Budget Resolutions

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The House will be surprised to know that I will talk about not billionaires, but ordinary people in my constituency of Kingston upon Hull North, for whom this Budget provides very little.

The Budget also provides very little investment, which we desperately need in Hull and the Humber. It exposes the reality of what levelling up actually means for the north as we come to the end of this Parliament. It is trifling; it is not transformative. The Chancellor mentioned Canary Wharf. That is not an area in need of levelling up. The Hull and East Riding devolution deal comes with headline-catching funding of £400 million, but it is spread over 30 years. That is £13.3 million a year shared between two councils. That comes nowhere near reversing Hull’s loss of £111 million a year since 2010. That stands in direct contrast to the Government’s economic transformation and integration deal with Rwanda, which comes with at least £370 million over five years—an average of £74 million a year—for levelling up in Rwanda.

I will focus mainly on what is not in the Budget: any compensation for the infected blood victims. That is despite the fact that 118 Members of Parliament from 10 parties wrote to the Chancellor last week, asking him to make an announcement on the allocation of funding for those people, and it comes after this House defeated the Government in December by voting to set up a compensation body through the Victims and Prisoners Bill.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her excellent work on the contaminated blood scandal on behalf of all our constituents. Does she agree that it is heartbreaking for children to have watched their parents go through this?

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), and to hear about all the challenges in his constituency.

There is nothing more important than giving children the best start in life. I first went into local politics through the Sure Start movement. Many of the women I volunteered with back then are now senior in early years provision, and it is a wonderful thing when we get it right. Last Sunday, in an interview on the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”, the Chancellor said that he could not guarantee that working parents of two-year-olds would get their promised 15 hours of free childcare. It is simply not good enough to see yet another broken Government promise. The Chancellor announced the free hours this time last year—a whole year ago—and they have still not been delivered.

My constituent Gillian has two young children, and she found out in January that her local nursery was closing down due to a lack of staff. She wrote to me:

“We were informed of this yesterday afternoon, I immediately stopped what I was doing, and started calling nurseries and childminders in the area. I must have called 25 childminders, none of which have availability.”

Imagine her panic when she knew that she would either have to give up her job, move house, move in with her parents or work part time. Parents are already hard pressed, whether it is because their mortgage has gone up, their private rent has gone up by 20% overnight in the past 12 months, or they are waiting for a social home to become available. Families in Hornsey and Wood Green are facing extreme pressure.

What good are free hours if families cannot find a nursery that is still open? The free hours need to be properly funded, yet so many early years settings have closed. As I heard from Councillor Brabazon, who runs children’s services in Haringey borough, many childminders have left the sector due to a lack of support from the Government. How will the Chancellor provide parents with more free hours if nurseries cannot recruit or retain staff? How will he prevent nurseries in my constituency from closing down? Will he guarantee that every eligible child will get their free hours in April, or will he move the goalposts again, and move the date to September 2024, or perhaps September 2025? Delivery seems to have an ever-moving boundary. He continues to move the goalposts. At this rate, children will be in secondary school before they have adequate childcare provision.

As well as the need for affordable and accessible childcare, there is the problem that thousands of children live in unsuitable temporary accommodation, including hotels, due to the Government’s abysmal housing policy. This is not a new problem, and it has been bothering many Members. The Government’s refusal to scrap section 21 and build social and affordable homes has contributed to the mess. There have never been more children in poor-quality, temporary accommodation, which is causing desperation for so many. In some cases, as the press have reported in the past week, children are dying in temporary accommodation.

London boroughs are now spending £90 million a month on temporary accommodation, according to London Councils, and more than 175,000 Londoners are homeless and living in temporary accommodation, including 85,000 children. On average, there is at least one homeless child in every London classroom. It is an absolute disgrace that we are spending so much money on temporary accommodation—it is mainly housing benefit—when that money could have been turned into the bricks and mortar of new homes.

Up and down the country, families are fed up with the Government’s broken promises and incompetence. This Budget will do naught to fix it. Only Labour has a plan to break down the barriers and provide children with the best chance in life. We need an end to the Tories’ sticking-plasters, and an end to Rishi’s recession. We need a general election and a Labour Government.