Blinkered minister forging ahead with damaging job cuts - Mulholland

12.00.00am GMT Wed 25th Jan 2006

At a meeting of the Department of Work and Pensions Select Committee today the Minister for Work, Margaret Hodge, was criticised by the Liberal Democrats for forging ahead with job cuts at the Department in the face of a catastrophic deterioration in the services provided to vulnerable people.

After the meeting Liberal Democrat member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, Greg Mulholland MP, said "Over the last few months we have seen many vulnerable people forced to wait weeks for benefit payments. We've seen benefit call centres abandoning new IT at such a rate that the Chief Executive cannot keep up with what is going on. And we've seen plummeting morale amongst benefit officers who simply cannot do their jobs properly.

"Ministers are so afraid of Gordon Brown that they will not halt the programme of job cuts despite the problems. Instead they are trying to use other budgets to employ temporary staff, or cancelling staff leave.

"Ministers must put the cuts on hold until service delivery reaches acceptable levels, and they must cease the roll-out of a computer system that is not working."