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Government debt advice ‘failure’ – reports

by: Mortgage Solutions
  • 08/04/2010
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Government debt advice ‘failure’ – reports
The management of the Government's strategy for helping people in debt has been branded a "complete failure" by a committee of MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee said 51 different projects since 2004 had been uncoordinated, with no-one in charge.

It said 11% of adults were struggling with debts, with the population’s total personal debt reaching almost £1.5trn, writes the BBC.

The committee praised one initiative to give face-to-face debt advice.

Overall though, the committee’s chairman Edward Leigh MP, was scathing.

“In 2004, the government launched a strategy aimed at improving the support to, and reducing the number of, people who struggle with unmanageable debt,” he said.

“No one is in charge of the strategy; groups intended to oversee it have not met, and there has been no reporting on its progress since 2007.

“The strategy has not been evaluated to assess whether the policy goals have been achieved and the department does not know how effective the interventions making it up have been,” he told the BBC.

The committee’s report supported only one initiative which was launched by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2006 to give face-to-face advice to those in debt.

This £130m project was funded primarily from the Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Fund and delivered locally by Citizens Advice and other sector organisations.

 

 

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