Safety of School Buildings

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My suggestion and the advice I would offer to the hon. Gentleman is to ask the Minister exactly what the state of school funding has been like over the last 13 years. His Government have been in power now for longer than the last Labour Government. He ought to take some responsibility for the state of schools in our country, not to blame others and not to deflect.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is, in her usual fashion, making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that one of the reasons Government Members will not release the data is that they know that over the last decade 50% of the capital budget has been cut through their ideological austerity agenda?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I think we probably all have reasons to reflect on why the Government will not be upfront about that. There are many reasons why that might be the case, but we have the Minister with us today. He can tell us why he said previously that he would publish this and why he has now changed his mind. I look forward to hearing him set out that case during the debate.

The lack of ambition is there for our children in their earliest years. The vision of childcare is little wider than a way of keeping parents economically active. There is nothing on the start we should give our children—the best start they deserve—or on the power of early intervention to change lives for the better and the difference that early years education makes in building a brighter future and a better Britain. There is nothing to close the attainment gaps that were already opening up and widening as our children arrived at school long before the pandemic even hit. And the answer to the childcare workforce challenge is as bleak as it is simple: to spread existing staff more thinly, to pile demand on to a system that they know fails providers, parents, families and, above all, our children.

The lack of ambition is there for our schools, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain]

I have had many conversations with the Minister over the years, and I respect him. Frankly, many of us in the Chamber today do not know whether the schools in our constituencies are safe, because the Government will not release the data. That is the central question we want addressing. The Minister in the other place wrote this week to tell me that three schools in my constituency will benefit from the condition improvement fund. Should I take it that those schools are currently unsafe for pupils?

[Nick Gibb]

No. The hon. Gentleman can take it that those three schools are receiving significant sums of capital funding to put right problems on their estate. Our surveys enabled us to identify those problems and to allocate significant sums of capital funding—£15 billion since 2015—fairly and appropriately.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Over the last few days of this debate we have heard some harrowing stories from constituencies around the country of poverty, deprivation and destitution—of people living hand to mouth in some of the worst possible scenarios. However, the Secretary of State who opened the debate today seems to have missed a lot of that, because the picture according to the Secretary of State is that this is a place where people get more than enough opportunities, where young people have never had it so good, where every school is funded exactly as it should be, and where the health service is operating as it should. I have absolutely no idea what parallel universe the Secretary of State is living in.

It is fine to talk about opportunities, but what about the obstacles people face before they get to those opportunities, the biggest of which is poverty? Let us be clear about this: poverty did not arise a few months ago with the cost of living crisis. Poverty has been worsening over the past 12 years because of an ideological austerity agenda by the Conservative Government that has devastated our communities. This is the reality of where we are.

At a time when people are facing some of the worst challenges ever, we see Conservative Members, even a Minister, going on national television saying that people should budget better and work more hours, as if that is the reason they are poor. When is the last time that Members met anybody who chose to be poor? When is the last time that we heard a child who was born in poverty say, “You know what? Actually, I am glad that I was born in that household.”

I urge the Secretary of State to come to Bradford. Our young people are full of aspiration and full of ambition, but, tragically, the media does not give Bradford an easy ride. Frankly, I am fed up with the media’s unfair image of Bradford and of our young people. We are a vibrant city, with a young population. What we lack is the opportunity.

Earlier today, the Secretary of State stood at that Dispatch Box and told me, my constituents and the people in my district that, somehow, we do have that opportunity. The reality is that he could have used his time differently in this Queen’s Speech debate. Conservative Members know that. Those who represent constituencies with poverty and deprivation will know inside themselves that this Queen’s Speech is a missed opportunity. It does nothing to provide opportunity to young people in Bradford. It does nothing to address the health inequalities. A person living in the inner cities of Bradford is likely to live 10 years fewer than if they lived in an affluent city suburb. That is the reality. When it comes to educational attainment, a person from Bradford is likely to achieve a lot less than if they lived in a rich leafy suburb. That is the unfairness. Those are the barriers that we are talking about.

If the Secretary of State for Education, who spoke earlier today, and the Health Minister, who will close the debate, want to address these inequalities, they have missed that opportunity. They should listen to our suggestion. We need an emergency budget to address the destitution that is rife in our country. Poverty is a political choice, and the people of this country will remember the choice that the Government have made.

Budget Resolutions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

In recent weeks, the Chancellor has been promising us a Budget that would look to the future, a Budget that would reshape our economy and a Budget that would level up our left-behind communities. Working people across the country hoped for action that would tackle the growing cost of living that they face each day, but what we got last Wednesday was a Budget without the vision and imagination to tackle the challenges that we face in society. We got a Budget that is stuck in the past, unable to confront the realities of the future, and a Budget that perpetuates an economy that serves the richest, while trampling over the poorest, which proves that, under this Government, levelling up is just a slogan and words, not real action.

Bradford is one of the most deprived areas and it is in the most desperate need of levelling up. All it really got from this Budget was a new sports and enterprise centre on Squire Lane, which is a project that was brought forward, developed and signed off by me years ago when I was deputy leader of the council. It was signed off and brought about to tackle the rampant health inequalities in our city, but it was starved of funds and never built because of a decade of Government austerity.

While this Government today tell us that, in Bradford, they are levelling up and giving us much-needed money for the new sports and enterprise centre, which, of course, is very welcome, the reality remains that, if they had not made the ideological austerity cuts over the last decade that devastated councils such as Bradford, we would have been able to fund this ourselves a decade ago. So I am not going to take Conservative Members telling me that they have done a huge favour on Bradford, levelled up and tackled poverty and the real issues that we face in the district.

In the time that this Government have taken to provide funds for that centre, the inequalities—particularly health inequalities—faced by those in Bradford have only grown. The life expectancy of someone living in Bradford is almost 10 years lower than in other parts of the country. Let us take a moment to look at that. If a person lives in certain parts of the Bradford district, they are likely to live 10 years less than if they lived in a leafy suburb away from Bradford. I ask Conservative Members: what does this Budget do to address health inequalities in Bradford? What does the Budget do to address the fact that up to 40% of children in my constituency will again today be denied a hot meal? What does this Budget do to address the fact that working families in my constituency will continue to use food banks? Those are the questions. It is easy to get caught up in statistics, but the reality remains that this Budget will do nothing to address those real issues in my constituency, which means that we now have to go even further and present new initiatives to tackle the widening inequalities in our society.

Ultimately, this Budget came nowhere close to what people in Bradford need. Throughout the Chancellor’s 100-page Red Book, there was no commitment to reverse the cruel cut to universal credit that will take £1,000 a year out of the pockets of some of the poorest in Bradford. There was no plan to tackle the rapid decline of Bradford’s high street by reforming and replacing an outdated business rates system that penalises small, family-run businesses to satisfy the greed of large multinationals. There was no pledge to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, which will run from Manchester to Leeds, through a station in Bradford city centre that would draw investment into our region and act as a firm symbol of levelling up.

Even the end of a public sector pay freeze to tackle the cost of living crisis failed to acknowledge that it was this Government and their decade-long pay restraint that created a cost of living crisis for those working in the public sector in Bradford. Although investment in education and healthcare is welcome, it will fail to make up for a decade of austerity, cuts and underinvestment that has created so much pain and misery for so many across the district.

As is so often the case under this Government, the cost of the Budget’s failures will fall on the shoulders not of the Chancellor or his constituents, but of my constituents in Bradford and other places like my constituency. It is in the pockets of people in Bradford that the cost of living is being felt the most. It is my constituents—on wages lower than the national average and employed on insecure contracts—who will be hit hardest by rising food prices, spiralling energy bills, and soaring rents and mortgages, only to be hit again by tax rises that mean that households will be paying £3,000 more in tax in the next five years than when this Prime Minister took office.

Time does not permit me to go on, and I want to be fair to colleagues. The fact is that the only people levelled up by this Budget are the millionaire bankers sipping champagne on their short-haul flights. The clear conclusion is that, just as we have seen every year under this Tory Government, this is a Budget by the rich for the rich.