Budget Resolutions

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in today’s Budget debate.

This week, the communities of Bradford, my home city, were left bruised and battered by this country’s eighth austerity Budget in just seven years. They saw more cuts to vital local services, no help for our chronically underfunded blue light emergency services, and little or no investment in transport in the north. One critical area that this Government have chosen to all but ignore once again is our vital education sector.

Long gone are the days of an ambitious Sure Start programme under a Labour Government. We recognised that early years intervention boosts life chances, but cuts have now left prevention and early years services in tatters. Councils today, struggling to stay afloat, are being forced by this Conservative Government to cut vital services for our children and young people—vital prevention services that create healthier, stronger, more prosperous communities.

In my constituency, families are struggling to make ends meet, and they face worse education outcomes for their children through this Government’s lack of support and investment in vital services. It surely cannot be right that a child, simply because of their place of birth, is destined to have poorer educational outcomes. A postcode should not dictate life’s opportunities.

In Bradford, my local council is facing the desperate task of deciding how to cut £13 million from its prevention and early help services by 2020. Total spend in my home city will plummet by more than one third. The consequences of such cuts in funding will be appalling. The council is consulting on reducing the opening hours of three children’s centres that serve Bradford South to the equivalent of just one day a week.

The Government’s record in our schools is no better. Despite the Education Secretary’s general election-inspired U-turn on funding, school budgets still face a £1.5 billion real-terms funding shortfall, according to the IFS. In Bradford, 178 out of 186 schools continue to face budget cuts. I struggle to identify even one out of Bradford South’s 35 schools that gains from the Governments so-called fairer funding formula; that is clearly not fair. City-wide, more than £23.5 million will be lost from school budgets by 2020. This equates to £276 a year for each and every child, or the equivalent of 488 vital teachers losing their jobs.

I had the privilege last Friday of presenting two members of staff at Hollingwood Primary School with the prestigious Marjorie Boxall quality mark award from the Nurture Group Network. I was really impressed with the work done in the school’s nurture group, which provides children with the skills and resilience that they need to make the most of their learning at school. However, as budgets continue to be squeezed, it will be increasingly difficult for headteachers to afford learning opportunities that fall outside the core business of their school. Many of these types of projects add great value to school life and make a real difference to the life chances of vulnerable children, but this Government seem to favour short-term cashable savings over making a long-term investment in our children’s future.

Without a sea change in funding, a whole generation of children and young people in Bradford South will be denied the most basic right—the right to pursue their ambitions, to strive to fulfil their potential and to get on in life through educational betterment. This Budget threatens all this, as our education system is run down by grinding austerity. I urge the Chancellor to change direction for the sake of a whole generation of children and young people in my home city of Bradford.