In a Guardian report, the Treasury has still not signed off on the government's troubled universal credit benefits reform, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, has revealed.{jcomments on}
He made the admission that the project was being drip-fed money by the Treasury after Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee, repeatedly pressed senior civil servants about its financial status.
It the latest sign that the Treasury is keeping a very close eye on universal credit, the responsibility of work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, after it was criticised by the National Audit Office for its "weak management, ineffective control and poor governance".
However, in a parliamentary hearing, Kerslake acknowledged: "We shouldn't beat about the bush: it hasn't been signed off. What we've had is a set of conditional reassurances about progress and the Treasury have released money accordingly. That is one of the key controls."
Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, said the Treasury and the Cabinet Office's Major Projects Authority "played a very, very clear role in bringing it to the attention" of Duncan Smith that the project was "way off track" at the start of last year. However, he said it was a good example where the most senior people in Whitehall had "intervened very strongly" to help sort it out.
Read the full story in the Guardian
