Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 27
60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025
Published 9 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Department told us that, if implemented successfully, its plans to upgrade its legacy IT could transform its customer service and productivity, enabling it to provide services where customers could do more for themselves where they are able to, and to take away some of the more administrative tasks that staff spent too much time doing to free up their capacity to spend more time serving customers. It said that it had just launched a customer account which would enable citizens to do things across multiple benefits, rather than just one by one.40 However, we have previously noted that major digital transformation programmes have often failed to deliver as intended, with government struggling to modernise a legacy environment at the same time as harbouring a major ambition to exploit opportunities from new technologies.41 38 Qq 62-63 39 Qq 58-59, 68-69 40 Qq 53, 64 41 Committee of Public Accounts, Government’s relationship with digital technology suppliers, Twenty-Seventh Report of Session 2024–25, HC 640, 6 June 2025, p 1 15
From: Public Accounts Committee, 60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 (HC 1447), 9 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 April 2026 (deadline 9 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with four of the Committee's five areas of recommendation and disagrees with the recommendation to publish regular jobcentre-level performance data.
- On integrating skills into the Jobs and Careers Service, the government agrees, naming "a key milestone" as bringing the National Careers Service together with Jobcentre Plus from 1 October 2026, with an update due in Spring 2026.
- On the shorter first work coach meeting, the government agrees and says it "will be undertaking a qualitative research project" to gather claimant insight, including feedback on the length and content of the meeting.
- The government disagrees with publishing jobcentre-level data, saying its view "remains that the right level to monitor performance is at a district and local authority level", and points to its quarterly Labour Market Insights publication.
- On PIP claim times, the government agrees and says it "will however write to the Committee to provide the information available as requested, by the end of March 2026".