Poverty

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to respond to this debate for the Opposition. I add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. She has been an extraordinary champion of further education, adult education and the skills agenda. I know that I speak for noble Lords on my side of the House when I say how much we regret her leaving but we wish her every success in the future. She certainly seems to have a very exciting agenda ahead of her. I should also say —I declare an interest as my wife is an adviser to the Education and Training Foundation—that the further education sector will be devastated that it no longer has such a powerful voice in this Chamber. It is striking how few Members of your Lordships’ House really understand this crucial sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, urges us to urge the Government to refocus efforts on tackling the systematic causes of poverty. We have had a very serious debate, and he is to be congratulated. He had a slight dig at my party and, indeed, Polly Toynbee, and what he described as the analysis of the left in dealing with poverty. I thought that my noble friend Lady Lister put it well: we have been consistently concerned about tackling the root causes of poverty, but we cannot ignore the need to alleviate the poverty suffered by so many people in this country. The last Labour Government did not get it all right but they put a lot of emphasis on tackling the root causes of poverty. The Child Poverty Act 2010, which came at the end of our 13 years in government, was the culmination of many efforts.

The noble Lord talked about embracing a holistic view of budgeting, and I could not agree more. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, set out why we need a holistic view of budgeting when he raised the wretched performance of NHS PropCo, which clearly has separate targets for financial performance from that of the National Health Service. It has almost to be forced to collaborate at local level because the targets it is given are not in its interests. The last Labour Government attempted to deal with some interdepartmental barriers by having cross-departmental targets and public service agreements. They worked to a certain extent, if not perfectly, but the current Government are not very interested in cross-departmental working. Following the decision we made that I think was a mistake, what I am most pleased about in this reshuffle is the fact that higher education is going back into the Department for Education. I welcome that move and hope that it will lead to a much more integrated approach to education than we have had in the last few years. I thought that I would get that off my mind.

We know that the child poverty figures are getting worse. My noble friend Lady Lister talked about food banks, and she is so right. People go to food banks because they have no other choice. The fact that there has been so much additional use of food banks is shameful. However, I pay tribute to the Trussell Trust, the Churches and all the other organisations that are doing such a magnificent job in keeping them going.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby referred to the role of the Churches and the voluntary sector. He is right to say that funding constraints have made their job much more difficult. I was interested in the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about digital skills within the charitable sector. That is an area where government could give support, as this is clearly a major challenge. The right revered Prelate also talked about extending and embracing comradeship and community. I think that my party could do with a bit of that at the moment, so we might need to approach him for further counselling and advice over the coming weeks.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, started his speech with a wide view and then got down to what he really thinks is important—education. I embrace his wide view, but I think that health is really the issue we need to tackle. We are simply reflecting what, following the Alma-Ata declaration in the 1970s, health people used to call intersectoral co-operation. We will not be able to tackle the root causes of poverty unless we take a holistic view. The Government cannot do everything but they can drive a cross-departmental approach, and that is what we want to hear from the Minister. He will be tempted to talk from the viewpoint of his own department. Of course the DWP has a role to play but I would like to see it take a much more proactive role across government in driving forward some of the poverty eradication measures that we need.

In my humble role as a Minister in the DWP, one thing I was very proud of was the appointment of a joint tsar, as we used to call them, in the form of a national director for health, work and well-being, Dame Carol Black. That was a joint appointment between the DWP and the Department of Health. There was a recognition of the hugely close links between health, work and well-being. We need more examples of pulling things together instead of having these rigid barriers that we so regret.

On health, the Marmot review is striking. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred to it. The great variation in the length of time that people can expect to live in good health is appalling. The average difference in disability-free life expectancy is 17 years. In other words, people in poorer areas not only die sooner but spend more of their shorter lives with a disability. That is a shocking statistic.

On education, according to the ONS, 43% of people in the UK who left education without any formal qualification experienced poverty at least once between 2011 and 2014. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, about how many people still suffer from a lack of literacy skills, was very telling.

Here we come back to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Given the need to embrace the skills agenda, why is further education discriminated against? Whenever there are funding reductions, why does the FE sector always take the biggest hit? The Government are very proud of their apprenticeship programme but all the evidence is that many of those apprenticeships are of very low quality and provide a poor education, and it is simply a statistic that is being chased, rather than the kind of quality that we need to see.

There are so many other issues one can talk about. The lack of affordable housing has not featured very much in our discussion, although my noble friend Lady Warwick mentioned it. The lack of affordable housing is surely one of the greatest curses we face and one of the greatest problems when it comes to alleviating poverty.

Where do we go from here? We have had brave words from our new Prime Minister. I think they were warmly welcomed all round the House and in today’s debate. My very simple question to the Minister is: how will the Government translate those words into action? How will they, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said, listen to poor people and work in partnership? How are we going to embrace health and education in our poverty strategy? How will we tackle the issue of affordable homes? How will we pick up the skills agenda? How are the Government going to lead an integrated approach? These seem to be the fundamental questions, which we very much look forward to having answered in the next few minutes.