Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in wishing all the very best to the Zephyr team in the attempt that they are making. He is right that his constituency plays a crucial role in the aerospace industry. I am pleased to say that we are continuing to work with that industry through the aerospace growth partnership to ensure that we can further enhance the industry. We wish the Zephyr team well.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
First, the hon. Gentleman might not have noticed but the wealthiest 1% of people in this country are now paying a bigger share of tax—28%—than they ever did under a Labour Government. If he is referring to the bank levy, may I also say to him that the Conservative party introduced the bank levy, which has raised £15 billion and is predicted to raise a further £11 billion that we can spend on public services. It is the Conservative Government who are changing the way we do it, so that we do it in a better way. We will be raising nearly £19 billion extra from the banks over the next five years—that is £3 billion more from the banks to be spent on public services.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
I agree with my hon. Friend and I am glad he has raised those points. My predecessor in this role, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), did excellent work in the Every Voice Matters project where he focused on this as a matter of social justice. Of course, the citizen—any citizen—should be at the heart of voting and able cast their vote as a matter of public service.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)
In November 2017, we published the 2015-16 figures for central Government Departments. The Government are fully committed to supporting our small businesses, which are the engine room of our economy, so we are continuing to take action to meet our target of a third of procurement being with small businesses by 2022.
Bill Esterson
Those 2015-16 figures show procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises to be falling, from 27% to 24%. The majority goes through indirect procurement, so is not the truth that wholesale changes are needed in a Government procurement system that just delivers crumbs from the table of large contractors to SMEs?
Oliver Dowden
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that this is a challenging target, but, as I said previously, we set a challenging target in 2010 and we met it by the end of the Parliament. I am confident that we will meet our target again. In particular, we will be taking further measures in relation to SMEs. We will use transparency to encourage large businesses to employ more SMEs and make prompt payment part of the selection process for larger suppliers, which is the point that he raised. I can tell the House that we will be bringing forward proposals on that very shortly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the question of refuges, and I am also very happy to join him in praising the work of Fortalice and services like it across the country. He mentions the reforms that we are putting in place. Indeed, that is because we feel that at the moment the system is not responsive to the needs of vulnerable women in local areas. That is why we want to put the funding in the hands of local authorities, but bring in new oversight to make sure we are delivering the right support for the right people. It is trying to ensure that we are focusing the support on those who need it and that the system is more responsive to the needs of vulnerable women.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
My understanding is that this issue is being properly looked into. Of course, I recognise the concerns that have been expressed by the hon. Gentleman, and indeed will have been expressed by other Members of this House, and the Government are looking into that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his optimism. In fact, this Government have made sure that undisputed invoices are paid within five days in many cases, and 96% of all contracts are paid within 30 days when the invoices are not disputed.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The prompt payment code simply has not done enough to address the scourge of late payment, with £26 billion owed and an average of 72 days being taken to pay invoices across the country. May I say to the Minister that she should stop paying lip service to the problem and take the action needed for smaller businesses, which just want to be paid on time?
Caroline Nokes
The hon. Gentleman is of course right to point out what a problem this is for small business in particular. However, I want to draw his attention to the Government’s mystery shopper service, which has secured a positive outcome for the vast majority of companies that have brought disputed payments to our attention, and indeed to the signatories to the independent Prompt Payment Code Compliance Board, to which we would encourage all those who have not been paid on time to report such cases.
Food Banks
Bill Esterson Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Maria Eagle
I cannot disagree with my hon. Friend. There is a deliberate attempt by DWP Ministers in this Government to sanction and stigmatise people who are on benefit.
The cost of living crisis means that people are more than £1,600 a year worse off since 2010. Living standards will be lower at the end of this Parliament than they were at its beginning. Prices have risen faster than wages for 52 of the 54 months that our Prime Minister has been in office. There are more working families living in poverty in the UK today than families with nobody in work—for the first time since records began. The cost of some food essentials has gone up in the past six years by as much as 20%. Families on the lowest incomes spent almost a quarter more on food last year than they did six years ago—they were already the families who spent the largest share of their income on food. People are now buying fewer, cheaper calories; they have been forced to trade down to less healthy, less nutritious, more processed foods.
It is not just food that has been going up in price: since 2010, people have been paying £300 more on average for energy to heat their homes and keep their lights on; water bills have gone up, with one in five people struggling to pay them; the cost of housing keeps rising, with renters now paying on average over £1,000 a year more than in 2010; and for those with children, the rising price of child care is making it harder and harder to take on work.
Yet during this time the Government have done nothing to address the cost of living crisis—and they plan much worse. Robert Chote, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, said plans in the autumn statement now take
“total public spending to its lowest share of GDP in 80 years.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the Government’s plans would take
“total government spending to its lowest level as a proportion of national income since before the last war”.
This Tory plan to recreate 1930s Britain, along with its hunger, low pay and non-existent rights at work, coincides with changes to the labour market making it tougher to make ends meet, even for someone who is in work. The “Feeding Britain” report says that 25% of food bank users are in work and the Trussell Trust says that 22% are: increasingly, being in work is no longer a guarantee against going hungry in Britain today. David McAuley, the Trussell Trust chief executive, said that
“we’re…seeing a marked rise in numbers of people coming to us with ‘low income’ as the primary cause of their crisis. Incomes for the poorest have not been increasing in line with inflation and many, whether in low paid work or on welfare, are not yet seeing the benefits of economic recovery.”
He is correct.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentioned that the Government have done nothing to address the cost of living crisis that so many people face, and she rightly talks about low pay. Does she agree that the effect of the Government’s policies has been to encourage zero-hours contracts, insecurity in the workplace and low pay? That has been the consequence of their policies, leading to more use of food banks.
Maria Eagle
I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The number of people in precarious, low-paid employment is increasing. According to the TUC, since the financial crisis hit only one in 40 new jobs is full-time, 36% are part-time and 60% involve self-employment. Only a quarter of those on zero-hours contracts work a full-time week, and one in three reports having no regular, reliable income. No wonder many of them end up at food banks, despite being in work. This is happening in Britain—the sixth richest country on the planet—in the 21st century. It is a scandal that is only made worse by the fact that our economy is growing again and the number of people in work is increasing. The Conservative party never stops telling us that this is what success looks like—I would hate to see its version of failure.
Youth Service Provision
Bill Esterson Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. That is frightful, and as I develop my speech this afternoon, I will refer to some of the consequences of losing youth services altogether.
The Government have established a maze of inefficient and underperforming nationally controlled programmes that duplicate services locally. There are around 40 national schemes and services delivered by 10 different Departments and agencies, leaving councils little, if any, influence to co-ordinate, target and scrutinise the shifting market of publicly funded provision and hindering their ability to plan where best to invest their own support.
Over the summer, I visited one of the schemes, the National Citizen Service, and met some lovely young people. I was impressed by the efforts and intentions, but the fact remains that these schemes have failed to fill the gap that cuts to youth services have created. To make matters worse, the NCS costs £1,200 per head for a six-week volunteering programme, whereas a similar scheme in Germany is able to fund a whole year’s work-based volunteering for the same cost.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Like my hon. Friend, I have met the people running the NCS, and I think the work that they do is very good. However, would he agree that one of the big problems with the NCS is that it does not happen week in, week out, all year round? What we really need are youth service workers working with young people every day of the year, because that is where the real difference is and where the real impact is made.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend is correct. I will not take anything away from the NCS; I think it is a tremendous and very effective programme. The young people whom I spoke to were really enjoying it and they told me that they were learning tremendous things, but as my hon. Friend said, it does not address year-round provision. It is six weeks, then there is a cliff edge and the provision ends.
The loss of specialist staff and locally tailored services should worry us all in that context. Young people want and need to be able to socialise in a safe and secure environment, but they also need specific professional support in many areas of their life, yet the Government measures forced on local authorities will leave many young people with nowhere to go but street corners. What my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned is probably an example of that. It does not just risk encouraging antisocial behaviour; more importantly, it will leave young people in very vulnerable situations and potentially victims of who knows what as they spend their time on the streets.
Alex Cunningham
Most certainly, because a lot of these programmes are aimed specifically at young people from deprived backgrounds who may not have access to the theme parks and holiday experiences that are enjoyed by other young people. It is all the more important that the service provision is there—and that they can eat there. When I went to the NCS in Stockton, they were doing some cooking. I did not care for the famous Parmo pork, with cheese spread over the top, and the pizzas that they made, but they were actually doing something. People said, “It is not very healthy food,” but at least they were eating, and we need to make sure that young people can eat along the way as well.
In many poorer communities, youth clubs and similar facilities are the only service available to young people and provide opportunities to learn new skills and channel their energies productively, but youth centres are so much more than simply a hangout place for young people. Yes, that is one element of the function they serve, and a very welcome one, but well-managed youth centres serve a dual purpose that will now be missed.
That open-access provision is a gateway to early intervention, reaching out to vulnerable youngsters who might otherwise be missed by other services or whose needs might escalate before they are picked up by targeted services. These open-access services are often more appropriate than targeted interventions when it comes to improving outcomes for young people. However, the large numbers of young people at risk of falling through the cracks in provision will not become evident for perhaps five or 10 years, by which time it will be too late.
Stockton-on-Tees borough council, which is responsible for youth services within my constituency, has seen the number of youth centres halved to just 12. That said, through much hard work, I understand that they have succeeded in attracting greater numbers of young people and on a more frequent basis. I take my hat off to them; that is very positive. However, in outlying areas, where provision for young people is generally poorest, the loss of somewhere to go that is close to home is a real problem for communities.
Across the country, the remaining youth provision is provided by youth workers who are thinly spread, overworked and, consequently, less able to fulfil their roles effectively. There is an obvious detriment to the services that they provide and to the young people with whom they work. Although local authorities are limiting the extent of cuts in youth service spending as best they can, that has largely been achieved by reducing the numbers of professional youth workers with the important JNC—Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers—qualification and the skills that come with that.
Again, the context is crucial. In the same two-year period that has seen the number of youth centres dwindle, 2,000 valuable skilled youth workers have been lost from the system. The Unison report highlighted the fact that, as a result, 41,000 youth service places for young people have disappeared, meaning that 35,000 hours of outreach have vanished from youth service provision. That loss is particularly concerning because by building relationships of trust and support with young people, specialist youth workers can actively engage with their communities and help young people to make their own informed decisions about their lives and develop confidence and resilience. In short, youth workers play a central role in supporting young people, yet their years of hard work are being dispensed with and the successes that they have worked hard to achieve are being jeopardised by scything Government cutbacks.
As if that was not bad enough, it has emerged that, as has often been the case under this Government, the impact of the cuts has been felt particularly hard in some of our most deprived communities. In such areas, youth services play an even more significant role: helping young people into work, avoiding and preventing substance abuse and tackling problems of antisocial behaviour and gang violence, as well as boosting community cohesion. However, the effects of austerity have been concentrated in those very communities. The education maintenance allowance has been removed, while support from the access to learning fund and the student opportunity fund has been cut. Housing benefit for the under-25s has been cut, tuition fees have trebled, making higher education more expensive than ever before, and careers services have been slashed. Those cuts are severely short-sighted and will add up to even greater problems as we move forward.
Let us take, for example, the careers service. At a sitting of the Select Committee on Education last week, Lorna Fitzjohn, Ofsted’s national director for further education and skills, reminded MPs that their assessment of the quality of careers advice in schools was that it was less than good in four out of five. It is no wonder: the Government dumped the careers service on schools—I acknowledge that they have the National Careers Service—but did not provide them with the funding that went with the responsibility. They were relying on the national service to offer additional guidance, but few young people have even heard of it.
There are some examples of very good practice, but in most cases, it is left to ill-equipped teachers to cobble something together and, if they have the right contacts, encourage a few employers to come in and chat to the young people. Association of Colleges research indicates that less than half of all colleges have reported that schools in their area are delivering the requirement to provide independent careers advice and guidance. Largely gone are the professional people who had the breadth of knowledge of different opportunities that provided the young with options best suited to their needs.
The Unison survey found that the majority of schools had reduced their careers advice and had no place for careers experts. Research by the university of Derby found that out of 144 local authorities, only 15 would maintain a substantial careers service. Ofsted’s promised review of careers guidance—that particular area of youth services—in 2015-16 cannot come soon enough.
In the current economic climate, which has seen unprecedented levels of youth unemployment and witnessed 1 million young people being out of work, education or training, there can be no doubt about the need for qualified youth workers, who are able to guide our young people into making the right choices for their lives and provide the support necessary for them to enter the work force. We cannot ignore the fact that young people are far more likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups, who are more likely to have experience on their side.
I am fortunate that Stockton borough council is very much a forward-thinking local authority. Its Youth Direction service is therefore geared to provide to young people across the borough a range of resources, including careers advice, business support and an array of targeted youth support projects, but it is the innovation that comes with that proactive provision that is particularly impressive. Working alongside the council’s antisocial behaviour team to carry out joint patrols in Billingham, the Youth Direction service is assisting with the targeting of identified hot spot areas and is actively contributing to reduced instances of antisocial behaviour according to police statistics.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend uses reducing antisocial behaviour as one of the very good examples of how youth work really does help as an intervention. Youth workers in my area—or former youth workers, to be more accurate, given that they are not employed any more—make the point to me that they are very often the one person in a young person’s life who is trusted and who gives them some kind of contact with authorities through which to address issues, whether it is antisocial behaviour, routes into employment or dealing with life in general. That one person makes all the difference to a young person’s life. They make a fantastic difference between success and failure later on as well.
Alex Cunningham
I am sure that that is very much the case, but it is not just about being the one person who may be trusted. I understand that youth workers are trusted more than teachers. Many young people look to a teacher for that sort of daily support and that level of guidance. I also see youth workers as almost being between the young person and the establishment, because they can be a champion for the young person in their community and with the other agencies. The point my hon. Friend raises is very important.
In Stockton, we are also going to have a patrol co-ordinator. The post, which will be advertised on Friday, will build on the work already being undertaken in Stockton and Billingham and will be the first ever joint antisocial behaviour and youth worker post in the country, so at least we are recruiting some youth workers, albeit only the odd one here and there.
Although a report from the National Audit Office concluded that, overall, councils have managed reductions well, 50% are none the less now at financial risk, while cuts to local government funding and services are jeopardising the Government’s professed ambitions for young people. Such an outcome not only is objectionable, but threatens to run counter to the duty on local authorities to secure access to a local offer. Introduced by the last Labour Government, that duty required all local authorities
“so far as reasonably practicable”
to provide all qualifying young people with access to
“sufficient educational leisure-time activities which are for the improvement of their well-being”.
In March 2012, the coalition confirmed that it would retain the duty and published streamlined guidance to accompany it, but that new guidance does not make clear the Government’s expectations for what a “good” or “sufficient” offer should look like. Instead, the guidance notes that local authorities are responsible for securing, so far as reasonably practicable,
“equality of access for all young people to the positive, preventative and early help they need to improve their well-being.”
Local authorities, however, face an enormous challenge in providing youth services while adapting to the sizeable budget constraints applied from Westminster. The large reduction in overall grant from central Government to local authorities and the cuts to early intervention grants mean that the sector faces a number of challenges. Despite research prepared for the Cabinet Office indicating that cuts to youth services in London were a factor in the riots experienced in the capital and other large cities in August 2011, the Government have refused to protect youth service budgets. Indeed, that report clearly states:
“Where young people described their normal lives as boring and talked about ‘nothing happening around here’, the riots were seen as an exciting event, a day like no other.”
On top of that, numerous young people are quoted as identifying boredom as a key driver of their involvement. With the riots taking place during the school holidays and with many youngsters having literally nothing better to do by way of structured activities, many resorted to joining in. If that point needed driving home, the report also notes that being otherwise occupied, whether through education, work, an apprenticeship or some other activity, was identified as a significant “tug” factor against “nudges” such as boredom.
Despite that alarming connection, statistics from the Local Government Association show that at least eight out of 10 heads of young people’s services said that they had faced more budget cuts since 2012. At the same time, two thirds of voluntary and community organisations providing youth services reported that they, too, had seen their income reduced in the previous 12 months. Although Churches and other voluntary groups have attempted to step into the breach that has been left by Government cuts, many simply do not have the resources to do so sustainably. Perhaps we need to go back to the expression “so far as reasonably practicable”. At least local authorities would be able to say that it is not reasonably practicable to deliver those services because the resources to enable them to do so no longer exist.
Before I ask the Minister some questions, I want to return to my home area. The Stockton youth assembly, known locally as the SYA, has been established to ensure that young people are consulted and their voices heard, and to help the council to work directly with young people to shape local services. The assembly provides a voice for young people aged 11 to 19, or up to 25 if they have a learning difficulty or a disability, and is made up of representatives from a wide range of existing youth voice forums. It holds a formal meeting every other month with an action-packed agenda. In between the formal meetings, the group have opportunities to engage in team building, positive activities and development sessions, which are provided by Youth Direction’s targeted youth support.
I remember well, when I was the chair of the Stockton Children’s Trust board, those same young people putting politicians, council, health, police and other professionals through their paces. They asked difficult questions, tried to force us to justify some of the changes that we were making at the time and encouraged us to do different things. That is the best of practice by a council that has been nominated countless times for council of the year and has, of course, won that award as well. From what I hear from around the country, not every local authority has been able to adapt to that extent to serve their young people—the example from Trafford comes to mind—and it is young people who pay the price for that.
I ask the Minister to carry out his own assessment of the impact of his Government’s cuts to youth services, and to pledge to become a champion for our young people and fight the Treasury for the resources that are required to start healing our youth services. Will he work with the Local Government Association to understand better the pressures it faces in delivering, in many cases, the most basic services for our young people? Will he help to fulfil his role of champion—the one that I have just given him—by better understanding young people’s need for the right advice and services from professional people? Will he further fulfil that role by working across Government to influence, among others, the Education Secretary to sort out the careers service? Equally importantly, will he help to ensure that the whole of Government works for our young people?
This is a well-worn cliché, but I will use it anyway. The young people of today are our future. They are the taxpayers of tomorrow and the people who will look after us. We need to give them more, and we need to give them a better start to help them to prepare for that responsibility.
Julie Hilling
I was going to talk about that issue, but I will pick it up now. If we look at the reports about Rotherham and Rochdale, we see it was youth workers who took the side of young people and started to raise issues. They said, “Things are not right here. These young people need to be listened to.” Indeed, they are perhaps the only professionals who come out well from those reports.
Youth work is also about challenging attitudes. It is not necessarily about taking the side of young people and deciding they are absolutely right, but about challenging their attitudes, their racism and their sexism. It is about challenging them to think about the world so that they do not just walk into the world and accept their place, but challenge the world as well. If they see injustice, they can challenge it by working together, not by rioting on the streets. Part of the legislation is that the voice of youth is central and that young people have a right to a voice.
Bill Esterson
I want to link what my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said with something that my hon. Friend said earlier, based on her experience. Many of the young people involved in the trafficking were in children’s homes; my hon. Friend talked about her work with looked-after children. All too sadly, many children in care will end up in prison a few years on, costing £200,000 a year each, which is an horrendous sum. Given my hon. Friend’s experience, can she say how effective youth work has been over the years in keeping some of those young people from ending up in prison?
Julie Hilling
That is always hard to quantify, but the issue is important. Over the past few years, people have looked for integrated services, which is the right thing to do, but they have then tried to combine them in one role. Social workers working with young people in care have a vital role, but that adult who befriends young people and works with them on their terms, and who does not have to make sure that they are home by 9 o’clock at night, they have done their homework or they have eaten their greens, is also vital.
My hon. Friend is right that the cost of young people who enter the penal system is enormous, and I will come to the figures in a moment. We are spending about £100 per year per young person on youth work, compared with the hundreds of thousands of pounds we spend to keep people in the penal system because we could not spend a pittance on them before. It is estimated that if we spent £350 per year per young person, that would fund the proper youth service we are talking about.
Another issue the Government have led us to is working just with the young people who are most in need—those who are not in education, employment or training. Of course we need to work with those people, but the more cuts we make to the service that gathers most young people, the more people will fall to the bottom of the net and need a more specialist service to get them out. The youth service is a good vehicle for enabling all young people to have that same positive relationship.
Let us talk about some of the cuts. In 2010, Sheffield had 41 youth clubs; in 2013, that was down to 23. Since 2013, of course, there have been further cuts, and those cuts are continuing. In the north-west, Manchester disestablished its youth service. It is still putting £1.3 million into the voluntary sector, but that is now up for grabs, and it is likely to disappear. Oldham is getting rid of everything apart from one myplace centre. In Trafford, all provision is on the table to go completely, although a housing association might pick some up. In St Helens, there is a 77% cut, and it now has only 28 hours of delivery at the most.
In Lancashire, half the budget has gone, and it is now looking at further cuts. In Tameside, the budget is almost gone. In Stockport, it is gone. Sefton faces huge cuts. In Liverpool, the budget is gone. Bolton faces massive cuts. Wigan now faces an 80% cut. Cheshire West now has four professional youth workers—I am sure they know individually every one of the young people they are supposed to be working with. The one little bit of success is in Knowsley, where youth workers and young people have set up a project together and are running the services.
The picture across the country is devastating. The smallest cut is 50%. A lot of areas have cuts of 75%. Now, particularly in the period going forward, a lot of areas are cutting budgets completely. These authorities have a statutory duty to provide a service, and I will come back to that in a minute.
We are losing the professional expertise and the co-ordination across the piece. Even when there is money to go into the voluntary sector, there is nobody there to co-ordinate that spend. Indeed, I was told yesterday of a local authority that is now looking to the regional youth service unit to provide it with some infrastructure, because the local authority’s infrastructure has completely disappeared.
It is now difficult to ascertain what is left of many services. Some are youth and play, while some are just youth support services. The whole designated youth service budget has gone completely. What saved the Wigan youth service in the late ’80s was the fact that the local authority had to spend a percentage of its education budget on the youth service. We had a great influx of money, and we doubled the number of youth workers. Legislation is important, and it should be implemented.
If we ask people in a neighbourhood what they want, they say they want youth centres for young people to go to. They do not want young people hanging around on street corners with nothing to do; they want them to have positive relationships. In that respect, early-day motion 488 now has more than 100 signatures, and 38 Degrees—I agree with this 38 Degrees petition—is encouraging people to sign a petition.
One of the Minister’s predecessors did a survey of local authorities’ youth service spending. As far as I am aware, it has never come to light. Can the Minister enlighten us about what happened to it, or whether it exists? Certainly, Unison did freedom of information requests on some local authorities and discovered that at least 2,000 jobs had gone. Given that there were only 7,000 in the first place, that is an enormous percentage. Some 350 youth centres closed and 41,000 youth services places were lost. As has been mentioned, a place in the criminal justice system costs £200,000 per annum.
I quote again from the Choose Youth manifesto:
“Youth work contributes significantly to early intervention and preventative services thereby reducing the incidence of young people in need of highly targeted intensive and expensive services later on.
For example, the Audit Commission report into the benefits of sport and leisure activities in preventing anti-social behaviour by young people estimates that a young person in the criminal justice system costs the taxpayer over £200,000 by the age of 16. But one who is given support to stay out costs less than £50,000. Other comparative costs include: £1,300 per person for an electronically monitored curfew order. £35,000 per year to keep one young person in a young offender institution. £9,000 for the average resettlement package per young person after custody.”
Youth work is a cheap, efficient alternative to all those other intervention measures. The National Youth Agency used to be paid to collate a survey of spending on local authorities. It can no longer do that work because it is no longer paid to do it.
The youth service profession are qualified workers, not just people who turn up on a Friday night and decide that they will play with young people. A youth work qualification is equivalent to a teaching qualification. The qualification and training are as rigorous as those for other caring professions such as social work and teaching. Youth work is now a degree profession and youth workers are highly trained and qualified. They support volunteers in their work. For every pound spent, £8 comes back in action by volunteers. The work is cost-effective in all sorts of ways, but it is about professional service. Most of us would not want an unqualified teacher to be standing in front of a class and teaching. Most of us would not want an unqualified doctor to treat us or an unqualified nurse to deal with us. Why then should we accept unqualified youth workers working with young people?
Andrew Percy
I do not know what the situation was, but I remember in the city of Hull, when we had it, although there was pump-priming from central Government we eventually ended up picking up some of the expenditure on Connexions. [Interruption.] I will have to. If the hon. Gentleman wants to contact me afterwards we can try to sort it out. I was on the council for 10 years. There are many things I remember well and some I choose to forget. This is one that I remember; we debated it in the council chamber. I will happily be corrected afterwards.
On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point about whether we should be mandating how local councils spend their money, there are countless examples. Connexions may be an example of where that happened after funding was made available by the previous Government. Bus passes are another example of where local authorities got some money and were told that they had to provide something. The money from central Government disappears off and local authorities ended up having to absorb it in their revenue budget. My answer to his question is that I would be nervous. It is something that local authorities should choose to provide, and if they do not provide it, they can be held accountable at the next election.
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman used the phrase “Government money disappears off,” which has certainly happened on a grand scale under this Government. Does he agree—this is the point Opposition Members have all been making—that investment in youth services prevents the costs of social failure, one way or another, especially preventing young people ending up in prison? Does he support the general principle of invest to save, quite apart from the benefits to young people?
Andrew Percy
I will not rehearse with the hon. Gentleman the reason why there are spending reductions for local government, which would have been implemented by whoever was in power. Let us not pretend that there is some sort of alternative nirvana in which local government budgets would be increasing. Regardless of who won the 2010 election, local government budgets would be reducing, so let us nail that myth.
I am rapidly trying to remember the hon. Gentleman’s question, which was on whether there is value in investment. I think there is value, but it can be provided in a number of ways. Indeed, who is providing such bespoke support, particularly to at-risk young people, varies between localities. There is no doubt, because the evidence is very clear, that if we intervene early on young people who are at risk of following certain pathways, we can prevent those outcomes—that is what we all want. I broadly agree with him, although how we provide it should not be mandated in one particular way.
That brings me neatly to North Lincolnshire council. We went through a painful process, because following the “Positive for Youth” Government guidance in July 2012, the local authority decided to consult young people on how it should provide its youth services. In so doing, the local authority spoke to 2,000 young people, who told us that the service they had been offered, which in many ways had not changed since the old Humberside youth service of 40 years earlier, was not necessarily delivering what they wanted it to deliver. That became controversial. Some youth workers did not like it, because different providers were brought in. Indeed, in the initial proposals there was a gap between what would happen to the core, traditional youth worker roles and the new provision. Questions were asked about whether we would lose something. Eventually, the local authority came to the sensible position of retaining a number of fully qualified youth workers in an outreach role across localities, and a range of other provisions was provided across various localities with an increased budget of £194,000, which is not insignificant for a small authority.
Young people told us that they did not necessarily want everything to be sport-related, which often happens with youth services and youth provision in the broader sense. People often think, “We’ll just put goalposts up and give kids a football, because that’s what they really want.” But that is not what a lot of young people want, so street dance is now being provided by a brilliant organisation called Street Beat. We have Grasp the Nettle, and we even have cooking classes. Of course, street sport is provided throughout the summer months, and indoor sports are provided in the winter months.
We have been able to base those activities in 20 centres across North Lincolnshire, including all the existing youth centres, which the council decided to retain and, in some cases, improve—the youth centre in Broughton in my constituency will shortly be moving. We now have new providers offering a range of services, including the Duke of Edinburgh award programme, in a number of new centres. There are new operators in places such as Winterton, Brigg, Epworth and Crowle. Attendance in Broughton has increased by 63% since youth services were provided in this different way, which was controversial in many respects, but the figures speak for themselves.
The local authority also talked to disabled young people about what they wanted. The responses were very interesting, because they wanted bespoke services for disabled young people to be part of the mix, but they wanted mainstream provision to apply to them, too. I pay tribute to Scunthorpe United, which does a great job of providing disabled youth services. I also pay tribute to Daisy Lincs, which is a great local charity headed by Julie Reed from Crowle. Daisy Lincs does a brilliant job with disabled young people.
I will now describe where we are at in my area and across North Lincolnshire. Before the changes, we used to have three sessions a week in Winterton; we now have five. We used to have eight sessions in Brigg; we now have nine. On the Isle of Axholme, which I represent, we used to have three sessions; we now have nine. The number of sessions increased by 49.5% between 2012-13 and 2013-14, and the attendances speak for themselves. There were 31,215 attendances in 2013-14 compared with 22,800 in 2012-13, so providing services in a different way and delivering them with extra funding has made a real difference. The biggest thing we found was that 85% to 90% of young people simply did not engage with the old youth service provision, which was working very well for a certain group of young people, but it was not working more broadly. It could be argued that some of the new provision, because it is based around themes such as street theatre, may not be picking up some of the important issues that the hon. Member for Bolton West so eloquently outlined. That is why outreach services are being retained.
We know that the picture is painful for many local authorities, but in North Lincolnshire, by putting in that extra money and providing services in a different way, based on what young people told us they want—there were some protests from youth workers—we have been able to deliver a positive change.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Solicitor-General
I thank my hon. Friend for that question and I hear very much what he says, and I am sure the CPS hears it too. All discrimination cases should be treated equally. It is troubling that disability hate crime remains the lowest strand of offences prosecuted, which is why the CPS action plan is a vital step forward.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My thoughts are with the family and friends of Erick Maina, who was tragically found dead over the weekend after apparently taking his own life. Shockingly, racist graffiti referring to Erick appeared in my constituency in the days after his death. Will the Minister commit to reversing the recent decline in prosecutions so that appalling acts of hate crime such as that linked to Erick’s death are dealt with in the strongest possible way?
The Solicitor-General
The hon. Gentleman has raised a grave and serious case, and it is one of a number that are concerning us as constituency MPs. The 10-point disability hate crime action plan will help to reinforce the message to prosecutors and to the police that hate crimes can take many forms. An example is people who befriend individuals with learning difficulties, then use coercive control to commit crimes against them. That is a hate crime.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bill Esterson Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Let us look at the cuts and freezes on fuel duty that we have made. Fuel duty would be 13p a litre higher under Labour’s plans than under our plans. To use a simple word, it would be a “nightmare”.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Prime Minister’s own Education Department has said that it has closed 578 children’s centres. How is that protecting Sure Start?
The Prime Minister
I gave the hon. Gentleman the figures, but I am afraid that he was unable to think on his feet and alter his question. The fact is that there are 3,000 such centres open, and only around 1% have closed.
G20
Bill Esterson Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As well as looking at the big banks and how we nurse them back to health—some good progress has been made there—we also need to encourage what are called “challenger” banks, and new lenders into the British economy. Those can be crowdsource funders as well as new start-up banks, or businesses such as supermarkets that are getting into banking. We should be encouraging all those things for a more competitive sector.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Staying with the economy, those who moved their bonuses to April to take advantage of the cut in the top rate of tax undoubtedly feel that there has been a recovery. Does the Prime Minister understand that for people on zero-hours contracts, or wages that are £1,500 lower than they were three years ago, there has been no recovery? Where is the good news from the G20 for the vast majority of ordinary people in this country?
The Prime Minister
Of course I understand that times have been incredibly tough for people, many of whom have not seen an increase in their wages yet they have seen prices rising. The key is that if we want a proper recovery in living standards, we have to see three things: a growing economy, which we now have; reductions in personal tax rates, which we are doing by lifting the allowance; and we must keep inflation under control so that we get low interest rates and low mortgage rates. All three of those things are happening under this Government, but if we had listened to the Labour party, I do not think that any of them would be happening.
Debate on the Address
Bill Esterson Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Wright
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The devil will be in the detail, but I hope that we can make amends. It is only 10 days or so since we commemorated workers memorial day, when we resolved to remember the dead and fight for the living. The proposed legislation is an important part of that, and I hope that compensation, fairness and justice will be provided.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend that the issue is of great importance, and it is good to see the Government bringing forward such legislation. Not long ago, I received a letter from AXA trumpeting the work that it and the Association of British Insurers have done. Will my hon. Friend join me in impressing on the Government that the approach of the ABI will be incredibly important, and that the Government must not listen just to the insurers when dealing with this very important issue?
Simon Hughes
I voted for the income tax changes as a package that took many people on low and medium incomes out of tax altogether as a result of the raising of the tax threshold, and only when I was satisfied that people on very high earnings would pay more net. Yes, they had a reduction last month in their top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p in the pound, but with all the other changes that affect them they will make a bigger total contribution to the economy in tax. The hon. Lady knows what I am going to say next. I was here for all the time of the Labour Government, when for every single month apart from the last few weeks the top rate of tax was 40%—not 50%, not 45%, but 40%. The great socialist regime of Tony Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) did not deliver the great socialist nirvana, and that was the time when people in the banks were earning obscene amounts, the likes of which had never been earned before, and they were not dealt with.
On the welfare cuts, the Liberal Democrats argued strongly in the coalition that benefits should not be cut, but that with some inflation-lined exceptions there should be a limited increase this year of 1%. That is what the Government have tried to do. There are exemptions. Changes to housing benefit should not apply to any pensioner householder in the country. Some rates of increase of benefit for people with disabilities are higher than 1% to try to achieve equity. These are all attempts to deal with a welfare bill that is extremely high. It is not pleasant and I do not pretend that it is easy. We would all like to be able to give much more to people who are struggling, and I am very concerned that the bottom 20% should be the priority of this Government in their remaining two years. From the hon. Lady’s Front-Bench colleagues I have heard no answers as to how we pay our bills, deal with the fact that we are paying 120 million quid a day in interest on our debts, sustain the welfare state and encourage people back into work.
Bill Esterson
The Institute for Fiscal Studies is clear that the lowest 20% of income groups are being hammered by the Government’s various changes. How can the right hon. Gentleman justify disabled people being hit, as they have been, by a combination of the bedroom tax, the council tax localisation scheme, work capability assessments followed by their appeal, and having their benefit cut during that lengthy process?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are now on 17 minutes. I was working on speeches lasting no longer than 16 minutes per Member.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is always interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant). I can only imagine what it would be like if he really disagreed with the Government: the vehemence of his attack would be something to behold. He made some good points about the impact of the HS2 project and the need to speed it up, as did his neighbour the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher). Speeding up the construction would help the economy, and the blight point was also well made. I live very near to the route of HS1, and that will drag on and on. One of the lessons of HS1 that should be applied to HS2 is the need to deal with blight as speedily as possible.
This feels a bit like speaking in an Adjournment debate. Indeed, I have seen more Members present in the Chamber during Adjournment debates. That may be an indication of the thinness of the fare before us, which may be more worthy of an Adjournment debate. Perhaps that says it all.
I want to discuss the way in which the Queen’s Speech will affect my constituents, and mention some of the proposals that it might have contained which would have affected them far more. Before I do so, however, let me say that I heard the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) come out with the usual Government line about politicians racking up debt around the world. He mentioned his business background and referred to the need for not just cost-cutting but top-line investment. However, he conveniently neglected to mention the role of the banks around the world in contributing to the financial crisis, and the fact that they lent money to people who could not repay it.
The business analogy illustrates the importance of investment. Without investment, business cannot succeed. Similarly, it is the Government’s role to invest in economies, because that is what Governments are there for. When things are tough and there is no one else to invest to stimulate the economy, Governments should step in. The Queen’s Speech did refer to the creation of jobs and growth, but there was precious little to back that up and explain how it would happen.
Let me say something about the Government-backed mortgage scheme, which, it is said, is designed to help people to own their own homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) accurately described the current state of the housing market and the problems that exist not just in her constituency, but all over the country. She spoke of the lack of affordable housing, social housing to rent, and low-cost housing to part-rent-part-buy or to buy outright. Developers want to build the most expensive housing they can, because, of course, they want to make as much money as possible. It is no coincidence that over the years about 2 million houses have been sold under the right to buy and we have a shortage of about 2 million affordable homes. We unquestionably have a housing shortage, and according to the Homes and Communities Agency, affordable housing starts collapsed by 68% in the financial year 2011-12. We have seen an increase in homelessness and rough-sleeping, which is particularly affecting families and children.
A proposal that is designed to underwrite mortgages will help the wealthy because it is for new-builds and more expensive housing, but will it help the housing shortage? If it is designed to help the poorest and tackle the shortage of social housing by moving the market further up, is not that use of Government-backed mortgages one of the reasons why we ended up in a financial crisis in the first place? We all remember Northern Rock and 125% mortgages in this country. It is not just me who says this. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North quoted a number of sources, including the Treasury Committee, commenting on the danger of inflating the housing bubble again and the danger of leaving people, at all levels in the housing market, sooner or later unable to pay, with all the consequences of that, which are still going through the financial system now.
Rising prices are another consequence of having a limited supply of housing, which can put housing out of reach for many, or put people into a false, unaffordable state of ownership. On 20 March, The Daily Telegraph said:
“Given the over-dependence of the British economy on the housing market, it is hardly surprising that Mr Osborne has looked in this direction for salvation. But we question whether it is sensible for the state to enter into the mortgage market in this way. It will do nothing to rebalance the economy, and risks stoking another housing bubble. In addition, even though interest rates will probably remain low, it is dangerous to encourage people to buy who might be vulnerable to an increase in lending costs and negative equity.”
As my hon. Friends have said, there is a housing problem and we need to build affordable homes. We must consider the impact building homes would have on the construction sector, the economy and jobs. There is also a lack of investment in the existing stock of empty homes, which the construction industry is keen to see addressed, hence the calls for a cut in VAT on renovation of property to 5%.
The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) mentioned the International Monetary Fund visit, and IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said:
“We said that if things look bad at the beginning of 2013—which they do—then there should be a reassessment of fiscal policy. We still believe that. You have a budget coming in March and we think that would be a good time to take stock and make some adjustments.”
The Budget did not do that. We did not see the kind of moves on housing that I have just described, and we have not seen that in today’s announced measures either.
Sadly, the Chancellor chose to ignore the advice and plough on regardless, and no doubt he will stick to that when he meets the IMF this week. I heard calls for him to ignore any advice from the IMF and to carry on regardless, but for my constituents that would mean more austerity. It would mean more pain for hard-working families, for disabled people and for those desperately trying to find work where only zero-hour or part-time, low-paid jobs are on offer.
There was no vision in today’s announcements for the long-term either. There was no suggestion of how the economy might grow so that public borrowing could finally be reduced, and there was no answer to the question of why the Chancellor said the credit rating was the most important factor on which he should be judged. Many Government Members want deeper spending cuts, but just a few weeks ago thousands of people earning more than £150,000 a year, including many millionaires, were given what their friends in government had promised them, which amounted to £100,000 each year to anyone earning £1 million a year.
At the same time, our constituents paid for that through the bedroom tax and in cuts in support for those in work and those looking for work. While the wealthiest in our society have enjoyed the benefits of a handout from the Chancellor, millions of people are wondering how to pay the bills, put food on the table and heat their homes. It is no surprise that 350,000 people are using food banks, according to the latest figures from the Trussell Trust—and that is before the bedroom tax, the council tax localisation scheme and other attacks on the poorest have really started to bite. At least 30% of those in social housing will be affected by the bedroom tax, and offering discretionary payments is simply not good enough. The housing associations and local authorities in my area have already found that that money does not go anywhere near far enough. People are facing real hardship, and the measure has only just been introduced.
Two of my constituents have told me of their circumstances. A man who has been disabled for 12 years was recently declared fit for work in his work capability assessment, despite having a degenerative disease. He is appealing, but while he does so he loses £25 a week; at the same time, the bedroom tax on his spare room is £14.71 a week and he has to pay £34 in council tax that he has not had to find before, because the council tax benefit is not at the same level it was before last month’s reforms. It all adds up to more than £200 a month for a disabled man who is unable to work and his family. We have heard from other Members about the difficulty disabled people have in finding work—they genuinely want to work, but there are not the jobs for them, and when they go to interview people will not take them on.
The other constituent is a lady who has spina bifida. She passed her work capability assessment, but one question a medically trained member of the Atos staff asked was, “How long have you had this condition?” The idea that someone who is medically trained did not understand what spina bifida was, or its consequences, is deeply troubling for everyone. That sums up some of the problems that people face. My constituent also now has to pay council tax for the first time. She used to work, but when she goes for an interview now people take one look at her and say, “No, I’m sorry, we can’t employ you”, because they assume that it will be difficult for someone with spina bifida to do the work that she has applied for, although she is extremely well qualified. She has no choice but to pay the extra money in council tax, if she can find the money from somewhere. I keep meeting people who have been disadvantaged by the benefit changes. At the same time, we see people at the top doing very nicely out of some of the changes the Government have introduced. Nothing in today’s announcements was encouraging for people looking for work and people who are disabled—people who desperately want to work.
We have heard about the attacks on the people in most need, but a number of colleagues have also mentioned the necessity of support for business. Where is the support for manufacturing to help our flatlining economy and our businesses and to create the full-time, well-paid jobs that people need? Why was there not an announcement about a national investment bank and the regional banks to go alongside it—the kind of support that is needed, which we could have done with desperately many years ago?
Some measures have helped the economy in my constituency. When the Government took office in 2010, however, they scrapped Building Schools for the Future, and that had a profound effect up and down the country. With school building programmes not going ahead, the construction industry and the economy as a whole were hugely affected. One school in my constituency, Aintree Davenhill, was in the primary capital programme. The children at that school used to have lessons in disused aircraft hangars made of corrugated iron. As one can imagine, it was boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter, and it certainly was not an ideal teaching and learning environment. The previous Government had approved funding, but whereas phase 1—the infants part of the school—had been completed, phase 2 had not been. When the current Government came into office, they stopped the funding for phase 2. Fortunately, Sefton council, which had sufficient capital in reserve for a primary school, stepped in to fund the rest of the project. I was lucky enough to go to the opening two weeks ago of the brand new school, which is a fantastic tribute to everybody who has worked on the project.
Investment in a primary school, however, makes only a very small contribution to the economy. Much more investment was needed, because the construction industry has wound down, hundreds of thousands of construction workers have been laid off, and businesses have closed. It will take time for any announcements now about construction to build the industry back up.
Another project that I am pleased to see in my constituency is the building of the Thornton relief road. It is a £30 million project. It was first proposed in 1934, and I have mentioned it many times in this Chamber since being elected. The building of the road was finally achieved by a combination of Government and local government funding, but it should have been approved three years ago. The previous Government had given the green light to the scheme, but it was also cancelled, and three years of lack of investment and economic stimulus resulted, as with the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme.
We need urgency from the Government, and we did not see that today. The hon. Member for Lichfield mentioned the High Speed 2 project, and he is right that it will make a huge contribution to the economy, but if it is delayed for many years, we will not see the economic benefits now when they are most needed.
Michael Fabricant
I forgot to mention that the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Group has said that one good thing that can come out of HS2 is the construction of lines and carriages, providing that that work goes to British companies. I will be asking the Department for Transport to ensure that it does.
Bill Esterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the importance of using British manufacturing companies for projects in this country. I will mention Bombardier, and the cancellation of the project at the Derby works—a project that went to Siemens—as an example of where our policy was wrong. We must get that sort of thing right—
Bill Esterson
I am glad that that the hon. Gentleman is nodding. German contracts are let to German companies—there are ways of writing contracts that favour them, and this country must get better at that in relation to our companies.
I mentioned the construction sector and two projects in my constituency. This country should ensure that the supply chain supports local subcontractors and local labour, and that should be written into contracts far more often.
Bill Esterson
I am glad to see the Minister nod in agreement to that point. This is about supporting the local economy, which can happen only if we prioritise using local subcontractors and their staff. There are always ways of doing that.
I have made the point about the importance of investment in the economy. There was not enough in the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech—frankly, there was precious little—to support the economy and to get the growth we need. Ultimately, to get the deficit down, we must have growth. We must have the investment now; it will not wait. We have had three years of delay. We need immediate investment in construction, in housing and in the kind of projects that we have been discussing in the past hour or so. It is also important that we consider the measures that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), are proposing on VAT and support for small business.
I will make a final plug for small business. I ran a small business for 15 years and many small businesses in my constituency—not only in construction, but throughout the economy—need growth and the support of Government investment to succeed. Small businesses will create the jobs; they will be the key drivers of the economic recovery that we desperately need. It is no good lending going just to the medium-sized and large companies that are already financially successful and have lots of money in reserve. There must be proper support for the smallest of businesses, and I urge the Government to take that point on board as well as the other points that I have made about investing in the economy.
Dr Wollaston
Yes, indeed. They say in the south-west that if one can see across the valley, it is about to rain, and if one cannot see across the valley, it is raining already.
Having expressed those reservations about HS2, I welcome almost everything else within the Gracious Speech. My principal point is about the draft care and support Bill. To see that Bill finally being introduced in this Session of Parliament is very welcome. I remember well the shock and horror of many of my former patients when they realised that if they had assets above the threshold of £23,250, they would receive absolutely no support with their care needs. We know that one in 10 families face losing more than £100,000 of their income just to care for a relative, and that very many people end up having to sell their homes to pay for their care needs. So, such a massive increase in the asset threshold and a cap on lifetime costs is very welcome, particularly because those measures will encourage people to come forward at an earlier stage to seek the help that they need. In turn, that will help to reduce unnecessary admissions as well as helping people to remain as independent as possible for as long as possible.
Of course, the Bill will introduce support and proper assessments for carers, not only for adult and elderly carers but for child carers, who suffer and are robbed of so much of their youth as a result of their caring responsibilities. I am looking forward to seeing the detail in the Bill, and I very much enjoyed being part of the Joint Committee on the draft Bill that made recommendations to the Government; I hope that many of those recommendations will be included in the Bill when it is placed before Parliament.
I also particularly welcome the fact that there will be compensation for the victims of mesothelioma who cannot trace an employer and for those whose employer has gone out of business, or who do not have any insurance. It is particularly cruel that they receive no access to any compensation, despite mesothelioma being almost entirely attributable to asbestos exposure. But, and this is a big but, how ironic that while providing fairness and support for one type of lung cancer we are failing in this Queen’s Speech to address preventing a far more common type of lung cancer—failing to address how we are going to stop the next generation of smokers coming on stream. We should bear in mind that every year 200,000 children take up smoking. Those children will be at risk of going on to face a lifetime of problems. We know that 100,000 people a year at least are dying as a result of smoking-related problems. The failure to take forward plain packaging is a huge missed opportunity.
I want to clarify one thing: there is nothing plain about so-called plain packaging. I would encourage everyone to google what plain packaging looks like. Plain packaging sets out very clearly what is involved. It sets out the disease and suffering that people will face if they do not address their smoking. My experience as a doctor was not so much that people feared the thought of death, but that they most feared the process of dying. The process of dying from many smoking-related illnesses is hideous. We are not just talking about lung cancer. We are talking about, for many people, the years spent in a kind of living death, tied to an oxygen cylinder, suffering from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and many other conditions; or the suffering that comes from needlessly losing a leg from arterial disease. Smoking is a leading cause of blindness. There are many effects of smoking—all entirely preventable. So-called plain packs spell that out graphically, and to anyone who hands around such a pack, it is quite beyond a simple public health message. It is a very graphic message.
Bill Esterson
I welcome what the hon. Lady says about plain packaging. In the Committee stage of the Children and Families Bill, I and a number of Members tabled an amendment about banning smoking in cars with children present. I wonder whether she would agree that we hope that the Government will bring back their own version of that amendment in good time.
Dr Wollaston
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Indeed, this is about protecting children, and that is what we should focus on. It is not about introducing a nanny state. The so-called plain packs would not necessarily change the habits of a committed lifetime smoker, but they are aimed predominantly at deterring the next generation. I feel this is a missed opportunity, and I very much hope that as further evidence emerges from Australia, the Government will reconsider their position and send a very sensible public health message.
Many Members have commented that the Gracious Speech is not just about setting out what legislation will be introduced; it is about sending a message on the direction of travel. My very clear view is that Government’s core business does include public health. Members know that I feel strongly about minimum pricing for alcohol. I am not trying to be the nation’s supernanny here— I enjoy a drink myself. This is about trying to get rid of ultra-cheap alcohol.
In my part of the country, we have shops that sell white cider with a maximum price. They are not allowed to sell it for over 23p a unit. I am afraid that is causing carnage. We have recently seen deaths of rough sleepers in my community, and rough sleeping is very closely associated with dependency. We know that as people start to lose control of their drinking, they start to target cheaper and cheaper alcohol. We know that the heaviest drinkers spend 40% less per unit on their alcohol. Just as with the smoking issue, this is not necessarily about saying that it is always possible to save everyone who has become a dependent drinker. We know that 40% of dependent drinkers will, whatever happens, be unable to control their drinking and will lose their life as a result of their dependency. It is about trying to help those who are starting to lose control of their drinking. It is about helping those who are right at the beginning of the journey, who may have developed a harmful pattern of binge-drinking.
The argument goes beyond the public health message and towards what alcohol dependency is doing to our communities. We know, for example, that there are 705,000 children in this country living with a dependent drinker—not just a hazardous drinker or a harmful drinker, but somebody who is dependent on alcohol. We also know that in 40% of child protection cases, alcohol is a key part of the problem. We know that nearly half of all violent crime is partly attributable to alcohol, as I know from my experience of seeing victims of crime and domestic violence. We know that a huge number of those who are victims of domestic violence report that alcohol directly caused or significantly worsened that violence.
We know that about a third of people feel that their town centres have become no-go areas to them at the weekend, and we know that all of us are paying for that. It costs us a staggering amount—about £21 billion a year just within our health service. I welcome the suggestion from the Secretary of State for Health that members of the Front-Bench team should spend time on work experience, and I suggest that suitable work experience for all members of the Front-Bench team would be a Friday night in casualty. If they really want to see what is causing delays in casualty departments at the weekend, they need look no further. Perhaps they would like to go out with the special constables in my area, who tell me that all their time at the weekend is spent dealing with alcohol-related crime and violence.
The final point that I would like to make about the subject is that it is an important cause of health inequality. To all those who say that minimum pricing penalises the poor, I would say that it is the poor who are suffering the most as a result of ultra-cheap alcohol. There are many reasons why we need to address the problem. If alcohol harmed only the individual who was drinking, that would be purely a matter of personal choice, but the wider harm is caused by the ripples that spread out from the individual who is losing control of their drinking, affecting those closest to them, their wider family and their community. So there are good reasons for saying that this is fundamental and core Government business.
I feel very disappointed that such a well-evidenced measure has been dropped from the agenda. It is not good enough to say, “We have not made a decision.” Continually kicking a ball down the road can, in effect, be the same thing as dropping it altogether. I hope that alcohol-related measures come back as “any other business” within the legislative programme.
I call on the Government particularly to look at the emerging evidence from Canada. Apart from the myth from the alcohol industry that such measures would make alcohol unaffordable, which is not the case, other myths are perpetuated. We need to challenge those. What we have seen clearly from states in Canada that have introduced a floor price is that following a 10% rise in the floor price there is a 32% reduction in deaths directly caused by alcohol. That is important evidence. There has also been a decrease in alcohol-related hospital admissions. Let us look at the evidence and have evidence-based policy, rather than listening to the power of lobbyists. It is vital that we look at the power of the alcohol lobby and the way that that operates at the heart of Government. I would like to see a register of lobbyists. I would like to see transparency about who is calling the shots when it comes to forming policy.
I sometimes get a little flack for using social media—surely not, Members might think—but if we look at the Chamber now, which of course is where Members of Parliament should be, we might consider that Twitter can reach parts that other tools cannot. In particular, if we look at the tools that others use, and at the power of the lobbying industry, we will see that MPs need to use every tool at their disposal to fight for the causes they believe in. Public health is fundamental to why I applied to be in this place in the first place, and it is fundamentally Government business. We should look at the evidence.