Youth Service

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) for securing this debate. I am sure that we have all seen in our constituencies the excellent work that youth services do. In Leeds West, there are several vital services. Earlier, I mentioned one of them—Bramley and Rodley Community Action Trust—and now I would like to highlight the role of another one.

Armley Juniors is a small group in my constituency. It is run by just three people in a deprived part of a constituency that already has low incomes and low educational attainment. Armley Juniors took over an old post office in the constituency and has managed to turn it into a youth centre with a kitchen for cooking classes. It also offers computer lessons and a communal area for children on the estate, and runs sports teams and outdoor activities during term and school holidays. It benefits from funding from Leeds city council and a peppercorn rent on its site, but, like many youth services across the country, it operates on a shoestring budget.

Leeds city council faces 27% cuts across the board during this Parliament, and the people in the dedicated team running Armley Juniors, whom I visited recently, are extremely worried about their future. Such issues may not register on the national scale, where we are seeing significant job losses and cuts across the board following the comprehensive spending review—indeed, in Leeds alone, we are facing the loss of 3,000 council jobs—but on the Heights estate in Armley, where Armley Juniors operates, the removal of funding would deprive young people in the community of the only communal space in the area.

The estate is a densely populated inner-city area with no playing fields, no other youth clubs and no sports halls. To make matters worse, Government cuts mean that the council now has to charge local youth groups for their use of school playing fields and community areas, which is a double whammy for groups such as Armley Juniors that need to use those facilities if they are to provide activities, especially sports activities, for young people.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with a comprehensive spending review that will hit children and families even harder than other sections of society, the need for services such as those in her community will be even greater?

[Rachel Reeves]

I agree with my hon. Friend. As well as having some excellent youth services in my constituency, we have Armley prison, and the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West about the long-term impacts of cuts to youth services rings true to me. A lot of people who provide youth services in my area say that their aim is to ensure that young people from very deprived backgrounds do not become the future inmates of Armley prison. During these difficult economic times, it is very worthwhile considering long-term impacts. Many hon. Members here today will recognise that this is an issue in their constituencies, and I fear that the cuts will cost us more in the long term.

Alongside the cuts to the police in Leeds, there are cuts to sports funding in schools, which we read about over the weekend and on which we will hopefully—although I fear not—hear some more positive news this week. There are also cuts to free swimming, and cutting services such as Armley Juniors on top of all that will have costly implications for both the community and for Government spending in the long run.

Most of us remember the 1980s and the generation of young people who were condemned to the scrap heap then. I was at school in that decade, and remember well the funding cuts that meant that sports clubs and after-school activities were available to children if their parents had money, but that children whose parents did not have money and who lived in inner-city areas without open spaces or playing fields, missed out. I urge the Minister not to allow us to go back to those bleak days. The value of organisations such as those that we are championing today cannot be measured, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, just by their cost on a balance sheet. They educate, engage and inspire young people and make a huge difference to their lives. Cuts on the scale envisaged by this Government will devastate youth services across the country, and I urge the Minister to think again.