Liverpool City Region (Poverty)

Debate between George Howarth and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important contribution. It is a point that I was going to make later in my speech. The coalition Government decided to remove the weighting for deprivation. Every Member who has contributed or is about to contribute has made that very point to Ministers sitting on the Government Benches. If we had had the average cut in Liverpool, we would have an additional £84 million a year, which would make a significant difference to the life chances and outcomes of the people we are elected to represent.

The Government talk a lot about increasing aspiration, but some people aspire every day to have enough money at the end of the week to put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs and to secure a roof over their heads, and not to have to choose between those three at any moment.

I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said about the Government’s proposed jobcentre closure plans. Liverpool will be hit hardest of all England’s cities by the proposal, which will affect 40% of our jobcentres. I presented a petition last night, on behalf of hundreds of my constituents, against the two proposed jobcentre closures in our area. The issue is very significant, and if the Government are serious about dealing with inequality it does not make sense to treat Liverpool city region in that way.

We should not forget that in 2015, the Tory Government scrapped child poverty targets that were brought in by the previous Labour Government. Ministers no longer have a legal duty to tackle the number of children in poverty. They believe themselves to be essentially unaccountable for their policies, but we will hold them accountable because we meet our constituents and their children in our surgeries every week. We see the faces of people such as my constituent Frank, who, on obtaining custody of his child last year, faced months of delays and administrative errors in trying to have his child benefit and child tax credits paid. That left him financially unable to provide properly for the child placed in his care and plunged his newly reunited family into extreme and abject poverty.

Conservative Members may say, “Well, of course, the poverty target was measuring the wrong thing,” or “Poverty ain’t what it used to be in my day. Children going hungry—now that’s real poverty.” If that is what they say, I would reiterate the significant comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood.

I am conscious that another hon. Member wants to speak, so I shall reflect only briefly on the issue of food poverty, which affects too many people not only in the Liverpool city region but across the country. The Central Liverpool food bank, which unfortunately is one of many in my constituency, has fed a total of more than 43,000 people, including 15,000 children. The number of people having to use the service has increased, because of an increase in the number of people being sanctioned. Many are children. Many people not only are using the food bank in a crisis, but have become chronic users because they cannot put enough food on the table for a sustained period of time.

I have raised the issue of food poverty before. In fact, I obtained the first debate on food banks in this House, in 2012. I also made a film about it called “Breadline Britain”. At that time, only a few hundred thousand people had to obtain emergency food aid. It is worth reiterating the point made earlier: the fact that more than 1 million people have had to get emergency food aid in the past year, in the sixth richest nation in the world. That is a stain on the national consciousness and I am ashamed to live in a country where that is the case. I am frankly appalled and disappointed that the figures are getting larger every year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton mentioned that I have been a long-term supporter of organisations such as Magic Breakfast, which helps schools provide children with breakfast. There are too many reports from teachers—and the number is increasing —of children sitting in school not having had breakfast. If it were not for those breakfast clubs, they would not be able to concentrate and learn properly.

The cuts that have been made are significant. It is not just a question of how much is in the pot; it is also a question of how it is distributed. We have been disproportionately affected because of the removal of the weighting for deprivation. I believe that the Government have washed their hands of the tough choices and passed them on to councils, as in the case of our city region and its people. Our early intervention grant was cut by 44% between 2010-11 and 2015-16. It is worth reminding the House that that grant is intended to support children and those most in need. It is no surprise, given that it has been savaged in that way, that people are struggling to get by.

As I said, it takes only one unforeseen event to push people over the edge into debt. That is why, according to the Children’s Society, nearly 2,500 children in my constituency are living in families that have problem debt. About a third of families with problem debt say that they have cut back on food in the past month. A third have cut back on heating and a third on clothing. Those are the basics of a decent life, and that is what is happening in this country in 2017. The tough choices being made in Britain today are whether to choose food over heating or heating over clothes, or to run deeper into debt. Children in poverty are more likely to fall behind in school, less likely to secure a job and more likely to experience mental and physical illnesses.

It does not have to be like that. We have heard from other hon. Members about the incredible charitable and voluntary sector efforts being made in the city region, but on their own, those valiant efforts are not enough. On behalf of all my constituents, young and old, and the people of the Liverpool city region, I urge the Minister to consider the issue of poverty seriously, and to outline exactly what the Government and his Department will do to address it properly.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, it may be helpful if I point out that I shall call the first of the Front-Bench speakers at 3.35 pm.

Local Government Finance

Debate between George Howarth and Luciana Berger

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central for making that point. I have a very great affection for Aintree library, because when it was in my constituency I used to hold surgeries there.

My hon. Friend is right. If he looks at the NAO report, “Financial sustainability of local authorities”, which was produced in January, he will see that the NAO points out that although 93 local authorities

“used reserves in 2011-12, the remaining 260 either made no changes to their reserves or added to them.”

There is an argument about the use of reserves, which the Government have made, but the NAO report goes on:

“There is evidence that local authorities are reducing services, for example in adult social care and libraries”.

Certainly in the Liverpool city region, in terms of reserves there is really nothing left other than what prudentially is needed.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned efficiency savings. Does he share my concern that when Liverpool city council was asked to make £141 million of cuts during the last two years, the opportunity to make efficiency savings was limited because so little notice was given that drastic and severe cuts would have to be made?

[Mr Howarth]

I think the Government have the illusion that local authorities are stuffed full of people with nothing useful to do, and that all anyone has to do is to identify where those people are and all the problems will be solved. However, the reality is that there is no headroom left at all in most local authorities, and increasingly we will find that that will directly impact on services. If there is a reduction in the number of social workers, it has an impact on adult social care, families under stress, children’s services and so on. There is a real problem.

To highlight my hon. Friend’s point, I will look at the latest settlement in terms of metropolitan areas as a whole and in terms of other sorts of local authority. If we deal with things by region, the Liverpool city region is experiencing a two-year cut of £166 per dwelling; in London, the two-year cut is £129 per dwelling; the English average is a two-year cut of £105 per dwelling; Wiltshire is experiencing a two-year cut of £50 per dwelling; and Surrey—that hotbed of deprivation—is experiencing a two-year cut of £19 per dwelling. There can be no doubt about where the cuts are being targeted.