A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Huw Merriman Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn). He talks with great experience about his community, and I hope that I can do likewise for the community that I am proud to have represented since 2015. It is really important that we are opening this debate about young people and what we must do to ensure that we deliver a brighter future for the next generation. Although the pandemic has impacted all generations, it has had a huge impact on the youngest, and it is absolutely right that we look at how we can give them the opportunity to get some of the lost year back.

People tend to forget that for those around my age, this has been a difficult time but we will get that time back—it has almost been a time of hibernation—but for young people, a year of their life is a year when they develop, they are nurtured and they grow, and that cannot be given back. That is why we must do everything—we must put all the resources in—to ensure that we invest in young people to give them the skills that they may have lost in the past year. That is why I really welcome the Queen’s Speech and its commitment to education, skills, and a lifelong requirement for people to be given that skill base.

I also want to touch on the reference in the Queen’s Speech to the need to fix our housing problem, because that relates to younger people, and it always has done. For so many young people now, getting on the housing ladder is not something they aspire to; they think that generations before them had that opportunity and it will not be there for them. To me, that is a tragedy, not least since we on the Conservative Benches have always given people the dream, the aspiration and the incentive to work hard because we will reduce their taxes and give them a home that they can afford to own for themselves. Many feel that is out of reach, so I absolutely welcome the target to deliver more homes.

The target of 300,000 homes per year is absolutely right. That does means that more homes will have to be built in areas of the country where people perhaps would rather not have them, but let me say this. I have pointed out on the doorstep, and I have had doors in my face as a result, that the house that is going to be built on the field adjoining the property whose owner I am talking to must be built because a young person needs the same opportunity as the person for whom their property was built on what was previously a field, so that every generation has the opportunity to own a home of their own. But with the housing must come the infrastructure, so that not just those moving to the area but those already in it have all the schools, the medical facilities and the roads that they require in order for productivity gains to be delivered across the entire community.

Again, I will reference my corner of the country, the south-east. It is notable that there has been a 19% increase in the population of the south-east, whereas in the corresponding period the population of the north-west has dropped by 6%, yet the spending per head on transport is exactly the same in both regions, at £370. That is evidence that there has been more house building in the south-east, but there has not been the spend on infrastructure. It is also notable that of all the major transport projects that are part of the Government’s welcome £640 billion of investment in infrastructure over the next five years, only one is in the south-east.

My message to those on the Front Bench is that if we want to see more houses—and I absolutely do—in the south-east, including in my constituency, we need hundreds of them per year, to give young people in my constituency the chance of a home of their home. Can we also ensure that the infrastructure spend is focused on those areas that will deliver the houses, not the other parts of the country that might be a little more fashionable than Bexhill and Battle when it comes to politics these days?

In the two minutes I have remaining, I want to focus on another issue that has a huge impact on young people’s lives: violence. The shocking increase in knife crime over the last five years is something that we in this House have not spent enough time talking about. It is outrageous. There has been an 84% increase in knife crime since 2014, with almost 50,000 offences caused by a knife or bladed instrument in the last year. It has gone down a little in the last year, but we do not know whether that is a result of greater Government focus, which I have welcomed, or the lockdown. It is essential that the legislation promised targets those offenders who ruin people’s lives, families’ lives and, indeed, their own lives by the use of a bladed weapon. I want to see the Government come down hard on those perpetrators but also look at this from a health and a community perspective, to ensure that people know that they cannot continue to do this.

I also want to focus on the other end of the spectrum. We talk about the younger population, and social care reform will impact on the young who need social care, but I represent a population that is ageing. Their numbers continue to increase, and those people need more than just a few words and a commitment that proposals to reform social care “will be brought forward.” They need the reform of social care to start this year. In the six years I have been in this place, we have talked a great deal about it, but we are not seeing the action. Successive Governments have not delivered the reform that is badly needed. I hope that this is the year when we find out what those proposals are and the Government start to legislate for it, because it is essential that older people are given dignity and care in their advancing years.

Finally, I will always implore the Government to remember that it is a question not just of legislating but of good legislation, given the unforeseen consequences that can come from good intentions but bad legislation. Let us ensure that we use the brains of this place and the other place to make legislation better and deliver a proper period of reform.