Furniture Poverty
Jonathan Brash Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered furniture poverty.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I am delighted that many colleagues have come to this debate, as furniture poverty often flies under the radar. Other colleagues have been campaigning on it for some time. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) asked a question about it recently, and I noted a written question about it from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson). Soon, my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) is hosting an event in Parliament on the subject, and I encourage colleagues to attend.
Furniture poverty is the lack of essential furniture items to make a house a home. That typically means a bed, a mattress and bedding; a table and chairs; a sofa; a wardrobe or chest of drawers; carpets or other flooring; curtains or blinds; a washing machine; a fridge and freezer; and a cooker or oven. In no way is it about want. It is about need—the furniture needed to attain a socially acceptable standard of living. Without all those items, it is difficult to achieve that. For example, living without a proper bed leads to poor sleep and difficulty focusing at work for adults and at school for children.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
In my constituency it is estimated that around 1,500 children do not have a bed to sleep in at night. Given the monumental impact on their education and mental health, does my hon. Friend think that there is a special case that needs to be addressed, particularly to support children in my constituency and others?
Sam Carling
My hon. Friend makes his point well. Lots of children are affected in a number of constituencies around the country. I have some statistics on that later in my speech, and I am grateful to him for highlighting the situation.
Living without a cooker means more ready meals and takeaway food, which is less nutritious and more expensive. No cooker means an average of £2,100 extra for a family of four per year on their food bill. No fridge or freezer tacks on another £1,300 to that food bill, due to an inability to buy in bulk or store food safely for future use. To avoid damp or dirty clothes without a washing machine, going to a launderette—of which there are few—adds just over £1,000 to the household bill. Those figures are from April 2023; increases in inflation and to energy bills since then mean that costs are likely to be higher now.
This is a poverty premium. Furniture items are a huge initial expense, and many low-income households simply do not have the money to shell out for them. However, their absence is far more expensive over time.
Income Tax (Charge)
Jonathan Brash Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
This is a Budget of aspiration. Unlike for the past 14 years, it aligns itself with the aspirations of ordinary working people. For a Hartlepool constituent hoping to live in a safe, secure and thriving community, the £21 million regeneration programme in the Budget meets their aspirations. For the 4,000 Hartlepool residents living on the minimum wage, desperately in need of a pay rise, this Budget meets their aspirations. For the thousands of carers whose aspiration is to be able to care for their loved ones and still make ends meet, this Budget meets their aspirations.
For the parents, pupils and teachers at St Helen’s school—specifically name checked by the Chancellor in her speech—who aspire to have a building that is not crumbling around them, this Budget mees their aspirations. For a small business—the lifeblood of Hartlepool’s economy—the doubling of the employment allowance meets their aspirations. For a working family trying to get by, this Budget, with its expansion of free breakfast clubs, the extension of the household support fund and the freezing of fuel duty, meets their aspirations.
The Labour party is in the service of working people. This Budget aligns itself with those working people and their aspirations, in Hartlepool and across this country, and I commend it to the House.