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Government to provide Universal Credit reports to committee
The government will make Universal Credit reports that were kept confidential for years available to the Work and Pensions Committee in a concession to Labour.
At an opposition day debate on the impact assessments this afternoon, work and pensions secretary David Gauke said the reports will be given to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on a “confidential basis” by Christmas.
Labour had called the debate to try and force the government to publish the reports. The opposition party said the government had so far ignored a ruling last year by the Information Commissioner that five of the reports should be released to campaigners because their publication would be in the public interest.
Mr Gauke said the “challenge” for any government is to “strike the right balance between transparency and encouraging evaluation and debate”. He said the assessments are only “useful” if authors can express their views “fairly and frankly”.
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Labour MP Frank Field, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, questioned how the expectation that his committee will keep the reports confidential will work.
He said: “What sense of secrecy or of honour binds us when we get these documents? Because even if we only read them it’s surely going to affect how we pose questions. If it was all so good then we’d have had these documents a long, long time ago.”
Mr Field also said 146 Department for Work and Pensions staff will be volunteering at a charity in his constituency, set up to eradicate hunger locally. They will fill Christmas hampers this weekend because “they know where this benefit is going and they are unhappy”.
