Oral Answers to Questions

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. He has made support for families an important issue, and I have talked to him on a number of occasions. I believe that the troubled families programme is critical in supporting families with multiple and often highly complex problems to turn their lives around. Between 2013 and 2015, the DWP created 150 troubled families employment advisers to support people, and 116,000 families have been turned around with nearly 12,000 adults moved into continuous employment. I hope that helps my hon. Friend to understand that the Government are serious about this issue.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Poverty is a destructive element for family stability. Has the Secretary of State read the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, “Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales 2015”? It points out that working families and young people in Wales are at greater risk of poverty now than they were a decade ago, that 45% of all part-time jobs are classified as low paid, and that for those who work part time or are self-employed, the number of families living in poverty has increased by 100,000 in the past decade. It states that changes in the Welfare Bill will be damaging for families in Wales. Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I acknowledge that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has written its report, and it has said many things in the past about what we have been doing. As I said earlier, the number of families that have risen out of poverty directly as a result of our changes has been dramatic. As the hon. Lady well knows, Wales had a difficult time in the recession, but unemployment is now falling dramatically and employment is rising. I believe that the best way to get people out of poverty is to get them into work, and eventually into full-time work. That is happening right now.