Sure Start Children’s Centres

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I will go on to give a couple of examples.

Some of these councils are cutting valuable front-line services to save money, while protecting the pay packets of the council hierarchy. There are some bizarre—and, frankly, ridiculous—job titles, including a creative director at the county council of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), earning £120,000 a year. Labour-run Liverpool city council is closing four Sure Start centres, and its record is a prime example of the wasteful spending that has plagued the effectiveness of our front-line services as, meanwhile, it has an astonishing 23 employees earning over £100,000 a year. Its recently retired chief executive earned more than double what the Prime Minister earns.

Labour-run Manchester city council has put question marks over its Sure Start centres, as the right hon. Gentleman outlined, despite having paid 18 employees over £100,000 a year, having cash reserves of £95 million, as my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) pointed out, and having the highest levels of funding per head in the area. The recent efficiency measures will provide the councils that have been reckless in their spending with an opportunity to reform their strategies and, as a result, function in a more streamlined and effective manner.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady understand that councils whose areas suffer the greatest deprivation, and which are therefore mainly Labour-run, have faced disproportionately large cuts from the Tory Government, and does she accept that the biggest cuts are taking place because they have received less grant from the Government?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I cannot comment on the councils in the hon. Lady’s area. I can only speak about my own area, which has some of the highest levels of social deprivation in the south of England, and highlight the fact that our country would not be in this situation—spending 39 times the Sure Start budget on the deficit—if the previous Government had not left us in such a pickle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I have listened with great interest to the debate. Speeches seem to have fallen into two categories: they have shown Sure Start as a shared success on which today’s debate gives us an opportunity to improve and they have made it a partisan issue and an opportunity to score points. We just heard from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), a man whose comments are always listened to very attentively by Members on both sides of the House, and his speech was a classic example of the first of those two categories. He made some very good points, one of which I shall comment on—that is, improving and taking Sure Start to the next level. Of course, we have heard other speeches, most notably that made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), that are more partisan and point-scoring.

I felt that the shadow Secretary of State’s speech was uncharacteristically ineffectual today. I always look forward to listening to his speeches, but I felt that it fell somewhere in the middle, as though his brief told him to make some electioneering, rallying, partisan points but his heart told him that Sure Start was far too important to be brought down to that level.

I want to try to address some of the points and try to avoid some of the partisan claims. My first point concerns the closure of Sure Start centres. I know that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends went through the general election confronted by Labour party smear stories about our intentions for Sure Start. It was a disgraceful smear then and it is a disgraceful smear when we hear it repeated, albeit in a muted way, today.

I am glad to have heard Members on both sides of the House talk about those councils that, even in very difficult times, are showing their commitment by maintaining Sure Start centres and to have heard the commitment on that point from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. When we hear that councils such as Harlow and Kent, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) mentioned, and, I understand, Liberal Democrat Councils and Labour councils such as Tameside have committed to maintaining Sure Start centres, surely that shows that this is truly a shared commitment for all parties. Why are other councils closing Sure Start centres? What have they done to find other savings? What sorts of overpaid jobs are they protecting? How analytical have they been about their budgets? Are we sure that they are not playing politics with children’s futures? I do not care what their political stripe is—I ask the Minister whether, through this process, he will pay close attention to the reasons why those councils are closing or threatening to close Sure Start centres.

[Julie Hilling]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain how a local authority such as Bolton can cut 25% of its budget without harming any of the services it provides?

[Richard Fuller]

That will definitely be a challenge. I know that the hon. Lady has deep experience in youth affairs and youth matters from her previous role, but people in Bolton have a higher level of public expenditure per head than we have in Bedford, where the deprivation level is about the same. When there are sharp reductions, that will cause some issues. That is an issue for her council to consider and it is crucial that services should come first for her council and for other councils. The methodology for delivering those services is where resources need to brought back into the budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I want to talk briefly about the cumulative effect of cuts to the organisations that make up the sum of Sure Start provision, because Sure Start is not just about child care; the best centres provide so much more.

Meadowbank in my constituency provides support for families in one of the most deprived wards in Wigan. It provides not only the usual support for parenting and child care, but all sorts of educational provision for mums and dads, encouraging them to improve their basic literacy and numeracy and to get back into formal learning. Those courses are at risk, however, because of cuts to further education funding.

The centre works in partnership with the Connexions service to support young people into employment, and Connexions is not—or perhaps I should say, was not—just about careers advice; it was also about providing opportunities for young people to build their confidence and skills and to undertake different work experience. Money was available to provide bespoke opportunities to help the hardest to reach into employment, training or education, but Connexions funding is part of the early intervention grant, so it is disappearing as we speak. Thousands of Connexions workers were made redundant on 31 March, and many thousands more have received letters to say that they are at risk of redundancy.

Meadowbank also provides sexual health services to young people and to their parents, services that are at risk due to the cuts in teenage pregnancy and health service funding. Teenage pregnancy funding was also put into the early intervention grant pot. Meadowbank has worked with the youth service to provide informal education to children and young people, but guess what? Youth service funding is also part of the early intervention grant and faces savage cuts. I truly hope that Meadowbank stays open, but it will not be able to provide the services that it did 12 months ago.

Sure Start centres in other parts of my constituency have run out of libraries—libraries that are at risk of closure because of the disproportionate cuts that the Tory-led Government have made to local authorities in the north-west. That in turn puts Sure Start services at risk.

I was always taught that you cannot get a quart into a pint pot, or indeed a quart out of a pint pot, but the Secretary of State seems to think that you can. He has put a range of funding streams into the early intervention grants, and forgive me but I am going to list them. They are Sure Start children’s centres; early years sustainability; the two-year-old offer; the disabled children short breaks programme; the January guarantee; Connexions; the child trust fund; Think Family; the youth opportunity fund; the youth crime action plan; the challenge and support project; the children’s fund; positive activities for young people; the youth taskforce; the young people’s substance misuse service; the teenage pregnancy service; key stage 4 foundation learning; the targeted mental health in schools programme; ContactPoint; the children’s social care work force; and the intensive intervention fund. I think that I have listed them all, but I may well have missed some.

The Secretary of State says that Sure Start funding has been increased, and I suppose that we could say that—if we agreed to get rid of every other programme funded by the early intervention grant. That is impossible, of course, because of the statutory duty to provide many of those services, but it is also unwise, because of the work that service providers actually do.

It is time for honesty in this debate. Funding to all the areas now covered by the early intervention grant has been cut, so funding for Sure Start has also been reduced.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that this is all about political will? In Nottinghamshire, where we too have had great cuts in Government money, not only have we ensured that we do not need to close a single one of our 58 Sure Start centres, but in Awsworth in my constituency we have actually opened one. It is about political will—balancing the budget, cutting bureaucracy and getting into the reserves. Does she not agree?

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I do not know how Nottingham manages to get a quart out of a pint pot, but when we look at a £50 per head cut and, in Wigan, a £60 per head cut in funding, we find that it is impossible to keep all the services open. We only have to look at the faces of councillors and council leaders in Bolton and Wigan to see the difficulty that they have in trying to support existing services. Bolton has to find £42 million of cuts this year. How on earth is it supposed to do that? Over two years, one quarter of its budget will be cut.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Julie Hilling]

No, let me finish my point.

Bolton and Wigan will not—I hope—close any of their Sure Start centres. They are at risk because of the cuts to libraries and other services, but my overall point is that the other services which make up the Sure Start project will be cut: youth services will be cut, Connexions will be cut and teenage pregnancy funding will be cut. All those services will be cut because the Tory-led Government have savagely cut their grants to local authorities.

[Anna Soubry]

And those cuts would have been made if the hon. Lady’s party had been elected, because her party would have had to make cuts of at least 20%. So will she answer me this, please? How would her local council have implemented the budget had there been a Labour Government with 20%-plus cuts?

[Julie Hilling]

I am absolutely delighted to answer that question, because Bolton council prepared for £15 million of cuts this year—the amount that the Labour Government told the authority that it was likely to face. It was therefore facing £60 million of cuts over four years. No doubt, that money was difficult to find, but the council now has to find £60 million of cuts over two years, and potentially another £30 million after that. With £15 million of cuts, would life have been hard? Yes, life would have been difficult, but instead of that it has to find £42 million of cuts.

[Andy Burnham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because I can, I hope, give the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) an answer and support what my hon. Friend is saying. Let us look at the range of the per-child cuts under the early intervention grant this year. In a number of authorities, such as Kingston upon Thames and Hampshire, they start from £30 per head for every person under 20. Let us turn to some of the authorities that my hon. Friend mentioned. The cut for Wigan is £60 per head, while for Liverpool—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman is supposed to be making an intervention, and we are coming towards the end of the debate.

[Julie Hilling]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I look forward to my right hon. Friend giving more of that information.

It is utterly unacceptable that the Government should be playing a game that says that local authorities have the funding and are therefore making the choice. The Government have cut funding to local authorities and have cut the pot of money that is funding Sure Start. They are wrong to do so and they should reconsider their decisions to harm families, children and young people struggling for survival in the dark days of high unemployment and ever-rising costs of living.

Finally, it is not enough to say that Sure Start centres will remain open. The question must be about what services remain and whether they are of the quality and quantity that prevailed previously. The answer, too often, is a resounding no. The Government should rethink their decision and truly look at how they can support children and families, without saying that the money exists within local authorities to do that, when patently it does not.