Speaking at the National Housing Federation conference in Birmingham Christian Guy, Managing Director at the Centre for Social Justice, said that delays of a couple of months would not make much of a long-term difference to the success of the programme.
‘Yes there have been delays, but by and large, by 2017 it will be delivered and the bigger picture is a good one,’ he said.
The implementation of universal credit – in which several benefits, including housing benefit, combined into one monthly payment that is administered by one IT system – came under fire from the National Audit Office earlier this month.
The watchdog said the project suffered from ‘weak management, ineffective control and poor governance’, warning the Department for Work and Pensions had been ‘too ambitious’ in its timetable.
The CSJ was set up by Iain Duncan Smith and has been responsible for leading much of the thinking behind reforms including universal credit.
Mr Guy argued that despite the criticism around the implementation of the policy, there was cross-party support for principle underlying universal credit.
However, he conceded that while he supported the idea behind the bedroom tax, he did not agree with the way it was being carried out because he did not think tenants should not have to pay if there were no properties for them to downsize into.
‘There are things on bedrooms we [the CSJ] would have done differently. The headline might be right, but the reality is not.’
He also said that the government’s £5 billion work programme had been ‘disappointing’.
On the work programme he said: ‘there are questions about its business model. It’s hard to say after a year that it has been a raging success.’