Mark Hoban: Face-to-face debt advice 'really important'

Hundreds of specialist debt advisers facing redundancy have won a reprieve after the government found £27m to continue the service for a year.

For the past five years, the £27m-a-year Financial Inclusion Fund has been paying for about 500 specialists in England and Wales to give free advice.

Last month, the government said it would axe the funding, and advisers stopped taking new cases.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban, told Radio 4's Money Box presenter Paul Lewis that their jobs were now safe.