A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate on the Gracious Speech, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). I pay tribute to all those across my constituency who have worked throughout the covid-19 pandemic to provide support to our children and young people. Early years staff, teachers and youth workers all kept working throughout the pandemic with such dedication in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, often fearful for their own health. Our local councils, Lambeth and Southwark, stepped in at key times to provide free school meals when the Government refused to fund them, and laptops and broadband access as month after month the Government dragged their feet.

Our children and young people have borne the brunt of the pandemic, missing out on learning, extracurricular activities and time with their friends. Their mental health has suffered, and the disadvantage gap in education has widened. Last year’s exam scandal heaped yet more entirely avoidable misery on an already difficult year, with thousands of young people plunged into weeks of turmoil, with their dreams at risk, because of the Government’s botched algorithm. This year’s exam students have also been put through months of anxiety due to dithering and uncertainty about how they would be assessed. I met this morning with year 10 students at the Norwood School in my constituency, who asked for urgent clarity on how they will be assessed in their GCSE and BTEC exams next year and how the Government will take account of the two years of disrupted education they have suffered.

Children and young people have been an afterthought for the Government throughout the pandemic. They must be the first priority for the recovery. We cannot allow the disadvantage and inequality exacerbated by the pandemic to define the future of this generation of children and young people, and that is not inevitable. With political will and resources, we can get our children and young people back on track, yet this Gracious Speech is simply not good enough.

In London, the vacuous phrase “levelling up” means no such thing. We have seen, time and again, the Government cutting the funding for our schools to make politically expedient funding choices elsewhere in the country. The full additional costs of the pandemic have not been covered for London schools and they now face a stealth cut in the pupil premium—a cynical change in the calculation date, which the Government hoped no one would notice. This will cost schools in Southwark £1.2 million, and it is a similar sum in Lambeth. It is utterly reprehensible to cut essential funding from the most disadvantaged children, wherever they live in the country. That is not levelling up; it is deliberately dragging our children down.

It is not only schoolchildren in London who are at the mercy of this Government’s cynicism. There are no proposals at all for the desperately underfunded early years sector, and the Tories are scrapping the London weighting component of the teaching grant for higher education, too. This funding recognises the increased costs of delivering higher education in London. It improves access to higher education for lower-income students in London, wherever they come from in the country. This cut of £64 million will have devastating consequences for London’s universities and those who choose to study at them. Once again, the Tories are levelling down London to the detriment of the whole country.

Children and young people in my constituency care passionately about our planet and about their peers elsewhere in the world. They know the importance of the UK’s contribution through international aid to tackling climate change, global poverty and supporting women and girls across the globe. The children and young people in my constituency do not understand why the Government would choose to make swingeing cuts to aid during a global pandemic and a climate emergency, the consequences of which are being most severely felt by the world’s poorest nations.

The commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid was enshrined in law as the democratic will of the House of Commons, on the basis of a manifesto commitment that the British people voted for and have voted for time and again. Reneging on that commitment is not a matter for the Chancellor alone. It is a matter for this Parliament, so I ask the Minister to confirm whether the Government will bring forward legislation so that the many Members in this place who believe slashing UK aid to be profoundly wrong can vote against it.

Each one of our precious children and young people deserves a brighter future, but the meanness and poverty of ambition in the Gracious Speech will only let them down. They deserve a bolder and more ambitious plan for our country than this meagre offering. I call on the Government to reconsider their cynical cuts to our schools, universities and councils in London and to international aid, and instead to equip, fund and empower our local communities to deliver for everyone.