Grahame Morris
Main Page: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)Department Debates - View all Grahame Morris's debates with the Department for Education
(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing this important debate. I also pay tribute to Marcus Rashford. I have no doubt that if he had not lent his support to the campaign, it would not have moved the Conservative politicians in the way it did. I also want to single out for special praise my good and hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) who has championed the right to food campaign and for its inclusion in the national food strategy.
This debate is particularly timely, as it comes after the publication of shocking new data about child poverty in the north-east. Last Thursday I attended a virtual briefing that was organised by the End Child Poverty coalition and the North East Child Poverty Commission and that revealed that in the three years before the covid-19 pandemic, the north-east had the second highest rate of child poverty in the UK, having an average of 37% compared with the UK average of just over 30%. The north-east saw the biggest increase in child poverty from 2014-15 to 2019-20. It rose by more than one third, from 26% to 37%, meaning that it has risen from just below the UK average to be the second highest rate of any region. More than one third of that increase came between 2018-19 and 2019-20.
Let me say to Conservative Members who have spoken in the debate that this is the defining issue of our time, and it is not happenstance that so many children have been driven into poverty; it is a direct result of Government policies. Closing Sure Start centres and depriving local authorities of the means with which to support children are deliberate policies of this Government, and this is the consequence.
Of the 20 parliamentary constituencies across the United Kingdom with the highest increases in child poverty from 2014-15 to 2019-20, more than four fifths are in the north-east. Child poverty in my constituency of Easington rose 10.7 percentage points, from 26% to 37%.
Like other MPs, I pay tribute to the volunteers and those who have stepped into the gaps, but they are trying to paper over the cracks of Government and their agencies failing to do their job. Urgent action is needed. That means supporting children by boosting child-focused support such as child benefit, which has lost 23% of its value since 2010. We need to reverse the planned £20 cut to universal credit. To help struggling families, we should extend free school meals to all families in receipt of universal-credit-equivalent benefits, legacy benefits, and to those with no recourse to public funds.