Budget Resolutions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I will keep my comments on the Budget specifically to youth work. I do so for two reasons. The first, more positive reason is that this week is national Youth Work Week, and I put on record my thanks to the youth workers in my constituency and across the country, who do a tremendous job in safeguarding, caring for and looking after our young people and guiding them through adolescence. Let us face it: adolescence is a difficult enough thing at the best of times, and in recent years we have not had the best of times, with covid, with lockdown and with education interrupted.

Secondly, youth work offers a good example of how this is a smoke and mirrors Budget. To give some context, youth work in England has seen a 73% cut in the past 11 years. That has had consequences. It has seen 940 youth centres closed and 4,500 qualified youth workers no longer working in frontline youth work—a figure that rises to about 13,000 if we take youth and community workers together. The National Youth Agency estimates that about £1 billion less per year is being spent on youth work than a decade ago.

I feel incredibly passionate about youth work, so I was glad two years ago when the Government announced a £500 million youth investment fund. The only trouble is that not a penny of that has been spent in the past two years. When the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and announced £560 million for youth funding, I was immediately suspicious, because I had already heard about £500 million for the youth investment fund, which we had not seen a penny of in two years. It is no surprise that the £560 million that has just been announced included that £500 million, so we could argue it was just a £60 million funding announcement. However, it gets worse, because when we read the small print in this Budget, we discover that the National Citizen Service funding is included in that money. Once we start crunching the numbers, we soon realise that the Budget includes a £450 million cut to youth services.

Our young people will get £450 million a year less under this Budget, yet the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and announced a £560 million investment. That is smoke and mirrors; it is deceiving to the young people and youth workers around the country, who have had a really difficult time over the past two years. For this to come during national Youth Work Week and at a time when the NYA has done research proving that young people in more affluent areas are twice as likely as those in poorer areas to have access to a youth centre and a youth worker shows that the Budget is not about levelling up; it is about smoke and mirrors.

If we are to do politics better, let us play with a straight bat and be honest: this Budget contains a funding cut to our young people. It is deceiving for the Chancellor to stand at the Dispatch Box and say it is an investment when it is quite clearly the opposite. I call on Government Members to be more straightforward with the voters, particularly with our young people. We need young people to engage in our democracy. When politicians stand up and say one thing, but once we look at the small print we discover that it is another thing, it gives our young people a sense that politics is not for them.

The consequences of that are far more than the loss of youth centres or youth workers—I fear that it will lead to a loss of trust among a generation of young people who have already faced 11 years of austerity and cuts to youth services, when they see further cuts. In youth services, 11 years is an entire generation. Given the scale of cuts we have seen to youth work and the 50% decline in youth work degrees, we know it will take an awful lot to build back a sector that is on its knees. We owe it to our young people to be straight with them and to be clear that this Budget contains a huge cut to our youth services.