Child Bed Poverty

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) not only for her work on the Petitions Committee, providing time for this petition and making it a priority, but for starkly setting out the pervasive nature of this type of poverty and how it affects children. I join her in paying tribute to Bex Wilson, who started the petition.

The debate has shone a light on how prevalent and stark bed poverty is throughout the UK. According to the Department for Work and Pensions’ households below average income survey from, 26% of children have parents who want to replace worn-out furniture but cannot do so and 19% of children surveyed have parents who want to have a bedroom for every child aged 10-plus of a different gender, but also cannot afford to do so.

I recently spoke to Calderdale Lighthouse, which is a volunteer-ran charity in my constituency. I pay tribute to Diane Barker and her co-founders Donna and Emma, who do incredible work supporting disadvantaged families. As the cost of living crisis continues to bite, the charity has received an ever-constant stream of requests in recent weeks for beddings and beds for vulnerable families, in addition to the other support it provides. In one instance, a health visitor for a family consisting of a single parent—a mother—and two young children found that neither child had a bed, and they asked if Calderdale Lighthouse could provide some. In another case, Calderdale Lighthouse provided blankets, duvets and hot-water bottles to a family that had no gas or electricity and had taken to sleeping in one room in an attempt to preserve heat.

On average, Calderdale Lighthouse receives a request for beds, cots or toddler beds more than twice a week. It has seen instances where victims of domestic violence choose to go back to their abusive partners so that their children are not left cold and without beds. There has been a number of cases where families with young children with continence challenges have struggled to provide them with the beds and bedding necessary. Charities such as Calderdale Lighthouse provide an important lifeline for so many people. Many of us cannot imagine sleeping in a proper bed being a luxury, but for too many children, it is.

As well as creating unhealthy and dangerous living conditions, bed poverty has a devastatingly long-term impact. The disruption caused by not having a bed permeates through every aspect of a child’s life and development. How can we possibly expect children to learn, grow and realise their true potential if they come to school exhausted and weighed down by a disrupted night’s sleep? One of my constituents recently got in touch to powerfully explain this problem. They said,

“I currently reside in a one bedroom flat on 15th floor, which is not ideal. We are overcrowded, my son cannot develop to his full potential in this tiny flat. He also needs his own bedroom as he has trouble sleeping, meaning he’s disrupting my daughter.”

The link between child poverty and children’s outcomes is clear. Data from 2014 showed that less than a third of Calderdale pupils in my area who claim free school meals achieve five or more GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths, compared with nearly 60% of all pupils. Unfortunately, bed poverty is symptomatic of a wider trend of growing poverty. Under this Government, the proportion of children in poverty in my constituency has steadily grown. According to the House of Commons Library, 30% of children in Halifax live in relative poverty—an increase of more than 6% since 2015. A further 25.8% of children in Halifax live in absolute poverty. I want every child to have the chance to fulfil their potential, but the cost of living crisis on top of years of austerity has taken us back to an almost Victorian era for some families.

Under this Government, work no longer represents a route out of poverty. According to the Library, 65% of families in relative poverty in Halifax are classified as in-work families. Bed poverty is not seen by many in our society and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, I frankly do not receive direct contact about it, because it is hidden. Most of the referrals to local charities like Calderdale Lighthouse come via social workers and health visitors, who are required to involve themselves in people’s lives and to visit homes. If they were not there undertaking those roles, such deprivation would probably go completely unseen, and I pay tribute to them for being in those homes, for raising the alarm and for undertaking that work day after day, which I can only imagine has an impact on them as well.

The debate has shown that children up and down the country are suffering in this way, hidden from the line of sight, in people’s homes. The reality is that many children will go to bed in insufficient conditions tonight. We can clearly see the incredibly detrimental impact those conditions are having on children’s broader outcomes. We all bring problems and injustices to Parliament—that is part of our job. However, I say in all honesty that this is one of the hardest speeches I have ever had to write, prepare for and give, so heart breaking is the reality of bed poverty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful for that clarification, and I apologise if I inadvertently suggested something that I did not intend to. I was merely trying to contextualise. The hon. Lady accepted that a substantial amount of work is going on. That needs to be acknowledged and contextualised within the wider discussion. There is such a substantial amount of work going on—I will go into that in a moment—that the challenge is knowing how best to approach things. I will try to address a number of the suggestions outlined by the hon. Lady and her colleagues.

It is important to acknowledge that a substantial amount of money is going into the issue. This has been a relatively well-regarded debate and I do not seek to make it particularly political, but, given the multiple references to austerity, I have to highlight that some of the difficult decisions that we have had to take over the last 12 years have been as a direct result of pre-2010 spending. We need to acknowledge that our decisions have trade-offs and consequences, and we are still living with those consequences a decade or so later, despite the fact that in absolute terms we are spending substantially more money than we were a decade or so ago. [Hon. Members: “Such nonsense!”]

We are going to spend over £245 billion through the welfare system this financial year, and £110 billion to support people of working age. That builds on wider efforts to lift more people out of poverty and to support those who have been highlighted in this debate. There were 1.2 million fewer people living in absolute poverty in 2020-21 than in 2009-10, including 200,000 fewer children, 500,000 fewer working-age adults and 400,000 fewer pensioners. That is not to take away from the challenges we face today, particularly the cost of living, but it is important to contextualise where we are.

In response to the global challenges we are facing, the Government have provided £37 billion of emergency support this year, and we are putting in place more help over the coming months. In the autumn statement, £26 billion of cost of living support was announced as a taxpayer subsidy for 2023-24, meaning that from next year households on eligible means-tested benefits will receive up to a further £900 in cost of living payments. From April next year, we are also uprating benefits for working-age households and disabled people, as well as the basic and new state pensions, by over 10%. Benefit cap rates will be increased by the same amount.

Just today, in the local government finance settlement we have announced a further £100 million of support for people who are deemed to be the most vulnerable, including a discretionary element that gives local authorities around the country where there are challenges—whether they are to do with access to beds or something else—additional funds to be able to close those gaps and ensure people have the things they need.

Crucially, there is also a dedicated household support fund, overseen by the Department for Work and Pensions, that councils in England can use to help families struggling with essential household costs, including the purchase of new beds and mattresses. A further £1 billion is going into that fund over the next financial year. Nearly £850 million will be distributed in England, and the remainder will be distributed in the devolved nations according to the Barnett formula. That will mean we have allocated £2.5 billion of taxpayer subsidies since October 2021.

Crucially, local authorities will have the freedom to allocate funds according to the needs in their communities. Given the acknowledgement by the Opposition that this issue is difficult to assess or even find, which was one of the points made a moment ago, the best way that we can respond to challenges that are hidden or semi-hidden is to provide both funds, which we have done, and the freedom to allocate those funds in the most proportionate and reasonable way in communities, driven by representatives in communities themselves, including the kind of councils that the hon. Member for Luton North highlighted, which are setting an agenda and making important decisions for their local area.

[Holly Lynch]

Some of the referrals coming through to local charities in Halifax relate to families involved in providing kinship care, which is where family members—often at short notice—take over responsibility for caring for a very young child as a member of their family.

Will the Minister, as part of his cross-departmental work and the Government’s response to the MacAlister review, which looks at the responsibilities of kinship carers and the support they deserve, specifically look at the support required by kinship carers? Will he look at what else can be done to support families in such situations when financial support is not a part of the package because of a variety of barriers, so that the children in those circumstances do not go without beds?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting the hugely important matter of kinship carers, which I know all Members will have an interest in and experience of; I certainly have, having spoken to constituents at length about these issues. It is an immensely challenging area to know how to get right. Of course, ideally in the first instance there would not be a need for such care, but this is life and there always is such a need. Where there are challenges, we want to keep young children as close as possible to their families and friends, who they know and understand. That will inevitably mean people take over at short notice caring responsibilities that they may not have anticipated. There is a very difficult challenge about knowing how to balance that. I will certainly pass on the hon. Lady’s comments to my colleagues in the Department for Education, who are leading on the MacAlister review and the response to it, and ask them to consider specifically her point about kinship care in that work, where possible.

I return to the point about freedom. Twenty-three councils have already put on record that they are using their funds to provide beds, bedding and blankets to vulnerable residents. Havering, for example, has already partnered with local retailers to supply beds, white goods and other essential household items to struggling families. At the other end of the country in Blackburn, the council has been working hard on the provision of new high-quality beds for children under the age of seven. Additional discretionary support funds are available where necessary.

I will touch on the broader point about supporting families. The supporting families programme operates between the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which I am a Minister within, and the Department for Education. It seeks to help councils do exactly what I have just mentioned—co-ordinate help for families to overcome multiple and complex problems. Supporting families funding is allocated to authorities based on levels of deprivation and the number of families in the local population; put simply, more deprived areas receive more funding. The programme can help with some of the drivers of financial insecurity and the knock-on effects, such as those we are talking about today. It can help to address mental health, drug or alcohol problems, or issues such as finding work and keeping children in school. There was a 40% cash uplift for this programme in the Budget, which should mean that 300,000 families are covered over the coming period.

There is a role for schools and the Department for Education, as this is not just about council officers working with individual families; schools play an important role in identifying pupils who may not be getting enough sleep at home. That is why we are here today and why Bex Wilson has set up the charity, after her experience while teaching in Leeds.

Through the publication of the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper, the schools White Paper and our response to the MacAlister review, we are creating a system that seeks firmly to work in the interests of vulnerable children and young people. We know that vulnerable children are more absent from school than their peers. In autumn last year, a third of all pupils eligible for free school meals missed more than 10% of school sessions, and nearly one in 10 pupils eligible for free school meals missed more than 10% of possible school sessions for unauthorised other reasons, compared to only 3% of their peers.



The pupil premium will provide over £2.5 billion in 2022-23 to help schools improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, which can be used to support social, emotional and behavioural needs, and approaches to improve attendance. Every local authority in England must appoint a virtual school head, who have a statutory duty to promote the educational achievement of children in their care.

I am grateful to Bex Wilson, Zarach and all those who have raised this important issue, and to the hon. Members who have spoken today. Across the House there is an absolute commitment to, and understanding of, the challenges we have debated. I hope that everybody, even if they disagree with the proposal that I put forward on behalf of the Government, recognises that a substantial amount of work has been done in the area, and there is a substantial amount of funding and taxpayer support. We all want to achieve the same ends and recognise various challenges. We are grateful for the work done by those who have highlighted this issue. I hope we can continue to make progress in the coming years, while continuing to debate the best approach.