Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issues that constituents face. I encourage him to engage directly with my noble Friend Baroness Stedman-Scott, who runs surgeries for MPs. As I said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), I encourage my hon. Friend to recognise that we are looking into this issue and that we will continue to try to make progress to ensure that children get the money to which they are entitled.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I support the Government’s policy of levelling up, but I think it is important that when the Government allocate money, it goes to those communities that have the highest level of unemployment and the highest level of children living in poverty or in need of free school meals. It is an age-old policy, namely: from each according to her ability, to each according to her need. Would not anything else be utterly corrupt?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman used the word “her”. I do not know if he is trying to suggest that I am corrupt in any way. That is not something that I would normally associate with him. However, just to be clear, I am very pleased to be working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on what we are doing about the initial element of the community fund, following into the UK shared prosperity fund. In that, the DWP will be particularly involved in making assessments for programmes that are targeted at helping those who are furthest from the labour market and not necessarily on benefits today. We want to try to ensure that as many people as possible get the opportunity to work and to take that follow-up to help UK plc’s productivity.