodsy42 into that "signature strengths" on-line questionnaire (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/25/dwp_psych_test/) (http://www.behaviourlibrary.com/strengths.php) that the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team developed for the DWP, and which the DWP "encourages" its clients to use, by amending it to include separate

"do you like listening to King Crimson" and

"do you like home baking and flower arranging"

questions, and anyone who answers "Yes" to both will immediately receive an on-screen message which says

"You are quite clearly a would be fraudulent or charlatan claimant: Do not proceed with a claim. Your details have been passed to the DWP anti-fraud unit and you should expect a visit from them shortly."

That way, something which has so far received a mainly negative press for "misleading JSA recipient potential job seekers" could be turned around and shown to be a brilliant anti skivers and shirkers, fraudulent claimant identifier" tool.

Sarton Bander said...

Whilst benefitz are funded from income tax and not equally given it's a good idea for them to be as small as possible.