Ministers have been criticised for unacceptable delays in publishing a damning report that showed that a scheme to “turn around” 520,000 troubled families was not working.
The public accounts committee said in a report published online last night that the government overstated the benefits of the programme by claiming that it had saved taxpayers £1.2 billion.
When independent research undermined the assertion, the government suppressed the findings for almost a year with “obfuscation”, MPs said.
The committee said that the term “turned around” was misleading because it was indicative of achieving only short-term outcomes rather than representing long-term, sustainable change in families’ lives.
Meg Hillier, the committee’s chairwoman, said the report was far more serious than a “slap on the wrist for Whitehall bureaucracy”, given the importance of the programme for families. The report said the government “must be far clearer about the benefits that can be directly attributed to the public investment in it”.