Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to support families and individuals facing multiple disadvantages.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

10. What steps his Department is taking to support families and individuals facing multiple disadvantages.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to support families and individuals facing multiple disadvantages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is true that voluntary sector organisations tend to deal with the whole person, rather than, like Government Departments and even sometimes local authorities, considering specific issues while forgetting that many of them knock on to each other. Such organisations have an important role to play. We should not ignore the fact that local authorities and Government Departments have to get their act together and make sure that when dealing with families with multiple problems, they talk to each other—always, there is a tendency for them not to do so. The good authorities hub up all the services around the family, which is at the centre, so Health, Work and Pensions, Education and all the Departments involved start to co-ordinate their activity, rather than spend all that money and get nowhere.

[Paul Maynard]

One of my wards, Claremont, is, according to the latest DCLG statistics, the fifth most deprived ward in the country, and I see daily the hurdles that families have to overcome to deal with some of the entrenched problems they face. I realise that no single agency can solve them, nor indeed can any single Government Department. Will the Secretary of State explain what he is doing with other Departments to ensure that all troubled families get a whole-of-Government approach, rather than a series of unconnected initiative-itises?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. That is why the Prime Minister asked specifically that Louise Casey operate and head up a unit, reporting to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which is looking at the 120,000 worst affected, most difficult families. The idea, as I said earlier, is that, working with her, local authorities nominate the families. She wants them to hub up services to make sure that the pooled amount of money they get is spent on life-changing actions, not the tokenistic box-ticking that too often takes place.