Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his positive engagement with the programme. As he would expect, we commissioned independent research on its impact, and it tells us that so far we are getting £2 of value for every £1 of public money we spend. The most significant impact has been on what might be called work-ready skills: in particular, helping young people to develop confidence and teamwork, leadership and communication skills, all of which are very important in the workplace.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Youth work budgets have been slashed throughout the country, but the amount the Government are spending on a six-week programme for 16-year-olds would fund a 52-week-a-year service for 13 to 19-year-olds. Will the Minister rethink the NCS and instead put the money into a year-round youth service?

[Mr Hurd]

I think the hon. Lady should speak to her Front-Bench team, who recently said they were not against the NCS. I think they saw the numbers on the very positive impact it has on young people, and I hope she will support that too. Youth services around the country do not have to be cut. There are lots of other options for local authorities—to mutualise, to look at other delivery models—and we stand ready to support them in that.

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[Mr Maude]

Way back in 2004, Sir Peter Gershon recommended the introduction of shared services to try to break down that silo mentality and to make efficiency savings. For eight years very little happened, but we are now breaking through and making big progress on legal services, on internal audit and on back-office, transactional, human resources and finance services. There is much more to do, however, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T6. Bolton community and volunteer services have congratulated Bolton council on preserving funding for the voluntary sector, but projects are still at risk owing to rising costs, increasing demand and reduced access to funding. What will the Minister do to save community and voluntary sector projects in Bolton West?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady should direct her first inquiries to the council, because not all councils are cutting funding to the voluntary sector. She should be aware of the broad national picture, in which volunteering is up, giving is stable and social investment is rising. There is a whole range of Government programmes to support and strengthen civil society and help it to maintain its resilience through this very difficult period.

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[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly study my hon. Friend’s Bill. It is not necessarily the Bill we would all expect him to produce, but it sounds like an absolutely excellent idea. In co-chairing the high-level panel at the UN about the future of development, I wanted to make sure that gender equality was put right up there in the replacement for the millennium development goals, and it is there. I think his Bill might be able to provide some extra ideas for how to bring this to life.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Q8. In 2010, the Prime Minister proudly stated:“we actually made sure that neither the budget, nor the spending round…would result in any increase in child poverty” but in his first full year as Prime Minister, the number of children in absolute poverty rose by 300,000, and it is still rising. Will he now admit that he was wrong and that his policies are to blame?

[The Prime Minister]

We made a specific decision in the spending round to increase the child tax credit to protect the poorest families in our country, but we had an inheritance from the last Government of such appalling levels of debt that it has been difficult and painful to deal with them. Let me repeat the point that the best way to get people out of poverty is to see employment grow, and in the north-west, the part of the country that the hon. Lady represents, employment has risen by 6,000 this quarter, it has risen by 50,000 since the election and unemployment is down by 20,000 since the election. Those are all life chances, jobs and chances to get on which people did not have under the last Labour Government.