Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the funding allocated by his Department for local authority-commissioned specialist debt advice services.

The Government does not directly fund the provision of specialist debt advice by local authorities.

Instead, the Government funds the Money Advice Service (MAS) to deliver publicly-funded debt advice, using a levy on the financial services industry.

Following Peter Wyman’s independent review of the funding of debt advice published in January 2018, the Government agreed to increase debt advice funding to MAS to over £56 million this year, enough to provide help to over 530,000 people.