Public Disorder

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in praising Staffordshire police, who provided assistance to the west midlands. Once again, this demonstrates that small forces can not only do a good job in their local communities, but help out others when they are in need.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

Looking to the future, I note that far too many of the people—young and old alike—who were involved in violent and criminal behaviour appear to come from the relatively small number of totally dysfunctional families in this country. Does the Prime Minister agree that work to turn such families around is somewhat piecemeal, involving far too many agencies, too many targets and too much paperwork? Will the Government find ways of targeting resources more effectively?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. We plan to spend additional money on the 20,000 most troubled families in the country, with more early intervention and much better co-ordination. So often with those families, we find that they have contact after contact with the authorities, but that it is contact with them rather than work to change behaviour and address problems. The problem is manageable. I know that there are 20,000 such families, and there might even be 100,000, but it is still a manageable number which we can deal with during this Parliament.