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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, in this very calm and sensible week for Parliament. I am sure all eyes will be focused on this very important debate.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for securing the debate. He has an exceptional track record in this important area; it is a real credit to the work he has done that he has so much support from the colleagues who attended the debate. I pay tribute to his work alongside the noble Baroness Eaton with the Centre for Social Justice, which culminated in its recent report on the family test. That excellent piece of work was a really good way to focus minds—not just in my Department, but across Government. I will go into more detail about that.
I also thank all the other Members who contributed, in particular my hon. Friends the Members for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). I will cover many of the questions raised, but let me say two quick things before I forget. I would be delighted, diary and parliamentary duties permitting, to attend the family hub event, so I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton to make sure I have all the details of that.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives has done fantastic work as an MP to support those with special educational needs, using his wealth of experience from his work prior to arriving in the House. I recognise his point about supporting families with special educational needs children.
I pay tribute to one of my local special educational needs schools, the Uplands School, which has made a very small change that could easily be adopted by all schools and is making a huge difference. Like all schools, it has parental support classes, which offer peer-to-peer support—parents get together over cups of tea and talk about the challenges they are facing and how they can support one another. The headteacher, Jackie Smith, has ensured that parents get an invite to those support classes once they know their children will end up at the school, rather than having to wait until the day they come. That ensures that peer support is provided from the very early days, which is making a huge difference.
We also had a contribution from the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who perhaps stretched the intention of the debate—most of her comments were probably better suited to a Home Office debate. I am sure there will be opportunities for Home Office Ministers to respond in the future.
I thank the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for welcoming the principle of the family test. I appreciate that, but she then applied a series of political statements loosely to the principles of the family test. It would be remiss of me not to correct some of the points she made. For example, under this Government there are now 500,000 fewer families on the housing waiting list. Food affordability—the measure of whether families can afford the basics in terms of food—has almost halved in just under five years and is 2.5% lower than the EU average. Material deprivation has never been lower. Income inequality has fallen under this Government, having risen under the last Labour Government. There are now 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty. Welfare spending under the last Labour Government—
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Lady was not willing to take interventions from colleagues who actually stuck to the principles of the debate, so I will not.
Under the last Labour Government, welfare spending rose on average by £3,000 per house. Imagine the impact on hard-working families.
Justin Tomlinson
I will shortly. The Opposition voted against income tax threshold changes that have given families an additional £1,200 a year. Our spending on childcare will have risen from £4 billion in 2010 to £6 billion by 2020—a 50% increase—and we are delivering record employment in all regions of the UK, yet again supporting families. I give way to my hon. Friend.
Fiona Bruce
The Minister has actually made my point for me. The speech by the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) highlighted the fundamental difference in the way we approach this issue. The Opposition’s solution to so many social problems is throwing more money at them. There was no money left when they finished in government.
We are saying that if we strengthen family lives, just like the teacher the Minister mentioned, we will prevent those problems—mental health problems in school, addiction, people going to GP surgeries with depression and losing work days, and so on—from arising in the first place. That is the fundamental difference. That is why we are pressing for the Government to strengthen family life: because we believe that prevention is far better and cheaper than attempted cure.
Justin Tomlinson
My hon. Friend is spot on. It was clear from my colleagues’ speeches that they have a constructive, proactive and real focus on the absolute principles of the family test, and I shall now turn to that.
Many hon. Members have underlined the importance of the family test, and I am pleased to see sustained interest in that test among colleagues. I restate the Government’s commitment to the family test, which was introduced in 2014 to help put families at the heart of policy making. In designing the test, alongside the Relationships Alliance, we wanted to help policy makers understand how policies might, positively or negatively, affect families.
We want potential impacts on families to be considered early so that they can shape proposals, rather than at the end of the process when we are preparing to announce and implement any changes. That point is key, and the test helps to ensure that potential impacts are properly considered in the advice that Ministers receive. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay was spot on when he said that such issues must be embedded into that early thinking.
Justin Tomlinson
I will respond to the thrust of the debate. We want the family test to be broad and flexible, reflecting the nature of 21st-century families. The test already encourages policy makers to consider a wide range of impacts, including on family formation, families going through key transitions, the ability of all family members—dads, mums, and the extended family—to play a full role in family life, families who have separated or who are undergoing separation, and those families most at risk of a deterioration in relationship quality and breakdown.
I acknowledge that some would like the family test to be a statutory obligation, but feedback from policy makers, and points highlighted in speeches today, suggest that a statutory test could risk becoming a box-ticking exercise at the end of a policy process, with pass or fail outcomes, rather than something embedded at the beginning of the process, which is key. A legislative test would also risk losing the flexibility to adapt and change.
I welcome the review of the family test by the Centre for Social Justice, and I thank it for highlighting these important issues, many of which my officials have been working to address with the relevant Departments. There is a strong alignment between the report’s recommendations and our approach to strengthening practice in the use of the test. I agree that individual Departments should take responsibility and ownership of their application of the family test—interestingly, the report by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton highlighted both good and bad practice.
Justin Tomlinson
There we are—it is on the record, and those Departments will no doubt be held to account. The Attorney General’s response is probably the shortest that I have heard from any Department, and I know my hon. Friend will scrutinise it carefully.
We are working with a network of representatives from all domestic policy Departments to develop tailored resources to help officials apply the test in their unique policy contexts, and ensure that advice to Ministers reflects the impact on families. That will be underpinned by refreshed central guidance for officials, which we expect to publish this summer—I will return to that important work at the end of my remarks, with a request for those Members who have demonstrated passion about this issue to ensure that we get it right. My Department will actively consider including the family test in the DWP business plan.
I am pleased to be part of the inter-ministerial group that is focusing on how to improve support for families in the first 1,001 days. Another of the report’s recommendations is for Ministers to take a more active role in ensuring that the family test is applied in their Departments. I have raised the family test with that inter-ministerial group, and I will ask Ministers actively to consider whether the test has been considered in all the advice they receive, on any topic, in their Departments.
The excellent report by the Centre for Social Justice builds on important issues raised by colleagues who published the “Manifesto to Strengthen Families”. It also highlights examples of where Departments have used the family test, and where that has made a difference to the policy making process. We recognise, however, that more progress can be made to ensure that the test is robustly applied to all domestic policy. That is why my Department, which has the cross-Government lead on the test, has been taking action to strengthen its implementation across Government.
Each Department has a nominated representative on the new family test network—my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay highlighted the importance of that—and the network is identifying, developing and sharing best practice on applying the family test. That helps us to deepen our understanding of how the test is applied across Government, and what further support officials need to embed it fully as part of any considerations made when formulating policy.
The network pays particular attention to the need highlighted in the report to build evidence, and we are currently exploring ways to support Departments in that. We will continue to encourage and support Departments to apply the family test, and to make their own judgments on whether and when publishing assessments is appropriate. We will consider whether more can be done to improve transparency, which includes reflecting on the report’s recommendations. It is unclear, however, whether knowing how many family tests a certain Department has applied would bring much greater or more meaningful transparency.
I am keen to avoid introducing layers of unnecessary bureaucracy to the policy making process, but I understand the thrust of the point being made. Insights from the family test network are driving our review of family test guidance, published on gov.uk, which helps officials to understand why, when, and how they should apply the test. Revised guidance planned for summer 2019 will better reflect the needs of users.
We are helping Departments to develop a toolkit of resources for officials to improve consistent and meaningful family test application across Government. Given that effective implementation of the test is fundamentally an issue of capability, we are also working with Civil Service Learning and the Policy Profession unit, to consider how best to support policy makers to apply the family test effectively.
Let me share some examples of how the Government are actively working to make lives better for families, and how our policies are responding to the key questions and evidence set out by the family test. My Department is currently implementing the Reducing Parental Conflict programme, which is backed by £39 million. That programme helps councils across England to recognise the evidence about the damage that parental conflict can do to children’s long-term outcomes. It will soon provide evidence-based, face-to-face support for parents in 31 English local authorities. I attended an important roundtable with those local authorities, and there is real enthusiasm to deliver this programme and build that tangible constructive evidence.
Fiona Bruce
I welcome this programme, but an integral part of it needs to be a focus on strengthening couple relationships, not just parent-child relationships. Will the Minister look into that?
Justin Tomlinson
We are digesting all the successful bids for the various strands of that programme, and I am sure that many organisations will have a proven track record in that area. I am happy to consider that specific issue in greater detail in a meeting on the programme.
We want face-to-face support to be available to those families who need it most. This is why we will prioritise help for workless and disadvantaged families, and why we are exploring how to ensure that those eligible parents with whom we are already working, through Jobcentre Plus and the Child Maintenance Group, are able to access such support as early as possible.
All local authorities can access funding to increase their strategic capability to address parental conflict, as well as training for frontline staff. We are funding even more innovation through our joint work with the Department of Health and Social Care to support children of alcohol-dependent parents, and with our new £2.7 million Reducing Parental Conflict challenge fund. A number of Departments have highlighted that fund to their stakeholders to ensure good engagement.
The principles of the family test are visible across the Government. The Department for Education recently announced that all children and young people will soon be taught about the importance of healthy relationships, including marriage and family relationships. I welcome the positive comments from my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay about the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Ministry of Justice is also considering how we can reduce conflict in families that are going through a divorce. The Troubled Families programme is driving better ways of working around complex families, improving outcomes for individuals and reducing their dependency on services, and delivering better value for taxpayers. That programme aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020—something I passionately support.
In conclusion, I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the thrust of this debate—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, who has been a real champion in this area. We welcome the continued constructive work by the Centre for Social Justice, and its review of the family test, and we are actively considering its recommendations.
The importance to our society of strong families cannot be understated, and we look forward to working with all hon. Members as we continue to strengthen our use of the family test and make a difference for families. I would greatly welcome the opportunity to meet my hon. Friends from the Centre for Social Justice and have a deep-dive look at the recommendations in their respective speeches and the recent report.