Troubled Families Programme — House of Commons, 2015-03-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Hilary James Benn (Labour, Centre-left): May I begin by thanking the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement, and for his personal commitment to providing support to local authorities up and down the country that are working with the most excluded families through the troubled families programme It is not often that we in this House pay tribute to public servants, and we do not do it as much as we should, so I would like to thank Louise Casey for the leadership she has shown and all the staff working in all the projects for their extraordinary dedication, patience and commitment. Their skill in, above all, building trust with the families they work with is absolutely fundamental if together they are to succeed We on the Opposition Benches support this important work. As the Secretary of State has generously acknowledged, the previous Labour Government started the family intervention project, and a future Labour Government would want to see this work continue and go from strength to strength As the Secretary of State will know, a number of local authorities and Labour pushed for the original criteria to be broadened to enable local authorities to provide support to those families most in need and to ensure that there was proper long-term follow-up to see whether families could maintain the progress that had been made. I welcome the fact that the Government listened to those representations and made the necessary changes It is clear that we need to provide hands-on support to families with multiple complex needs, in order to help them to break cycles of disadvantage. It is also clear that we need to move away from trying to contain problems, at great expense, towards trying to prevent them in the first place. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the concentration in the most deprived communities of families taking part in the troubled families programme? I ask that because we know that, under this Government, households living in areas that rank in the 10 most deprived communities have seen their local authority spending power reduced by 16 times as much as those in the 10 least deprived communities Demands on children’s services are increasing and the figures show that local authorities are doing their best to protect them. However, the National Audit Office has found that, between 2010-11 and 2014-15, budgeted spending on children’s social care actually fell by 4.3% on average in authorities with the highest cuts in Government funding, compared with real-terms increases of 14.8% in authorities with the lowest cuts. How is that going to help Last August, it was announced that the troubled families programme would be expanded to work with 400,000 more families from 2015 to 2020, with funding of £200 million for 2015-16, but the Secretary of State has just said that he has secured cross-Government support and an additional £200 million for its expansion from 2015 to 2020. Will he confirm whether that £200 million is for 2015-16 or for the whole period from 2015 to 2020 The Secretary of State referred to the 10,000 adults who have moved into sustained work, which is a great achievement, but it still leaves more than 100,000 families where that has not happened. Would it not help those families if we were to guarantee a job, as Labour is proposing, to every adult who has been out of work for more than two years and every young person who has been out of work for more than a year The Secretary of State rightly talked about the problems that a number of these families have in paying bills. How many troubled families are being hit by the profoundly unfair bedroom tax? Surely, to help them, that tax should be scrapped, as we have committed to do? Why are the Government so intent on penalising people on the lowest incomes, and how many of those families currently rely on food banks to help feed their children Over this Parliament, the Secretary of State has spoken regularly about the number of families who have been turned around. However, within the original programme, a family could be so classified if they reduced the level of crime committed by just a third. Will he confirm whether such families are counted in the total he gave today In 2011, the Prime Minister said that troubled families were costing the state an estimated £9 billion a year. However, in his statement today, the Secretary of State said that if these savings were representative of all 105,000 families so far, it would generate a total of £1.2 billion in gross fiscal benefits. Can he square those two figures and confirm whether these savings are in fact being achieved? As he will be only too aware, demonstrating savings will be really important for securing future funding for the programme from other parts of Whitehall We know that intensive support really can help families transform their lives. Raising children can be challenging and we can all do with help and advice at times. We support the programme precisely because the local authorities that are implementing it on the ground are convinced that it makes a difference. However, the Government also have a responsibility to help all families, whether in difficulty or not, in other ways. Insecurity, zero-hours contracts, a lack of affordable housing and high rents are real concerns for them. If we are really to help all Britain’s families, we need a Government who will do something about those things as well.