Local Government Finance

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will give way a little later on, because I have been generous so far.

The Tory-led Local Government Association estimates that if we continue on this current course, the funding gap will grow to £8 billion by 2025. That is an £8 billion gap not to rebuild our services after 10 years of cuts, but just to stay still: just to prevent already heavily stretched services from falling apart under the weight of growing demand, rising costs and wage inflation. I reiterate: it is £8 billion more needed just to stay as we are today. So, even if this £8 billion funding was provided, in full, by 2025, it would barely keep the sector’s head above water, allowing councils to continue delivering services at current levels, with no capacity to meet the growing need for services. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister considers that a sustainable way to finance the sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee, has mentioned in an intervention, research published today by the Local Government Information Unit shows that 73% of councils would not agree with Ministers. The Chief Executive of the LGIU has warned:

“Our social care system is no longer on the edge, it’s fallen off the cliff. Our children’s services aren’t at breaking point, they’re broken.”

That has real-life consequences: Age UK estimates that in the past two years alone, 74,000 older people died waiting for care. An average of 81 people a day, equivalent to three every hour, died before they received the care that they needed. This is not a political point; it should shame each and every one of us, on whichever side of this House we sit. Age UK states that 1.4 million older people are not getting the help that they need to carry out essential tasks such as washing themselves, dressing and going to the toilet. That is not just unacceptable; it is appalling. It is a stain on this House—on all of us—and on our country.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Birmingham City Council and the great city of Birmingham have been hit hard by the biggest cuts in local government history—cuts of £700 million—with children’s centres and youth clubs closing, and social care and special needs provision being cut. Does he agree that it is fundamentally wrong, not only that the vulnerable have been hit as hard as they have, but that Birmingham reels from those cuts while the leafy shires of Surrey get yet more?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has been a champion for not only local government across the country, but that great city of Birmingham, fighting the devastation that has befallen that great city. On the LGA’s own statistics, a further £48 million in adult social care funding could be removed from Birmingham to add to the devastation that has already hit his city. That is why the fair funding review is so unfair and wrong.

According to the King’s Fund—so this is not coming just from the LGIU—by the end of the next decade the number of older people who need adult social care support is predicted to increase to 4.1 million. That is piling even more cost pressures on our local councils, which is why the LGIU also highlights the increase in financial pressures on children’s services, as adult social care is only one part of the very costly equation that is people-based services—the services that councils, by law and by right, have to provide. Mrs Smith, on any street of any town in any shire, thinks that her council tax increases are going towards ever-reducing bin services, and she sees parks not being maintained and libraries closing. That is because she never sees the impact on adult social care and children’s services.

On children’s services, the LGIU argues that councils are no longer able to shield vulnerable children from the worst of the budgetary pressures that councils are facing. More than one in three councils said their inability to protect vulnerable children was their biggest concern. We know that there are unprecedented demand pressures on children’s services. The number of children in care has hit a 10-year high, but without the funding to support that increase in demand.

From 2009 to 2019, the number of section 47 inquiries—that is, where a local authority believes that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm—has increased by 139%. The Local Government Association warns that children’s services alone are facing a £3.5 billion funding gap by 2025. It is these pressures on people-based services that are pushing many councils towards the cliff edge, and sticking plasters will no longer suffice. The Minister will no doubt say that he gave £1 billion to be shared by adult social care, children’s services and provision for NHS winter pressures. That is not enough.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to grow that cake and the distribution of resources has to follow need. If we are serious about tackling health inequalities, if we genuinely want a fairer, more equal country, if we want to narrow the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest, which sadly is widening, we will not do it by cutting resources and services in the areas that need them the most.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. A man who gets on the train at Birmingham New Street and gets off in Erdington, either at Gravelly Hill station or Erdington station, is likely to live seven years less than one who continues out into the leafy shires of Four Oaks. Birmingham City Council is the sixth most deprived in the whole country, yet it suffered the biggest cut in local government history—of almost £700 million—with another £80 million to come. Does he agree that what is grotesque about the treatment of a great city such as Birmingham is not just the scale of the cuts—including 12,000 staff gone from the city council—but the unfairness compared with the treatment of some of the leafy shires? Birmingham is high need but is being treated as a low priority.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The treatment of the great city of Birmingham has been appalling. The people of Birmingham deserve the resources they need to have decent public services. He has been a feisty champion of the needs of the people of his constituency and that great city and will continue to make that case.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

May I start by giving the apologies of the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), as to why he cannot be here today? He is at the Hillsborough inquest. Twenty-seven years ago a terrible wrong was done. Ninety-six husbands, wives, fiancés, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters died. The fact that today justice was done is due both to the remarkable persistence of the families to ensure justice for those who died, and to the outstanding leadership of my right hon. Friend who, in his courage, persistence and championing of a noble cause, has served the people not just of Liverpool, but of this country well.

We welcome many of the proposals before the House today, which follow our exchanges in Committee. I do not intend to speak to them all in detail. We welcome the move on pre-charge bail to prevent terrorists, such as Dhar, from ever fleeing the country before charge. We welcome the protection of police whistleblowers. We welcome moves to improve the way that the police deal with people suffering a mental health crisis, such as no longer considering a police cell to be a place of safety. We welcome moves to ensure that 17-year-olds detained in police custody are treated as children, which is something my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has fought very hard for.

We support changes to the Fire Arms Act 1968 that will tighten our gun laws in line with recommendations made by the Law Commission. We support the duty on emergency services to collaborate. We will deal with many of these issues in some detail on the second day on Report. We also welcome moves made by the Government on other issues that emerged during our consideration of the Bill. For example, agreement has been reached following the excellent campaign run by David Jamieson, the police and crime commissioner for the west midlands, on the banning of those hideous zombie knives, whose only purpose can be to kill or maim.

However, given that the Bill purports to complete police reform, I am bound to say that there are a number of issues that should have been in the Bill but are not. The Bill does not help the police to adapt to a world in which crime is changing and moving increasingly online. There is a gaping hole in the Government’s policing policy on the failure to tackle—or even to acknowledge in the Bill—cybercrime, or to help the police deal with the consequences of the Government’s swingeing spending reductions. On child sexual exploitation and abuse, although the one clause is a welcome step, for a Bill that purports to be focused seriously on this grotesque manifestation of all that is worst in our country, one clause alone is not enough. The Bill does not go far enough on some of the issues it seeks to address, such as police accountability, but we will return to some of those on day 2.

Having spelled out those areas of the Bill that we agree with, I am bound to say that there are critical areas with which we fundamentally disagree. We have just had a debate, led by my formidable hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), opposing the compulsory takeover of fire authorities by PCCs. Our strong view, as she indicated, is this: yes to greater collaboration; no to hostile takeovers that take place regardless of what local elected representatives and local people think.

The other highly controversial proposal that we are debating today is about giving police powers to volunteers. Let me make it absolutely clear that there is a long and honourable tradition going back 150 years of special constables. There is a more recent tradition, but one that is profound within the communities we serve, of volunteer engagement in neighbourhood watch. For example, the admirable Maureen Meehan, chair of the Stockland Green neighbourhood watch in my constituency, does outstanding work to ensure that the community is safe, working with the police. Indeed, in this House we have the police parliamentary scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) has had a fascinating insight into policing in the Met and in south Wales, and subsequently he has waxed lyrical about the work he has seen, for example on mental health, but also working with volunteers.

We are strongly in favour of enhancing citizen engagement and voluntary efforts. As the great Robert Peel said,

“the police are the public and the public are the police”.

Therefore, the role of the citizen in policing is key. But the public demand that police functions are discharged by police offices, which is essential. We are extremely concerned that the proposals contained in the Bill are an attempt by the Home Secretary to provide policing on the cheap.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. Most people outside Parliament will see through this, because they are seeing the number of police officer and PCSOs in their own neighbourhood policing teams cut, and the Government are proposing to hand those powers to civilians.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. In all the surveys of public opinion about the visibility of the police over the past couple of years, the public have complained more and more that they no longer see their police officers or PCSOs, that they no longer have contact with them, that the police no longer have roots in the community and that neighbourhood policing is being progressively hollowed out. People want neighbourhood policing—the bedrock of British policing—to be rebuilt, but not using volunteers.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. Does he not also suspect that, perhaps as an unintended consequence, this might place volunteers in very risky situations?

[Jack Dromey]

That is absolutely right. I will mention something similar in a moment. If we have volunteers—I again stress that there is a long and honourable tradition of volunteers working in and with our police service—we must, to be frank, go the extra mile to ensure that they are not subject to risk or harm. If they are ill-trained and there is no framework of accountability, issuing them with CS gas and leaving them to get on with it might lead to very serious consequences indeed, not just for members of the public but for the volunteers themselves.

Police Grant Report (England and Wales)

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

We will oppose this settlement today. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice said from the Dispatch Box that police funding is being protected. That is simply not true, and I will lay out my case in due course.

We are still learning some painful lessons from the past. There are still wrongs to be righted; the police are not perfect. We need to raise standards, and we should always hold the police to the highest standards in the public interest. The first thing I wish to say to the Policing Minister and the Home Secretary is that the British model of neighbourhood policing is celebrated across the world. The model was responsible for a generation of progress on crime, but the Home Secretary’s remorselessly negative tone about the police, taken with ever fewer police officers doing ever more work, has demoralised the service, and we are now seeing soaring levels of sickness and stress.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is absolutely right to go back to the Labour success of neighbourhood policing. Is he as dismayed as I am about what is happening now? In my own constituency, neighbourhood policing is withering away, and officers are now being put on response duties. I accept that such duties are necessary, but so too is neighbourhood policing. This is undermining public confidence in the ability of the police to listen to the needs of communities.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Typically, what we see all over the country is a neighbourhood sergeant responsible for perhaps one or two teams and a number of PCSOs. Those who were previously part of the neighbourhood teams are now being put on response duties. Following a Home Office decision in 2012 there was a reclassification whereby some people on response were given local neighbourhood policing duties, even if they spent all their time on response, so the earlier assertions about our having more officers on the frontline are simply not right.

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[Jack Dromey]

There has been an £8.5 million cut in real terms, contrary to what was said at the Dispatch Box. After a generation of progress, and despite the heroic efforts of the police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, and the Greater Manchester police service, we are seeing profoundly worrying signs of crime starting to rise once again.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is right to point out the sleight of hand by the Government. The real unfairness to areas such as the west midlands and Greater Manchester is this: we have a relatively low council tax base, so the precept brings in relatively small amounts of funding—nothing like the amounts of funding that are being cut by the central Government grant. Added to that, those are the areas that tend to have higher crime rates, so need is not matched by resources. It is a double whammy for the urban areas and it penalises places such as Greater Manchester.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend sets out the case powerfully. There is no question but that need does not determine the way this Government allocate funds, whether to the police service or to local government. I will return to that point.

There was another broken promise. The Prime Minister said in 2010 that he would protect the frontline. Not true—12,000 front-line officers have since been lost. It was a broken promise and, to add insult to injury, not only are the Tories continuing to slash police funding, but they are expecting the public to pay more for it. The Tory sums rely upon local people being charged an extra £369 million in council tax. Our citizens and the communities we serve are being asked to pay more for less.

Police

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

The short answer is no, the reverse is the case; my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as Policing Minister, encouraged such things. When the hon. Gentleman went to his electorate, did he say, “Vote for me and 117 police officers will be cut”? That is what has happened to his local police service.

The Minister spoke about inheritance, and there was an inheritance on the police, because a Labour Government put 17,000 extra police officers and 16,000 police community support officers on the beat. Local policing, local roots with local people having a say proved to be both popular and highly effective.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that neighbourhood policing was a success story of the last Labour Government. May I draw his attention to the work of the Poet’s Corner residents association in north Reddish, ably led by Brenda Bates who is really concerned about the lack of response by the PCSOs now that they have to parade in Stockport? For example, they used to do school gate work but they are now unable to get to the school gates in time for when children are dropped off because they are too busy parading in the town centre, several miles away.

[Jack Dromey]

Unlike what we heard from the Minister, my hon. Friend speaks from the heart about the reality in his locality, and it is unsurprising, given that the police service that covers the constituency he so ably represents has seen more than 1,300 police officers go, with more to follow at the next stages. There was a good inheritance on the police, but a generation of progress made—the formation of that British model of neighbourhood policing—is now being reversed.

I wish to make one other point about what the Minister said. He paid tribute to our police service and discussed remarkable innovation, which I have seen all over the country. Let me give but one example. Essex police, under its excellent chief constable, Stephen Kavanagh, has developed a groundbreaking system that tracks both the perpetrators and potential perpetrators of domestic violence, and the victims and potential victims of domestic violence, and enables the police to drill all the way down to hot spots of domestic violence to inform other interventions. We see such innovation by our police all over the country. But the Minister, who was previously a firefighter, will know from his experience that the police service in England and Wales is a demoralised one. It is demoralised by the scale of what is happening to the service and by the remorselessly negative tone set by the Government, from the Home Secretary downwards.

Police

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Let me make two preliminary points. First, hon. Members were here earlier for a powerful debate on the Floor of the House about Hillsborough, and it is absolutely right that where there is wrongdoing, those who are guilty of such wrongdoing are held fully and properly to account. Secondly, I agree with the Minister when he says that a progressive reform agenda—progressive is my word, not his—is a good thing and should be embraced. That is precisely why we commissioned the Stevens report and I will say more on that later. I agree with the Minister on the proposal to professionalise the police service progressively, with chartered police officers accountable to the College of Policing, a lifelong career and personal development.

Let me turn to the issue of Hillsborough and how our police service is sometimes painted. I agree with both the Home Secretary and the Police Minister when they say that it would be absolutely wrong to paint the entire police service with the brush of a very small minority guilty of wrongdoing. I want to start by paying tribute to the brave policemen and women up and down the country who put their lives on the line day in, day out to keep our communities safe; police officers like Ian Dibell who have given their lives for their community and this country. In my constituency I have seen the outstanding bravery of police officers—for example, tackling armed robbers—and the very best of neighbourhood policing. The Stockland Green neighbourhood police team is an award-winning team. Five years ago, the North Birmingham academy in Kingstanding was riven with gang violence. The school has been utterly transformed by the excellent co-operation between the new leadership of the school and the local police service.

The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of the communities we serve. In government, Labour listened to what people wanted and to what the police said. We invested in neighbourhood policing: 17,000 additional police officers who know their communities and 16,000 additional police community support officers. Neighbourhood policing worked: it proved to be deeply popular and crime fell by 43%. Today, however, as a direct result of the actions of this Government, there is a real fear that we risk a generation of progress being reversed.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I was a local councillor, one of the biggest issues on the doorstep was the remoteness of the police. One of the biggest advantages of the introduction of neighbourhood policing was that people finally started to feel an affinity with their local bobby and their police community support officers. Is he aware that we are seeing neighbourhood policing teams covering larger geographical areas with fewer police officers and PCSOs? Those complaints about the remoteness of the police are starting to come back.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the heart of neighbourhood policing is the notion of local policing: roots in the local community, the community knowing who their police officers are and being able to identify with them and develop relationships with them, both in terms of providing evidence of wrongdoing and diverting people from crime—preventing crime in the first place. The intimacy of those local relationships is of the highest importance. At our peril do we go down the path of moving away from the notion of neighbourhood policing and towards remote police officers touring areas in their cars when what the neighbourhood wants to see is that presence on their streets.

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[Jack Dromey]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can help me. Has his party declared its manifesto on the police for the next Parliament? No, it has not. We will say to the country, “Judge us on our record.” Labour is the party of neighbourhood policing. Labour built neighbourhood policing and will defend it. The Government are undermining neighbourhood policing, and we will take no lessons from the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has laid out Labour’s commitment to neighbourhood policing. The blunt truth for my constituents is that the difference between the HMIC proposals for a 12% cut in waste and the Government proposals for a 20% cut to policing is the loss of Denton police station, the loss of Reddish police station, fewer bobbies, fewer PCSOs and a more remote police service.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is right. After the 2007 crash, all parties faced the question of how to make reasonable economies. The 12% proposal, which was carefully thought through and which we embraced, would not have put the front line at risk. A 20% cut has put the front line at risk. In addition, the fabric of partnership working is being stretched ever further and our communities are increasingly feeling the consequences.

The Government’s delay in announcing the threshold was unacceptable and has meant that police and crime commissioners were left in the ludicrous situation of having to propose their police precepts, under a statutory duty created by this Government, without knowing whether they would have the power to implement them. We have heard a lot about localism from the Government, but calls from police and crime commissioners for clarity about funding were repeatedly ignored in Whitehall.

Now that we have seen the settlement, I cannot say that it makes up for the hold-up by the Government. The Conservative party and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are cutting police funding by 20%. In the last three years, that has already resulted in the loss of more than 15,000 police officers. I have seen firsthand in Birmingham and the west midlands some of the finest police officers one would ever want to meet or work with forced out under the A19 rule.

The loss of 15,000 officers was more than the experts predicted and a higher number than HMIC said would be safe. But the Government plough on regardless with this settlement. It is not only wrong in itself: it is increasingly damaging police morale. The pressure being put on our police by these unsafe cuts is starting to take its toll. Just last weekend, we learned that 800 police officers are off work on full pay as a result of stress-related sickness, costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every year. Just last year, police officers took 250,000 days off because of stress-related illnesses, a 15% increase over the three years up to 2013. Chief constables are blaming staff cuts for the staggering rise in sick days for depression and other mental issues.

In government and in opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, the distinguished former police Minister, said that some reductions in expenditure were necessary, given the economic circumstances, but as hon. Members have said today, we agreed with HMIC that a cut of 12% could be achieved without harming front-line policing. As we said at the time—it is important to remember this—a reduction of 12% over a Parliament, and of around £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, would have involved making tough choices if we were to succeed in protecting police numbers. Such tough choices included cuts in overtime, reform of procurement, collaboration, and altering shift patterns, but we believed then and believe now that that was the right approach, and that those savings were and are possible.

Conversely, the Government’s approach—they have ignored the HMIC advice and cut police funding by 20%—resulted in the loss overall of 15,383 police officers in the first three years of this Parliament, which is more than even the most apocalyptic predictions and proof that going beyond 12% meant cutting police officers, not waste, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said. The Home Secretary has said:

“Crucially, all the savings that I have set out can be made while protecting the quality of front-line services.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 714.]

She has repeatedly said that, but 10,460 bobbies have gone from our streets since the general election.

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[Jack Dromey]

The hon. Gentleman reins back from impugning the integrity of the commission members. The shadow Home Secretary and the leader of the Labour party were absolutely right to listen to the widespread calls for what the Stevens commission became—a royal commission in all but name. It was 50 years since the last royal commission, and the police service required serious examination for the future in the 21st century. We were right to commission those eminent and responsible individuals, who produced a report independent of the Labour party. It challenges all political parties, but focuses on the growing concern in the crime and policing world at the Government’s direction of travel—the hon. Gentleman, having pledged 3,000 additional police officers, is propping them up.

It is not only police chiefs and the various people I have referred to who are raising concerns about the future of British policing. If the Minister stopped and listened to communities up and down the country, as I have been doing as part of our consultation arising from the Stevens report, he would hear their concerns loud and clear. He should talk to those in Coventry, Greater Manchester, Worcester or indeed Kent about neighbourhood policing, and they will say how crucial it is. He should talk to them about what is happening to neighbourhood policing, and they will rightly express their growing concern about that which they value and know from experience works.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I do not think my hon. Friend has been to see the Poets Corner residents association in Reddish, in the Stockport part of my constituency, but he might as well have been there, because the concerns he has just outlined are very much those it raised with me. In particular, its neighbourhood policing team is now far more remote; it is based in Stockport town centre, instead of at Reddish police station. Does my hon. Friend understand why those residents feel so isolated, on the edge of the borough, without an adequate local neighbourhood policing team?

[Jack Dromey]

Again, my hon. Friend speaks up admirably for his constituency, reflecting the concern I have seen on my visits for the Stevens consultation. Communities such as his have helped to build community policing, they value it and they want it to continue, but they are seeing it come apart at the seams, with the police becoming increasingly remote, often as a result of the cuts impacting on relationships with the police officers who serve their communities.

The first priority of policing is to fight crime, but it is not the only priority. If the Police Minister was to visit the Somerset levels and tell people there that the police are only crime fighters, they would be utterly uncomprehending. Yet the Home Secretary could not have been clearer when she said:

“cutting crime is the only test of a police force”.

Over the last few weeks, however, we have seen how important their wider role is. Their function, above all, is to build relationships, prevent crime, divert people from crime, detect crime and wrongdoing and bring those responsible to account, but, at times of disaster and crisis, they are also there to rebuild lives and communities. Their wider function, therefore, is of the highest importance.

The warning bells are sounding, and for that reason we are calling on the Government urgently to rethink the scale of their cuts and instead to set out a proper plan for police reform. We are now in the fourth year of this Parliament, and we are again debating a settlement that will damage the ability of police officers across the country to serve their communities. I want to stand up for the best of British policing and for our communities and their determination to fight crime. For that reason, we will vote against this settlement. It is the duty of us all in the House to fight for what our communities want and deserve—to be safe and secure in their homes and their streets and to see a continuation of the neighbourhood policing we built in government. For that reason, I urge all Members to vote with us in rejecting the Government’s plans.

Economic Growth

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jack Dromey

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

No, I do not believe that we should take the same approach as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Britain. I will come in a moment to our proposal.

Three admirable young people in Castle Vale in my constituency told me recently that they were desperate to do an apprenticeship in the construction industry, as their dads and uncles had done, but they could not get one. R&C Williams, an excellent local building company, is surviving despite the problems in the construction sector. Nevertheless, its managing director told me that the previously successful companies run by his two best friends have now gone out of business.

I also see in my constituency the working poor—people on minimum wages and whose wages are being held down and sometimes cut—who end up having to claim housing benefit as their rents go up. It is a startling statistic that 10,000 households a month now go on to housing benefit, because struggling families cannot afford to pay their rent. Such things are pushing up the benefits bill, as is rising unemployment in the west midlands. The number of people unemployed rose in the last quarter by 16,000 to 253,000, which is up by 26,000 over the past year.

That is why Labour proposes urgent action now. The building of 100,000 homes would put 80,000 building workers back to work, create apprenticeships for young people who desperately want a future, lead to wealth in the supply chain—all those who manufacture bricks, glass and cement—and add 1% to GDP. The lesson of history is that our country has never had sustainable economic recovery after events such as the depression, the war and every recession since the war other than when there has been a major programme of public and private house building, and that is why Labour’s amendment proposes action to do precisely that.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Is not the set of measures mentioned by my hon. Friend in stark contrast to the Government’s own NewBuy scheme? We were promised that 100,000 families would have access to cheap mortgages, but only 1,500 families were able to take up that initiative.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is right. The Government have a miserable track record of promising the moon and failing to deliver. I will say more about that in a moment.

There is growing demand for urgent action to stimulate the building of affordable housing from organisations ranging from the National Housing Federation to the CBI. There is a chronic lack of confidence not only in the economy, but in the Government’s housing policies. There have been four “Get Britain Building” launches and 300 separate initiatives, and yet the sorry saga of failure continues.

We now have Help to Buy. We are in favour of helping people to realise the dream of buying their own home. However, a powerful report by the Treasury Committee described the scheme as “unconvincing” and said that it was likely to push property prices up and unlikely to produce the significant lift in the supply of new homes that is badly needed. There is also the bitter irony that Help to Buy will help millionaires, fresh from their tax cut, to buy a second home worth up to £600,000—an absurd anomaly that stands to this day. There is one law for the rich and one room for the poor because of the bedroom tax.

That leads me to my concluding remarks. The Chancellor spoke earlier about the need to get benefits down, ignoring the reality that it is soaring rents and unemployment that are pushing benefits up. He has engaged in the most disgraceful debate that divides our country between shirkers and strivers. Only yesterday, Lord Freud said in a speech that people affected by the bedroom tax should—I kid thee not—get a job or sleep on a sofa. What would he say to the severely disabled couple who came to see me who can no longer sleep in the same room, but whose son has moved out? Because they have a “spare room”, they have to pay the bedroom tax. It is an immoral tax that will cost the taxpayer more because there will be a higher housing benefit bill as people are pushed out into the private sector and disabled people will be forced to move from adapted homes to unadapted homes that will then have to be adapted by local authorities and housing associations.

Instead of doing what they should be doing, the Government are seeking to divide the nation. They are driving more and more people into the trough of despair. The essential difference between them and us is this: they divide the nation, we will build one nation.