Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing attention to that fact. It is good news for people who are earning and people living on lower incomes, and I certainly hope that it continues.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many people across the House will have been shocked by the pictures of my constituent Stephen Smith, who has a progressive lung disease and was hospitalised at 6 stone. He had repeated failed appeals and tribunals, and the Liverpool CASA, his advocate, said:

“We were unable to solicit any reply from the DWP”.

He was readmitted to hospital because he was so unwell, and it was only after I intervened that the DWP overturned its decision, but it should never have got to that. What will the Secretary of State do to ensure that no one in our country faces such an injustice in seeking the support they are entitled to and deserve?

[Amber Rudd]

I share the hon. Lady’s indignation. We have apologised to Mr Smith and his ESA payment has been repaid and reinstated in full. I will take a personal interest in ensuring that, where errors were made, they are corrected.

Poverty in Liverpool

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered poverty in Liverpool.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I am pleased to be joined by my hon. Friends who represent constituencies in Liverpool. Together we will speak up for the communities of our great city and bear witness to the terrible realities for too many of poverty in Liverpool. I know that sadly we will hear some heartbreaking stories of avoidable deprivation, unfair disadvantage and incredible resilience in the face of some insurmountable odds. I hope that the Minister will listen closely and pass on what he hears to his ministerial colleagues, not least because Monday’s Budget will afford his Government an opportunity to put some things right.

I am very proud to call Liverpool my home. It is a vibrant, proud, creative and dynamic city. We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Liverpool being the European capital of culture. Just last month the Giants came to Liverpool, attracting more than 1.3 million people from around the world to our streets. When we talk about poverty in Liverpool, we are talking about poverty in a hard-working, proud and resilient city. It is a global city that takes knocks and bounces with a smile and a joke. The ancestors of the people of Liverpool sailed the oceans to New York and Sydney and back again. They fled famine, and forged new lives on Liverpool’s streets. They are the people—many still with us—who kept the docks working as bombs fell all around them, and ensured that Britain did not starve.

How dare some people do Liverpool down? I reflect on the comments—I have made him aware that I would mention him—of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who has accused the city of wallowing in victim status, and of having

“an excessive predilection for welfarism”.

Let me be clear that Liverpool’s people are not victims. Liverpool does not want welfare, and it certainly does not want charity. Liverpool wants jobs, homes, skills, investments and opportunities—and the people of Liverpool will do the rest. As the right hon. Gentleman’s great hero Winston Churchill once said:

“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”

Liverpool’s strength is its people: the entrepreneurs, writers, artists, actors, poets, musicians, designers, restaurateurs, architects and filmmakers who have carved out a place in world history, and our teachers, shop workers, careworkers, street cleaners, bus drivers and so many more whose hard work and grit give the city its beating heart and soul. However, Liverpool is also a city mired in poverty, which saps the ambitions of our young, mars the autumn days of the elderly, denies opportunities, and can fray the fabric of our city.

A couple who bought a house in the Picton ward of my constituency wrote to me just the other month, saying that they had witnessed something horrible. They wrote:

“'As we walked up the street, I saw two boys who must have been around 10 years old. They were opening people’s bins and seeing what they could find.”

The couple approached the children—it was 11 o’clock at night—and discovered that they had collected a discarded hoody and some half-empty bottles, including shampoo and shower gel. The couple wrote:

“This is not the Liverpool we know and has left us angry, outraged and very upset.”

Those constituents of mine have a right to be angry. We should all be angry. Let me not mince my words, because poverty kills. Infant mortality is a key indicator of poverty in our country. In 2014, across England and Wales the death rate of babies under the age of one was six in every 1,000 births. In Liverpool, the figure was nine in every 1,000 births—50% higher. In Liverpool, the avoidable death rate from diseases such as cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease and diabetes is 326 people in 100,000; in the Chilterns, it is 138 per 100,000. Life expectancy is 10.1 years lower for men and 8.1 years lower for women in the most deprived areas of Liverpool compared with some of the least deprived.

Let me briefly set out some city-wide context. I am grateful to the always excellent Commons Library, and Liverpool City Council’s policy team, for collating some of the facts that I will present. Liverpool is the fourth most deprived local authority in our country. Alongside Middlesbrough and Manchester, Liverpool is ranked joint most fuel poverty deprived local authority in England—that refers to people being unable to afford to keep their homes adequately heated, which is particularly relevant as we embark on the winter months.

Since 2012, Trussell Trust food banks in the city have fed 108,635 people, 36% of them children. Last year alone, more than 6,700 children had to rely on the generosity of our city’s food banks, and in the same period Liverpool City Council has made more than 13,000 crisis payments to help people with the cost of food, fuel and clothing. That was a 6% increase on the previous year. In fact, the council spends £23 million a year dealing with a range of issues surrounding poverty and homelessness to try to prevent that poverty from turning into destitution.

Despite those enormous efforts, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that Liverpool was second in the city rankings on destitution. Let us be clear about what we mean when we talk about destitution, because it is the most extreme form of poverty. It means someone sleeping rough for more than a day, not eating properly for two days, being unable to heat or light their home for five days, going without proper clothes or toiletries, or receiving an income so low that those basic essentials will stay out of reach. That is the reality for too many. Sustained low income coupled with a financial shock were the most significant triggers for a plunge into destitution, against a backdrop of benefit, health and debt issues.

Liverpool was the first council in the country to carry out an assessment of the combined impact of the Government’s changes to various welfare policies. It found that 3,400 households across the city with a long-term sick or disabled resident have been hit by the bedroom tax. It found that families with children have been hit the hardest by the combination of a freeze in child benefit, reductions in housing benefit rates in the private sector, the introduction of the bedroom tax, and the benefit cap—policies introduced by the coalition Government and continued under the current Administration. It found that young people aged 16 to 29 account for one in three applications for council emergency payments, that single private tenants aged 25 to 35 have seen a cut of around £34 a week in their housing benefit, and that women in our city account for 60% of those affected by a cut in council tax support, and 65% of those hit by the bedroom tax.

By 2020, £444 million will have been slashed from our council’s central Government support since 2010. When adjusted for inflation, that equates to a cut of 64% of the council’s overall budget over the last decade. Of course, times have been tough everywhere. Can we be accused of special pleading, or parading our poverty? No. Government policies have created more need, while at the same time Government cuts have made it harder to meet those needs. The Government have changed the funding formulae that once helped to support the most deprived cities such as Liverpool with historically high rates of poverty and low council tax bases.

Central Government support has been slashed and councils such as Liverpool have been told to make up the difference from business rates and council tax payers. However, we are unable to replace that funding with higher demands on our hard-pressed council tax payers and businesses, because such a high proportion of our properties are in the lowest band: council tax band A. In fact, council tax across the city raises just 11% of the council’s annual spending on its vital services. If Liverpool had experienced the average cut for local authorities across the country from 2010 to 2020, our city would be more than £70 million better off. Instead, it is having to deliver services with 3,000 fewer staff.

According to End Child Poverty’s analysis, 32,000 children are growing up in poverty across our city. In my constituency alone, 6,129 children—one in three—live in poverty. In one ward, Picton, more than half of children are growing up in poverty, while in nearby Kensington and Fairfield ward the figure is 45%. Figures from the Children’s Society show that approximately 3,300 children in my constituency live in families who experience problem debt; I do not need to tell the Minister all the pressures and challenges that come with that. Across Liverpool, more than 17,000 children receive free school meals, and there are continuing concerns that during school holidays too many of them are going hungry.

I congratulate Liverpool City Council on ensuring that all our children’s centres have stayed open despite Government cuts. Picton and Kensington children’s centre has been working with the Granby Toxteth Development Trust to provide meals during the school holidays. It says:

“We are dealing with huge issues of food poverty, and as of September we have also built in after school play sessions with a meal included to tackle this.”

I anticipate that hon. Friends will want to talk in more detail about how our amazing football fans are collecting every week for their city’s food banks. They do not just sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”; they prove it with their generosity—and not just the Reds, but the Blues, too.

Not long after I was elected in 2012, I became the first Member to secure a debate about the food banks popping up across the country to patch the holes that the coalition Government’s decimating policies had created in the safety net for those most in need. But let us pause for a moment and ask: why, in 2018, in one of the richest countries in the world, do we have food banks at all? Why have more than a million people had to access emergency food aid on their own or their family’s behalf in the past 12 months? That is an incredibly sorry state of affairs and we should all be ashamed of it.

Food banks stand as a testament to the generosity and decency of everyone across our country, but the citizens of Liverpool in particular. Like many hon. Friends, I have joined the biannual food collection co-ordinated by the Trussell Trust in local supermarkets. At a recent collection in Tesco, I was told that the people of Liverpool have been the most generous donors in the country. Whenever I have been involved in food collections, I have been struck by how many people stop and say, “This could be me one day—I know that I am just one weekly or monthly pay cheque away from being in that situation.” It takes just one financial shock to affect a household’s income, because so many are living literally from month to month.

Food banks also stand witness to the fact that Ministers are losing sight of their responsibility to protect the welfare of citizens in our country. Kensington and Fairfield ward in my constituency had the largest Trussell Trust food voucher count this year. In just two wards—Kensington and Fairfield, and Picton—more than 2,700 adults have been fed by food banks in the past year. Issuing food bank vouchers during my constituency surgeries and via my caseworker is a regular occurrence.

I am grateful to the Liverpool Echo for its campaigning work on poverty. An article quotes one of my local food bank volunteers, Kathleen Quayle:

“The foodbank gets busier as the weather changes. From about October, when it gets colder, people are having to choose between heating and food. A lot of the people who come are ill and hungry. They’re exhausted…You can see it in their faces and that’s a travesty in a society like ours.”

I echo that sentiment. I have made several food bank visits, and I am sure that my hon. Friends will talk about similar experiences. It is just appalling to bear witness to people having to rely on emergency food aid, through no fault of their own.

We face the spectre of universal credit arriving in Liverpool this autumn. Just this weekend, the Liverpool Echo published a story about “James”, who is originally from my constituency and now lives in another part of the city. He lost his job and was put on universal credit. He is just 31, but his experience was so traumatising that he considered suicide and his wife turned to sex work to bring some income into the family. With no money for three months and all their possessions sold, they were up to their eyes in short-term high-interest loans and left destitute and abandoned by our Government. That is happening now, not just in Liverpool but in other cities. It is absolutely appalling.

Maggie O’Carroll, who leads our local enterprise hub, says that more than 425 businesses have been established by unemployed people and nurtured through the hub since 2016. As I said, ours is a city of creative and determined people, but Maggie warns:

“Universal Credit poses a very real barrier to those who depend on benefits and wish to become self-employed to launch their own start-up business.”

I ask the Minister to respond to that point in particular, because it has so many implications that have not been addressed.

Just last month, Liverpool City Council published its own forensic analysis, “Universal Credit: Unintended Consequences”, which should be in every Minister’s red box. It shows that it is the poorest, sickest and most disabled people—who are living in the city’s most deprived wards and have already been hit hardest by the bedroom tax, failed personal independence payment assessments and housing benefit changes—who will suffer most from the dangerously out-of-control roll-out of universal credit. Debbie Nolan, health programme manager at Liverpool Citizens Advice, says:

“Payment delays and high rates of deductions once UC is in place will cause unprecedented hardship for the most vulnerable”.

To those who are looking for work, it is unfathomable that in the past year the Government have closed jobcentres across our city. In my constituency, Edge Hill and Wavertree jobcentres have both closed, which follows the closure of Old Swan jobcentre in 2012. More than 3,000 people in Liverpool, Wavertree are being denied the local help that they need to find work. I have highlighted in debates and campaigns the distances that my constituents have to travel—another barrier that makes it even more challenging for them to get on with finding work—but it has fallen on deaf ears.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that nationally, from May 2017 to April 2018, 359,000 universal credit claimants were referred for sanction decisions, of which 71% related to attending or participating in work-focused interviews. Looking at the jobcentre closures in my constituency, it is not hard to understand why so many people have been affected. I am already hearing from single parents who want to get to their jobcentre but cannot afford the bus because they have not been given their payments. They are having to walk for miles, and they cannot get childcare. I have raised those very real challenges with the Government but they have not been addressed. The latest statistics show that 5% of universal credit sanctions lasted for 27 weeks—more than half a year—with no access to support. That is not acceptable.

Increasing numbers of people are homeless on our streets in Liverpool, despite our council spending £12 million to alleviate the worst distress. That situation is replicated in other cities, including here in the capital. Other constituents of mine have found themselves shut out of work after episodes of ill health because our NHS regularly misses its targets for cancer and other treatment. Families are giving up work to look after elderly parents because our social services cannot afford to provide support. Parents are losing work to look after children who are too ill to go to school, but have been told that they are not ill enough to meet the rising thresholds for mental health and social services.

For example, there is the case of Ms M, a single parent of a young son with autism, who is working three days a week and was making use of 30 hours’ free childcare, only to have it withdrawn because she got lost in a bureaucratic maze. She was trying to do the right thing, but is now facing the risk of having to give up work. Where is the humanity? Where, indeed, is the cold, hard economic realisation that failing to properly and flexibly support people such as Ms M and her son to stay out of poverty raises costs for everyone?

What needs to be done? When the Chancellor delivers the Budget he needs to restore funds to our council and recommit to future Budget allocations that reflect the depth of deprivation experienced by cities such as Liverpool. Today, Liverpool City Council is forced to spend money that it should be investing in the future on patching up the holes in the Government’s botched welfare reforms, including £3.5 million on protecting 42,000 people from the full impact of Government reductions in council tax support and £2.7 million on more than 13,000 crisis payments to help people with the cost of food, fuel, clothing and furniture. A total of £9.2 million has been provided since dedicated Government funding was withdrawn.

Secondly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must invest in Liverpool and its people. I anticipate that the Minister will tell us today that employment is up but will not mention how precarious much of that employment in our city is, thanks to the widespread and increased use of zero and low-hours contracts. He will not mention that unemployment rates across Liverpool are consistently above the national average and wages below the national average. The median household income for Liverpool is £20,373, which is nearly £11,000 below the UK median of £31,310.

We need a proper industrial strategy, including a regional investment bank, real apprenticeships and lifelong skills training to grow jobs, grow incomes and let our people grow tall. We need to devolve real economic powers to the city region. Liverpool City Region Mayor, Steve Rotheram, has made a great start in bringing our communities together, but now the Government need to get behind his and the combined authority’s efforts to transform our regional economy.

Those of us who call Liverpool home are proud of our city, but we are shamed by its poverty. We are not looking for a handout or even a hand-up. We want a fair deal to allow us to be in charge of our own destinies. Instead, the Government are largely responsible for the poverty of too many of my constituents.

The Prime Minister told us in her conference speech the other week that austerity is over. Ministers need to set out what that will mean for the people in Liverpool. They need to acknowledge the challenge that we face, do everything possible to apologise for it but also, most importantly, help us to do everything possible to turn it around.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

As I said, I will come to food banks—a little patience, please.

We all recognise that getting people into work is important, but ultimately the question is whether it leads to real cash in their pockets. Research has shown that there are one million fewer people in absolute poverty—a record low—and 300,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty, but there is still more to do. While food insecurity has almost halved in the last five years alone—we are at 5.4%; the European average is 7.9%—there is still more to do.

[Luciana Berger]

I have been reflecting on all the positive spin that the Minister is trying to put on various figures, but why then we are receiving a visit from the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in the next few weeks? Why is that person coming to this country to see the awful situation that we face?

[Justin Tomlinson]

We get reviewed as a signatory country and supporter of the UN’s work, and I will be speaking personally to the person coming.

Of the four current measures of poverty—relative, absolute, and before and after housing costs—three are lower than in 2010 and the other is the same. Those in poverty, who are the focus of this debate, are on average £400 better off in real terms than they were in 2010, while those in full-time work on the national living wage have seen a 7% real-terms increase in their income in the last two years alone. We have done that through a combination of increasing the national living wage—there are arguments about what the level should be, but I do not need to remind colleagues that the rate that we first set was higher than the one in the manifesto that Labour Members stood on in 2015—our income tax threshold, which has completely removed the lowest 3.6 million earners from paying income tax, which is worth £1,000 a year, and our extension of free childcare and other areas of support.

Let me turn to universal credit, which is very topical. One thing that surprised me was that nobody mentioned conversations with work coaches. I know that many Opposition Members have been to visit jobcentres—I have done my research and looked at their Twitter feeds. As a constituency MP—I have only recently been recalled as a Minister—I know that the work coaches on the frontline are very enthusiastic about the principle of universal credit. That does not mean that everything is right, but they are enthusiastic about it. For the first time, they can offer personalised and tailored support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. I was not anticipating this opportunity, but I am grateful for it. I thank hon. Friends and colleagues for joining me and making representations—collectively, we have made a strong representation to the Minister—and I thank the shadow Minister, my hon. friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for his remarks which, equally, elaborated on all remarks made.

We are talking about people—our constituents—who face misery every day. We sit here in a very different position to many of our constituents, who really struggle on a daily basis. I have reflected on the Minister’s remarks and I have captured some of the themes, but I am disappointed that he did not specifically respond to the experience in Liverpool—he gave national figures, but no figures specific to what is happening in Liverpool. He did not acknowledge the prevalence of various different forms of precarious employment—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10 (6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. It is important that we put people at the centre of our processes and make sure that they work for everyone, irrespective of their impairments, and that is what we seek to do.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent David Gamble has a number of degenerative conditions that are so serious that he was granted higher-rate mobility DLA indefinitely, but when it came to his PIP assessment he was given a score of zero. It has been 18 months since then, his appeal has been adjourned three times through no fault of his own and still the DWP has not even applied for his full medical records. Will the Minister intervene to ensure that he can have a proper decision?

[Sarah Newton]

Something clearly has gone terribly wrong in that situation and of course I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady.

Personal Independence Payments

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

That is correct. As we work with stakeholders, including people with disabilities, we seek to make the process smoother, easier and more beneficial for people in need, and that is exactly what we will be doing.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is not the only PIP case that the Government have lost. On 21 December 2017, the High Court ruled that PIP changes made earlier in the year had been “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions, and “cannot be objectively justified”. However, six months later, there is still no confirmed timetable for the full implementation of the High Court’s judgment and the delivery of back payments to the people affected. Will the Secretary of State tell us today—six months on—when that High Court ruling will be implemented?

[Ms McVey]

I have answered that question several times today. As I have said, we have been preparing new guidance and consulting stakeholders on what is best for that guidance and how to work through it. As I have also said, the first payments will be made at the end of the summer. As the hon. Lady will appreciate, having to assess such a number of people will take—and has taken—a bit of time, but the process has been thorough and correct.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

It was not me talking about dodgy statistics, it was the chair of the UK stats authority who said that, but I thank my hon. Friend for pointing that out. The overwhelming majority of jobs are full-time and permanent jobs, and the vast majority of those in part-time jobs have chosen to be in part-time jobs.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

On job searching, has the Secretary of State had the opportunity to review the very helpful and generous offer made by Liverpool City Council to her predecessor to provide office space for closure-threatened jobcentres? There are two jobcentres in my constituency—not one, but two—that her Government wish to close, leaving my constituency with zero jobcentres. They are due to close in just a few weeks’ time. Has the Secretary of State had an opportunity to review that offer, to ensure that my constituents continue to receive employment support?

[Ms McVey]

It is really important that everybody gets the support they need, and a lot of the support going forward will be outreach work, so that people do not need to go to Jobcentre Plus, thanks to further support in the community. Obviously I am pleased that in the Liverpool city area—and in the north-west area—which is my hometown, employment is now far higher than it was in 2010. The unemployment rate under the Labour party was 2.8 million in 2008, even before the banking crisis, but now it is 1.4 million, so we are supporting people and we will continue to support people, because that is what this Conservative Government do.

PIP Back Payments

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Keeping people safe and taking care of the most vulnerable people in society are the top priorities for this Government, and I know that my hon. Friend does a huge amount of work in her constituency to support the most vulnerable members of her community. I can absolutely provide that assurance—PIP is a non means-tested benefit that is not subject to the benefits cap. It plays a vital role in enabling disabled people to play as full a part in society as they can, which is something I know that my hon. Friend and I both want.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is nothing short of a national disgrace that Ministers persisted with this utterly flawed and unfair system of PIP assessments despite all the warnings. It was only when the High Court ruled that Ministers’ changes to PIP were “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions and were a breach of their human rights—the opposite of parity of esteem in action—that the Government announced that they would review the 1.6 million cases. Can the Minister assure the House that PIP assessments will take into account the full range of symptoms and factors affecting mental health, especially those symptoms that we cannot see that present differently on different days, including due to bipolar disorder, depression and phobias?

[Sarah Newton]

I can absolutely assure the hon. Lady that we are utterly committed to making sure that mental health and how it affects people are properly and fairly treated throughout the PIP assessment process, but I do think we should look at the number of people who are now receiving help, and the number of people with mental health problems who are now receiving financial support through PIP who were not under DLA. Some 200,000 people now receive the highest level of support, and more than 100,000 people receive the highest level of mobility support. Clearly PIP is not broken, because it is supporting many more people than DLA did.

Housing Benefits (18 to 21-year-olds)

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

My right hon. Friend makes exactly the point that underpins this policy. We want young people in work and young people out of work to be making the same choices about where they are going to live.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think that anyone listening to this urgent question would, frankly, be appalled by the responses that we have had thus far from the Minister. She has not answered any of the questions that were rightly asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). Will she tell us why the equality impact assessment has not been published and when she will bring it forward, so that we can all see exactly the rationale behind this ridiculous policy?

[Caroline Nokes]

I think I have answered that. The Department has engaged extensively at ministerial and official level with stakeholders. We announced this measure in the summer Budget. There is no duty on us to share the impact assessment with the House, but we did share it with the Social Security Advisory Committee.

Liverpool City Region (Poverty)

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Howarth. It is fantastic to have you in the Chair for this timely debate. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), on securing this debate.

All of us here today see in our weekly constituency surgeries low pay, precarious work, zero-hours contracts, energy price rises and benefit delays leaving thousands of our constituents living on the edge of poverty, if not submerged by it. In such circumstances it takes only an unexpected bill, a family illness or an accident to leave people without the means to properly house, clothe or feed themselves and their families.

The number of such cases increased dramatically last year when the full impact of the Concentrix tax credits debacle became felt. We heard a moment ago how that impacted on the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) as well. The most extreme examples of hardship as a result of that fiasco were felt by people such as my constituent, Michelle, who faced repossession as her tax credits were stopped simply because a previous tenant’s mobile phone bill was still registered at her address.

In Liverpool, as in so many places around the country, such personal financial precariousness is compounded by the Government’s long assault on local community services and networks that have traditionally supported people to get back on their feet.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton alluded to in his remarks, we have seen from central Government a cut of 58% to our budget since 2010, and Liverpool City Council is faced with making a further £90 million of cuts over the next three years, bringing the total amount of central Government spending cuts since 2010 to a staggering £420 million. I will say more about the cumulative impact of the cuts in a moment. It is simply not possible—I am sure that no Minister in their heart of hearts really believes it to be possible—to make such deep cuts over such a sustained period of time without damaging the social fabric that protects people in need from the worst effects of poverty.

The all-party group on fuel poverty and energy efficiency has praised Liverpool City Council’s healthy homes programme, which brings together help and advice with practical support on keeping our constituents’ homes warmer to tackle fuel poverty. That is particularly relevant in this debate. According to the Government’s new definition of fuel poverty, my constituency is in the top five in the country to be affected by this issue. Liverpool is one of the few councils around the country that sees the value in this activity and it does its very best to continue funding a team of environmental health officers who can use enforcement powers to make unwilling landlords improve properties if there are health and safety risks to their tenants.

The healthy homes programme has supported about 46,000 initial assessments, resulting in 22,000 referrals for additional support over the past seven years. The programme estimates that it has saved our NHS about £55 million over a 10-year period, while the enforcement work has made private landlords invest an additional £5.5 million in their properties. It is proof that a relatively small investment in long-term support and preventive work, carried out by local councils in partnership with local agencies, can make a huge difference and actually save money in the long term, as well as improve the health and wellbeing of local people. As a local MP, I have referred many of my constituents to the service. They have gone on to see improvements in their homes and can now afford to heat them properly, particularly during the cold winter months.

However, Government cuts threaten our council’s ability to continue to deliver this vital service for our constituents. Of course, our council is doing all it can to protect the most vulnerable. For instance, in children’s services, money has been set aside to maintain our network of children’s centres for the next 12 months, because we see the value in providing that vital service, with the aim of devising a viable option for the future of the services. However, the council still has to find savings of £4.1 million, which it intends to make by reducing the cost of care placements and packages, and increasing the number of in-house foster carers.

There is a reason why the previous Labour Government invested in creating more than 3,000 children’s centres across our country and invested in the early years of a child’s life. It was to break a cycle that we know still persists in our country and is getting worse: where a child is born determines their life chances and outcomes. That is why children’s centres can and should be making a difference. The council cannot deal with the extent of child poverty in Liverpool with a Government in Westminster that are not interested in contending with this vital issue.

Under this Government, one in three children in my constituency—more than 6,000—are living in relative poverty, and almost half of them are in families where at least one parent is in work. The subject on the Order Paper today is poverty in the Liverpool city region, but of course our children are not alone in experiencing the pain of Tory policies. Across the country, we have seen an increase of 200,000 children living in poverty, up to 3.9 million, in a single year. That is the price children across our country are paying for the Tory Government’s failure to tackle inequality adequately.

In one ward in my constituency, Picton, more than half the children—52%—are living in poverty, after housing costs are taken into account. In Kensington and Fairfield ward it is 43%, in Old Swan it is 34%, and so it goes on, in ward after ward, right across our city region, year after year. Children’s life chances are being stymied because Government policies have created an economy built on casualised, low-paid, temporary and precarious work for their parents, and removed the safety net that previously ensured children were supported.

For comparison, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), 13% of children are, after housing costs, living in poverty. In the constituency of the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), the figure is 16%. Frankly, whether the percentage is 13%, 16% or, as in my constituency overall, 33%, children, after housing costs, are living in poverty. Those figures bring shame on the Government, and we must all recognise that poverty is not spread evenly around our country. Some parts, such as our Liverpool city region, carry a heavier burden.

I fear that too many Government Members carry with them a view of some places in the north, such as Liverpool city region, as home to people deserving not of a chance, but of contempt. I do not make that point lightly. I ask Members to ponder this single statistic produced by the Children’s Society: more than 3,000 of the children living in poverty in my constituency of Liverpool, Wavertree are from families where at least one adult is in work. Such people are doing the right thing: heading out the door every morning, working hard and returning home, only to see their children still living in poverty.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Will she attempt to explain what the Government’s thinking might be, given the disparity in poverty between certain areas that she has just explained? In the Wirral, we have lost 57% of local authority funding, Liverpool has lost 58%, and yet there are some areas, normally represented by Conservative MPs, that have seen nowhere near those levels of cuts, and the average is 37%.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important contribution. It is a point that I was going to make later in my speech. The coalition Government decided to remove the weighting for deprivation. Every Member who has contributed or is about to contribute has made that very point to Ministers sitting on the Government Benches. If we had had the average cut in Liverpool, we would have an additional £84 million a year, which would make a significant difference to the life chances and outcomes of the people we are elected to represent.

The Government talk a lot about increasing aspiration, but some people aspire every day to have enough money at the end of the week to put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs and to secure a roof over their heads, and not to have to choose between those three at any moment.

I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said about the Government’s proposed jobcentre closure plans. Liverpool will be hit hardest of all England’s cities by the proposal, which will affect 40% of our jobcentres. I presented a petition last night, on behalf of hundreds of my constituents, against the two proposed jobcentre closures in our area. The issue is very significant, and if the Government are serious about dealing with inequality it does not make sense to treat Liverpool city region in that way.

We should not forget that in 2015, the Tory Government scrapped child poverty targets that were brought in by the previous Labour Government. Ministers no longer have a legal duty to tackle the number of children in poverty. They believe themselves to be essentially unaccountable for their policies, but we will hold them accountable because we meet our constituents and their children in our surgeries every week. We see the faces of people such as my constituent Frank, who, on obtaining custody of his child last year, faced months of delays and administrative errors in trying to have his child benefit and child tax credits paid. That left him financially unable to provide properly for the child placed in his care and plunged his newly reunited family into extreme and abject poverty.

Conservative Members may say, “Well, of course, the poverty target was measuring the wrong thing,” or “Poverty ain’t what it used to be in my day. Children going hungry—now that’s real poverty.” If that is what they say, I would reiterate the significant comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood.

I am conscious that another hon. Member wants to speak, so I shall reflect only briefly on the issue of food poverty, which affects too many people not only in the Liverpool city region but across the country. The Central Liverpool food bank, which unfortunately is one of many in my constituency, has fed a total of more than 43,000 people, including 15,000 children. The number of people having to use the service has increased, because of an increase in the number of people being sanctioned. Many are children. Many people not only are using the food bank in a crisis, but have become chronic users because they cannot put enough food on the table for a sustained period of time.

I have raised the issue of food poverty before. In fact, I obtained the first debate on food banks in this House, in 2012. I also made a film about it called “Breadline Britain”. At that time, only a few hundred thousand people had to obtain emergency food aid. It is worth reiterating the point made earlier: the fact that more than 1 million people have had to get emergency food aid in the past year, in the sixth richest nation in the world. That is a stain on the national consciousness and I am ashamed to live in a country where that is the case. I am frankly appalled and disappointed that the figures are getting larger every year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton mentioned that I have been a long-term supporter of organisations such as Magic Breakfast, which helps schools provide children with breakfast. There are too many reports from teachers—and the number is increasing —of children sitting in school not having had breakfast. If it were not for those breakfast clubs, they would not be able to concentrate and learn properly.

The cuts that have been made are significant. It is not just a question of how much is in the pot; it is also a question of how it is distributed. We have been disproportionately affected because of the removal of the weighting for deprivation. I believe that the Government have washed their hands of the tough choices and passed them on to councils, as in the case of our city region and its people. Our early intervention grant was cut by 44% between 2010-11 and 2015-16. It is worth reminding the House that that grant is intended to support children and those most in need. It is no surprise, given that it has been savaged in that way, that people are struggling to get by.

As I said, it takes only one unforeseen event to push people over the edge into debt. That is why, according to the Children’s Society, nearly 2,500 children in my constituency are living in families that have problem debt. About a third of families with problem debt say that they have cut back on food in the past month. A third have cut back on heating and a third on clothing. Those are the basics of a decent life, and that is what is happening in this country in 2017. The tough choices being made in Britain today are whether to choose food over heating or heating over clothes, or to run deeper into debt. Children in poverty are more likely to fall behind in school, less likely to secure a job and more likely to experience mental and physical illnesses.

It does not have to be like that. We have heard from other hon. Members about the incredible charitable and voluntary sector efforts being made in the city region, but on their own, those valiant efforts are not enough. On behalf of all my constituents, young and old, and the people of the Liverpool city region, I urge the Minister to consider the issue of poverty seriously, and to outline exactly what the Government and his Department will do to address it properly.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, it may be helpful if I point out that I shall call the first of the Front-Bench speakers at 3.35 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

I am happy to, although I also want to make sure I respond to points raised by colleagues. It is the fact of the end of the PFI contract, which covers most of the estate, that gives the opportunity and indeed creates the imperative to review the entire estate because we see the estate all as one. The Telereal Trillium contract does cover most buildings, but of course there is a knock-on effect both ways through buildings that are not covered by that contract.

In Liverpool, we currently use just 66% of the space that we are paying rent for. Even if we go ahead with the changes we propose, Liverpool will still have one of the highest concentrations of jobcentres relative to other conurbations. When considering this question, our overriding priority has been the future service that we will offer our claimants. In every case in Liverpool, as elsewhere, we have sought to minimise disruption, moving existing jobcentres into nearby sites and co-locating with other services wherever possible.

[Luciana Berger]

Does the Minister not accept the point I made about Liverpool being disproportionately hit compared with any other city in England, with 40% of our jobcentres now earmarked for closure according to his plan? A not insignificant number of people are affected. In my constituency alone, 3,000 people will have to go to a new centre at least every two weeks. Thousands more have to access those two jobcentres. At least 3,000 people will have to do that. On that basis, does he accept that there is a disproportionate impact on the people of Liverpool? People not only in my constituency, but in others will be affected, as Members have said in this debate.

[Damian Hinds]

There are, of course, public consultations being run for both Edge Hill and Wavertree. As I was saying, even with the effect of these changes, there will still be a significant concentration of jobcentres in Liverpool compared with other major cities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

First, ESA and IS claimants are not required regularly to attend the jobcentre in the same way that JSA claimants are. We want to look at outreach and other opportunities in working with partners. As the hon. Lady will know, the consultation closes on 28 February. On the overall approach for the city of Sheffield, this is about consolidating the amount of available space and using that space better to get a better deal for the taxpayer, while being able to provide enhanced services for customers. It will raise utilisation across Sheffield from 51% to 69%.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 2010, there were three jobcentres in my constituency. The coalition closed one in 2012, and now the Minister’s Government want to close the remaining two. Just under 3,000 people—not an insignificant number—have to access the jobcentre in my constituency at least every two weeks Why did his Department not conduct and carry out the full equality impact assessment before the closure of the consultation?

[Damian Hinds]

The proposals will raise utilisation across the city of Liverpool from 66% to 95%, which will make better use of buildings. Where movement from one jobcentre to another involves travelling less than three miles or 20 minutes by public transport, we consider it is reasonable to ask people to make such a move.

Jobcentre Plus Offices: Closure

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

In many instances, co-location provides the best solution, exactly as my right hon. Friend has described, for claimants and indeed for our own staff. She will be aware that we have consulted jobcentre staff closely and looked at how we can best make sure that the new location for their roles fits with what they want, or, where essential, that they can be redeployed to other DWP roles.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 2010, I had three jobcentres in my constituency. Old Swan was closed by the Minister’s Department at the start of 2010, and now she wants to close the other two, in Edge Hill and Wavertree. My constituency has the 39th highest level of unemployment in our country. Why does she want to make it harder for the 2,950 people who want to access support but will have to pay £8.80 every month to do so?