My Lords, I want to make a short intervention in support of the two excellent speeches that have been made in introducing Amendments 70 and 71. I agree with everything that has been said, and I think we need another name for this programme as “troubled families” is a terrible name for it. I do not know whether we should have a competition for it—it might be too late. However, those families are certainly more troubled for being called troubled, so we need to think carefully about this. I hope that these suggested annual reports will
not just be analytical and statistical but will come up with some policy advice and dynamics about change, to make these programmes better for the future.
I have had a bit of experience of working with a troubled families programme indirectly as a non-executive director of the Wise Group in Glasgow. It had a pay-as-you-go performance contract in the north-east of England, which was very interesting. I am in favour of the multiagency approach, but it is still in its early days and needs to be developed. I hope that these annual reports will look at a snapshot year by year and look across the different experiences and the different programmes mounted by the different local authorities to try and get best practice established and shared. That would be really useful.
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The most difficult thing about the troubled families programme as it stands is getting an evaluation that makes sense. Different methods and procedures are being tried, but it is the local authorities that evaluate these things and are, as it were, marking their own homework. This still needs some extra work, as the temptation is to say that it has been more successful than it actually has. I do not say that against local authorities, as people are working in difficult circumstances and trying to build on the platform of the experience that we have had in this important new public sector programme, but central government needs to hold the ring and make sure that the evaluation techniques that we are using are sensible, translatable and comparable.
This is a bit of a left-field suggestion, but I believe that the sanctions that are now so prevalent in the rest of the social security system need to be integrated in some way with the troubled families programme. If people are getting sanctioned regularly in a way that the system notices, they should be offered a slot on the troubled families programme. It is a voluntary programme, so the offer would have to be accepted, but some of the experience I have had, again in the Wise Group, suggests that the troubled families programme is a better way of dealing with some of these people who have been sanctioned multiple times and are obviously troubled in a way that is not just to do with their CV—it is deeper and wider than that within the family setting—than sanctions and the Work Programme. I hope that the Minister will think about that.
Finally, the point made earlier about close contact being maintained with local authorities is absolutely correct and must be right for England. But this is not just about local authorities in England. I accept the need for a report such as the one we are talking about here but, although it may not be directly analogous to the programmes in England, I hope that the Minister will also embrace the experience of the other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom, which are doing work of this kind, too. It would be a mistake not to have some way of bringing in the experience from Scotland, Northern Ireland and possibly even Wales for all I know. This is a developing and interesting area. It has to be resourced sensibly but it will help. I am in favour of the suggested reports but I agree that adding the suggestions in these amendments would be an entirely sensible thing for the Government to do.