Liverpool City Region (Poverty)

Debate between Luciana Berger and Angela Eagle

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.