A £1.3bn scheme launched by David Cameron to help 120,000 of Britain's most troubled families has had no real impact on changing their lives, according to an official report.
The Troubled Families Programme was set up to tackle truancy, benefits dependency and anti-social behaviour in the wake of the 2011 riots in London.
But research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found there was no evidence it has "any significant or systematic impact."
It casts doubts over Mr Cameron's claims last year that the programme he launched to bring about "social recovery" had "turned around" the lives of 98.9% of the families involved.
The Government poured £448m into the initiative when it was launched but extended it for a further five years from 2015/16 to help a further 400,000 families, bringing the cost to the taxpayer to £1.3bn.
The report said: "Across a wide range of outcomes, covering the key objectives of the Troubled Families Programme - employment, benefit receipt, school attendance, safeguarding and child welfare - we were unable to find consistent evidence that the programme had any significant or systematic impact."
One author of the NIESR report, Jonathan Portes, wrote on his blog of how the programme was "a perfect case study of how the manipulation and misrepresentation of statistics by politicians and civil servants - from the Prime Minister downwards - led directly to bad policy and, frankly, to the wasting of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money."
Troubled Families evaluation now published: No evidence programme had any significant impact on key objectives. https://t.co/qzVRDwfV6N— Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) October 17, 2016
The report's findings come just two days after Communities Minister Lord Bourne hailed the programme for "transforming the lives of thousands of families".
He wrote: "We know that more than 116,000 of the families who participated in the first phase of the programme have seen significant improvements in their lives, with children back in school for a year, reduced youth crime and anti-social behaviour, and adults holding down a job.
"We believe this programme has transformed the lives of thousands of families. The councils and frontline staff who have put it into practice should be pleased with the work they have done."
Dame Louise Casey, who led the Troubled Families Team in the Communities and Local Government Department, is expected to answer questions from MPs on Wednesday.
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