Julie Hilling
Main Page: Julie Hilling (Labour - Bolton West)
Brandon Lewis
Local authorities across the country know what this is about. They have a vested interest in getting it right, and some of the examples out there are a salutary lesson to every authority that such behaviour would not be tolerated.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
16. What assessment he has made of the effect of recent changes in local authority spending on youth work budgets.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
Local government accounts for a quarter of all public spending, so it must clearly share the burden of reducing the deficit that this Government are trying to bridge. We expect councils to make sensible savings, such as cutting waste and bureaucracy, not taking the lazy option of cutting front-line services, such as youth work.
Julie Hilling
But youth services up and down the country are being destroyed, even though local authorities have a statutory duty to provide or procure youth work. So what is the Minister doing to ensure that local authorities fulfil their statutory duty?
Stephen Williams
I understand that several local authorities are being innovative in their approach to discharging that statutory duty—for instance, placing their youth service in a social enterprise, where it might be provided more efficiently, or working with volunteers. My Department has a multi-million-pound programme in place via Youth United to find many hundreds of volunteers who are needed to run many of the youth services that flourish in all our constituencies.