Helen Jones
Main Page: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
I am aware of the excellent Portas pilot bid by my hon. Friend’s town team. I wish it well, along with the other 350 or so bids that are still in the competition. As I mentioned, an announcement will be made before the end of this month.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Properly targeted and funded family intervention works, so why have the Government introduced a half-baked scheme based on research that fails to distinguish between poor families and those involved in antisocial behaviour? Why do they refuse to give details of their cost estimates on the spurious grounds that the spending of public money is commercially sensitive? Is it not because they want to disguise the fact that they have slashed services such as Sure Start and youth intervention programmes, which really make a difference, and the fact that councils will get back only a tiny fraction of the millions that they have already lost?
Mr Pickles
I would have thought the hon. Lady would have been a little bit more jolly, considering that I congratulated her on the great work that she has been doing on behalf of the Government.
I am very surprised at the hon. Lady, because we would not have been able to help troubled families without the intensive help of Labour councils. The big difference between what we are doing now and what she suggests is that we are allowing councils to come up with their own schemes and methodologies. All that we are interested in is the outputs. Frankly, she should congratulate all those who have worked hard, because we can now identify the correct families, three months ahead of when people expected us to be able to do so.