Autumn Statement 2022

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Lea. Although I was not in the Chamber, I was listening, and I very much welcome how the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, welcomed her. Also, following the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, gives me the opportunity to apologise to her for a comment that I made on a speech of hers some 12 months ago, in which I questioned her sincerity. It is a bit late in the day, but my apology is sincerely meant.

I intend to concentrate exclusively on the recent report from Barnardo’s, At What Cost? The Impact of the Cost-of-living Crisis on Children and Young People. Children are our future—that is what this financial Budget should be all about. But I will kick off with the Ben Jennings cartoon in the Guardian last Friday. A father and son are at a kitchen table; the son is eating and the dad has a cup of tea. The son says to the father:

“Dad—when will I be grown up enough not to need dinner any more, like you?”


Table 1.4b in the DWP’s households below average income statistics tells us that 3.9 million children in the UK are living in relative poverty after housing costs. That is more than one in four children in the UK, and 75% of them are in a family where at least one person is working. A YouGov poll for Barnardo’s found that 54% of parents have been forced to cut back on food spending for their family in the past 12 months, 20% struggled to provide food, 26% said that their children’s mental health had worsened, the same number had sold possessions and 16% had left their pets at rescue centres. Time does not permit me to record the statistics from Barnardo’s practitioners, but around two-thirds are supporting a child experiencing poverty, providing access to food banks or giving or signposting access to clothing.

The report notes that

“Persistent poverty can affect a child’s brain development in ways that are harmful to their physical and mental health”,


citing the LSE Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. Poverty creates anxiety, and the challenges created by Covid are likely to continue as rising living costs create more anxiety. I picked up such anxiety in two recent Zoom sessions with schools in different parts of the country in the Learn with the Lords programme.

The Barnardo’s report is easy to obtain and read. There are 120 citations and five recommendations, which I will summarise. The first is:

“We recommend the extension of free school meals to all primary school pupils in England”.


Kids must get at least one hot, healthy meal a day, which would overcome the stigma and red tape in present system. Only 22% of children—1.9 million—are eligible for free school meals, but it is estimated that a further 1 million in poverty remain ineligible. Participation is needed for all on universal credit, most of whom are in work.

Barnardo’s second recommendation is:

“Develop and implement a ‘full participation plan’ to ensure vulnerable children can engage … in school life, no matter their home circumstances”.


The recommendation also mentions:

“school trips, and wraparound care through an 8am-6pm extended schools offer which includes access to breakfast clubs and after school clubs”.

On welcome care, the first adult some children see in a day is a teacher, mum or dad having gone early to a cleaning job. Some kids see their younger siblings off to their schools. Uniform grants should also be included for England, as in Wales and Scotland. My view is that we should ban posh, up-market requirements for uniforms —the rules are designed to exclude some children from those schools in the first place.

The third recommendation from Barnardo’s is to:

“Strengthen social security to provide a lifeline to families on a low income.”


Yes, it needs more than the inflation uprating, but I do not want to be churlish and welcome the Government uprating by inflation. It requires targeted support to get us through this winter. Barnardo’s thinks that the Government should reintroduce the £20 universal credit uplift. It says that we are entering a period comparable to that during Covid, and that the Government should also:

“Reverse the two-child limit, which is now the largest single driver of UK child poverty.”


The fourth recommendation from Barnardo’s is:

“Improve mental health interventions and support to combat isolation for vulnerable children and young people.”


The research for the report identified young people saying they felt

“as though they were living in an extended lockdown as rising … costs”

limit their access to activities in education and training. As I said earlier, I raised this point myself in recent Zoom sessions. Although neither the children nor the staff put it in exactly that way, that was the message that I picked up.

Finally, the fifth recommendation is:

“Extend family hubs to every community.”


The report says:

“Family hubs provide a ‘local nerve centre’ for … family support within a community, from stay and play groups, to breastfeeding support to help with issues such as finding a job or applying for benefits. In the 2021 report ‘It Takes a Village’ Barnardo’s calculated that for every £1 invested in its Isle of Wight family hub service, £2.60 of savings were generated.”


Access to work is not the complete answer, otherwise we would not have the majority of universal credit claimants at work. The taxpayer is subsidising low-paying employers on a grand scale; the Government appear happy to continue with this. It is costing billions of pounds to subsidise those employers. I suspect that the forthcoming report from the Economic Affairs Committee regarding the missing 600,000 workers will refer to those who cannot now work due to a lack of access to, or the level of, childcare costs. In fact, the willingness and capacity of people to work is our greatest asset—it is the greatest asset of any country—yet we make it so difficult for many people to start work or get back into work. Low incomes are connected to low birth weights, leading to poor physical health and chronic conditions, according to the Office for National Statistics. Infants in the top 10% of most deprived areas are twice as likely to die in infancy as in the top 10% of least deprived areas, which is also according to the ONS. If they had the same mortality risk, this would amount to over 700 fewer children dying per year in the UK. So what is the answer to the son in the Jennings cartoon? It is certainly not the present policies, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said. The Tory Government have done too much damage to the UK for them to remain; it is time for them to go.