February 25: Fast running out of credit

Iain Duncan Smith, the self-proclaimed “Quiet Man” of politics, was tasked with one of the most onerous challenges – getting to grips with a benefits system that was no longer fit for purpose.

Yet, while his newly-introduced Universal Credit has promised to deliver much-needed savings through providing an easier route into work from benefits, its efficacy is still open to question – not least owing to a desperately botched launch which has cost the taxpayer dear.

The Department for Work and Pensions has so far spent £700m on Universal Credit, justifying such exorbitant expenditure on the promise of jam tomorrow rather than what has been delivered to date. Fewer than 18,000 people were claiming Universal Credit by last October – equivalent to just 0.3 per cent of those eligible.

Nor does it help that Mr Duncan Smith has been so evasive on the subject. Dr Stephen Brien, dubbed the “architect” of Universal Credit, has claimed that Mr Duncan Smith was aware that its successful implementation looked “very stark” before assuring MPs in September 2012 that the programme would be delivered “on time, as it is, and on budget”.

Furthermore, the department chose to fight a lengthy legal battle to prevent the publication of programme “milestones” against which it could be held to account publicly.

The Public Accounts Committee accepts that the department has since become more open about its difficulties, but insists it has further to go – and this must start with the public face of the programme, Mr Duncan Smith himself.

This obfuscation is no doubt owing to the fact that the success of Universal Credit has been widely seen as the Tories’ trump card at this May’s election.However, at present there is no little irony in the fact that a system that was designed to save taxpayers money is currently squandering it at an alarming rate.

A plan for farming

Truss’s growth vision has merit

IN keeping with the mantra being repeated ad infinitum by her Conservative party colleagues, Liz Truss has promised farmers that

she has a “long-term economic plan” to address the many issues that face their industry.

Rather than sound like a stuck record, however, the Leeds-educated Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in fact showed a keen understanding of current challenges during her speech yesterday to the National Farmers’ Union’s annual conference, setting out four key areas to help the industry grow.

Each was rooted in common sense – from simplifying EU rules and regulations in order to promote greater innovation among food producers in regions such as Yorkshire, to developing an in-built resilience that enables the industry to withstand volatility in global markets.

Price volatility, which has resulted in a fall of up to 40 per cent in farmers’ income from milk sales and means many are now selling milk for less than the cost of production, is not a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon and as such requires a considered strategy that Ms Truss seems determined to institute.

Where a pinch of salt may be required is in Ms Truss’s assertion that buying more high quality British food in schools, hospitals and public sector canteens would create up to £400m in new business for local producers. Given the continued squeeze on public spending this sounds rather optimistic, to say the least.

Quick switching

System favours the big banks

DESPITE celebrating record mortgage lending last year as it marked its 150th anniversary, Yorkshire Building Society still falls into the bracket of “challenger institutions” seeking to take on the big banks.

Yet this is made more difficult by the desultory pace of switching services, which means customers must wait a full seven days when swapping their current account from one provider

to another.

Certainly there is no reason why, as chief executive Chris Pilling says, switching banks cannot be “as easy as downloading an app” to a mobile phone.

Obviously this would be beneficial to successful yet smaller institutions such as Yorkshire Building Society, but more importantly it would introduce the increased competition that is necessary to ensure customers secure the

best deal.