Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Crabb and David Amess

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Stephen Crabb)]

The Government are committed to tackling disadvantage and extending opportunity so that everyone has the chance to realise their full potential. Our life chances approach will focus on tackling the root causes of poverty, such as worklessness, educational attainment and family stability.

[Sir David Amess]

While I welcome my right hon. Friend’s recognition that strong and stable families make an enormous impact on children’s life chances, will he spell out to the House precisely what his Department is doing to ensure that those relationships are fostered and strengthened, particularly in a coastal town such as Southend?

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend is exactly right: family stability is a really important part of our mission to tackle entrenched disadvantage. That is why we have doubled funding for relationship support to £70 million and are significantly expanding support for parents. In addition, through our local family offer, we are working with 12 local authorities, including his own in Essex, to learn how best to strengthen the support they offer to families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Crabb and David Amess

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that I have a pretty good track record of working with the Welsh Government, whoever is in power. As for his important point about entrenched and persistent poverty, it is absolutely right for us to take account of that. We will shortly be launching a life chances strategy in which, for the very first time, the complex underlying factors that lead to persistent pockets of entrenched poverty in wards such as those to which he has referred will be genuinely addressed.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to increase the number of older people in employment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Crabb]

As I said to David Willetts from the Resolution Foundation, the author of the report, and as I say to every Member who seeks to criticise universal credit, “Go to your local Jobcentre Plus, go and sit with the teams of work coaches who are rolling out universal credit, and you will see the enthusiasm and the motivation as they see universal credit transforming people’s lives for the better.”

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

T7. In anticipation of the White Paper on disability, will my hon. Friend embrace Leonard Cheshire’s Change100 programme, which allows disabled graduates to gain paid employment with major employers?