It is not in the interests of the children to be brought up by such violent, dangerous and neglectful parents

Frank Field

Tony Blair endorsed the Bill last week and it is being pushed through Parliament with Government help.

The new law would target extreme behaviour involving violent or criminal acts by parents or their offspring. Guilty families would be evicted and stripped of their housing benefits.

Children would be taken into care until their parents made a commitment to behave.

The proposal comes on the heals of Mr Blair's controversial plan to take child benefits away from the parents of teenage trouble makers.

Frank Field, the new Bill's author, said eviction alone was ineffective because anti-social families can simply demand to be rehoused, transporting the problem to a different estate.

'Necessary measure'

Mr Field, the former minister for welfare reform, said it was necessary to take children into care because existing measures do not work.

"Many of the violent, disruptive and aggressive neighbours have small children and up until now children have been used as a means to get another home," he wrote in an article published in the Telegraph.

"Families have to be rehoused because they have children. So they get a new house or flat, and then proceed to terrify a new set of neighbours. That's the cycle we have to break.

"It is not in the interests of the children to be brought up by such violent, dangerous and neglectful parents.

Frank Field says existing measures do not work

"The Government must therefore be willing in these extreme and exceptional circumstances to use the power the Bill will give it to take the children into care until the parents show some semblance of proper behaviour."

He said Mr Blair was willing to place children with Social Services.

"I believe the Prime Minister is prepared to accept that consequence of my Bill," Mr Field said.

"He knows the legislation won't work if this final sanction is never used."

The Prime Minister endorsed the Bill in the Commons last Wednesday.

Mr Blair told MP's: "We are also looking at the housing benefit and the persistent anti-social behaviour and offending by families in receipt of that benefit."

About 3.8 million people claim housing benefits at an average of �51.90, according to official statistics.