(1 year, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I have a surprising amount of time, but I will not take all of it. First, I would like to thank everybody who took part in the debate, with consensus about this massively important issue, which affects 1.5 million people across Britain. We welcome the Minister’s sentiments. The point has been made that we need to speed up and deliver for the people who are seeing their children’s life chances ebbing away in many cases, as we speak.
Since my hon. Friend has a couple of minutes, one issue raised by the Minister was the role of the voluntary sector. I know he was speaking on behalf of a coalition of groups, but one issue we have not examined is the funding of those individual organisations. Many of us have concerns about the drying-up of funding from local government to the voluntary sector. We might now need to put that back on the agenda in discussions with the Minister.