13. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the troubled families unit since its creation. (902041)

Thanks to the help of local government and the personal commitment of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, we are on track. In November, 18 months into our three-year programme, I announced that over half of the 120,000 families were being worked with and that over 22,000 had been turned around. I hope shortly to be able to give an update, which I think will show even more spectacular figures.

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. I am sure he will be pleased to know that the initiative has been actively and successfully embraced in Eastleigh, with Eastleigh borough council and Hampshire county council working together to transform people’s lives. However, I have heard that some councils are using it as a box-ticking exercise. How can the Department ensure that local councils are genuinely changing lives, not just filling in the appropriate forms?

There is a robust system in place for verification and checking. Both councils’ internal audits and my Department carry out spot checks, but the hard truth is that there is no reason to do this, because it offers no advantage to a council. In fact, doing it will effectively cost councils more money. In the long term it will save them money, but it means that they have to give an extra commitment. I think it is the commitment we have seen from local authorities that we should be celebrating.

Will the Secretary of State clarify whether a family can be considered “turned around” if they are still committing crimes or engaging in antisocial behaviour?

The short answer is no. We went about it in a very straightforward way and so have some very straightforward criteria. Basically, the kids must be in school, and for three terms, which is why there is a bit of a lag, and somebody must be on the road to work, in the same way that they will be within a programme, and the incidence of antisocial behaviour on the estate must have been reduced measurably.

Although most of the families on the estate that I grew up on were hard-working and decent people, the odd one or two troubled families caused problems for the rest of the estate. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this initiative, which helps to get children back into school and parents into work, is helping not only the family concerned, but the wider community?

Sure, and the important thing is that we have one social worker dealing with one family as a whole, not a series of social workers dealing with different members of the family. That has been very impressive. I have toured the country and seen a number of the schemes in action, and I have been very pleased with the level of co-operation.

I fear that the Secretary of State is in denial, because his programme actually causes a reduction, not a cessation, in the problems for which the families have been put on the programme. Is it not the truth that many of the families that he says have been turned around are still truanting and engaging in antisocial behaviour? How on earth does he justify the fact that many local authorities are failing to monitor those families after they come off the programme? Is it not the truth that he is scared of real scrutiny of the claims he makes?

I invite the hon. Lady to come to my office and talk with Louise Casey. I do not think there is a scintilla of truth in anything the hon. Lady said, and I greatly regret the breach in bipartisanship towards the programme. Our books are open, so she should come in to see them. I have to tell her, in the nicest possible way, that she should put up or shut up.