Unclear Benefits: Reforming the Department for Work and Pensions

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest discussion paper, written by Tim Ambler, proposes a number of reforms to improve the efficiency and value for money of the Department for Work and Pensions.

This paper is part of the Adam Smith Institute’s “Reforming the Civil Service” series.

• The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has responsibility for a number of functions that are currently performed inefficiently and represent poor value for taxpayer money;

• The Department should be restructured in line with the Ibbs guidelines, with a small policy and legislation core and policies being delivered by executive agencies;

• Various arm’s length bodies—such as The Pensions Ombudsman, The Money and Pensions Service and The National Employment Savings Trust—should be closed or moved to the private sector;

• The Department’s annual plan should have specific quantified targets for performance attributable to the Department or, better, one of its executive agencies;

  • The DWP annual report should then show the results against those targets and what we can learn from the comparisons;

• Taken together, if all the recommendations within this paper were implemented, this would amount to a saving of 19,621 staff (21.9% of the present total).