Budget Resolutions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

The communities of West Ham needed hope from this Budget, but it has delivered absolutely nothing but continued despair. The Government cannot grapple with the dire state of the economy, public services or housing, nor can they understand the depth of poverty that our people are living in. This Government are not capable of acknowledging the real need for change. Perhaps if they understood just a little, they might ask who is responsible, and they would have to reflect on their last 14 years.

Let me talk about West Ham and the change desperately needed there. Newham has the highest rate of homelessness in the country. According to Government statistics, one in every 20 Newham families are trapped in overcrowded, mouldy, insecure temporary housing. Nationally, homelessness in temporary accommodation is up 10% in a single year. People sleeping rough on our streets—the absolute worst of homelessness—is up 27% in just one year.

What about the kids whose lives are blighted by temporary accommodation? They lose their home every six months and have to move school. They have nowhere to do their homework and have to travel miles on buses because they want to keep the one stable thing in their life: their school place. That is up by 12% in a single year. In Newham alone, 8,596 children are without a safe and secure home. Temporary accommodation costs are rocketing for Newham Council and are set to increase by a whopping £17.5 million in the coming year because the council has the growing pressure of accommodating 30 to 40 new homeless families every single month. Long-term council assets are having to be sold to pay temporary accommodation bills. That is utterly unsustainable.

This Government refuse to face reality. The council services that my constituents rely on day to day, from street cleaning to libraries and public safety, are being degraded because this Government think it is right for the cost of spiralling homelessness to fall on my local residents. It ain’t just a local problem. It is caused by decades of Government failure to invest in social homes and to tackle poverty. Our councils are forced to sell off social homes and then are massively constrained on what they can do with the meagre receipts that they get back.

How did the Budget respond to this worsening crisis? It did so by ending the scheme that enabled councils to do the right thing and use more receipts from the sale of social homes to build replacements. At a stroke, this Government have cut £200 million from the funding for new social homes in this country, at a time when those homes are needed more desperately than ever. The horrifying scale of the housing crisis has grown ever larger, but the Budget shows, yet again, that the Government simply do not care. They are more interested in salting the earth after 14 years of destruction than they are in any kind of solution.

I have focused on homelessness today, but, as we know, the problems our communities face are far wider, and are being neglected or ignored by this Budget. Across the board, my constituents are paying higher taxes and getting worse and worse public services in return. Almost half of patients needing treatment locally are waiting more than 18 weeks, and 6% are waiting more than a year.

The Government have not even managed to repair the damage caused by the wrecking ball that was the former Prime Minister: mortgages are still through the roof; prices in the shops are still rising; and people simply cannot afford to pay their bills. The OBR expects this to be the only Parliament on record in which living standards fall over the full five years. That should be truly shocking, but our collective expectations of the Government have fallen so low that it is normal. We desperately need real change for Newham and for our country. The Budget does nothing to offer that change. Our one solitary hope is that it will prove a bitterly fitting end to 14 years of Tory failure, division and decline.

Autumn Statement Resolutions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

It is critical that it is renewed over the foreseeable future, because the reality is that the issue is not going away. If we are to be serious about addressing the fundamental concerns that exist about the duration of the conflict and how it will affect people for many months to come, it is vital that the scheme is renewed long into the future.

The second is the need to resolve the current crisis of illegal immigration. Clearly, it is unacceptable for the country to spend some £5 million a day on hotel costs. It is a multi-dimensional challenge. I welcome the deal that was agreed with France last week, but the Home Office clearly needs to do more to secure lower cost accommodation and to improve the processing times for asylum claims, which are both key drivers of the backlog that has been allowed to accumulate. The Home Office received funding in the spending review in 2021 precisely for that purpose, and addressing that is vital.

We also need to alter the incentives that drive people into the arms of people traffickers. That means making the Rwanda scheme work and doing all that is required over the months ahead to ensure that it is able to be enacted. Both of those problems, if allowed to persist, would represent a risk to the public finances, and I very much hope that we can get an update on them from Ministers.

Those are specific issues, but I now wish to turn to the three broad principles that the autumn statement spans and on which we need to touch today. The first is the balance of tax and spending. Clearly, we are living through hugely challenging times. We have already rightly heard reference from the Front Bench to Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. The Chancellor was right to say that this is a recession made in Russia and, of course, it comes hard on the heels of the covid pandemic. There are simply no easy choices here, and I recognise that, but faced with the available options I would have preferred to see a much greater emphasis in the statement on spending reductions rather than tax rises.

We simply cannot ignore the fact that the OBR says that the tax burden will now rise to its highest sustained level since the second world war, hitting 37.1% of GDP by 2027-28. Faced with that, I would have curbed our capital spending in particular more sharply. Most Departments have pronounced covid-related underspends and for many projects, such as HS2, the business case no longer looks as robust as it once did, after the pandemic. On current spending, I would not have increased spending on out-of-work benefits in line with inflation at a time when wages clearly will not rise in the same way, and I believe that there is a strong need to drive NHS efficiencies. At a time when we spend the equivalent of the GDP of Greece on our health service, we need to make sure that there is a robust plan to get maximum value for the taxpayer. While many NHS trusts perform fantastically, including mine in South Tees, we need to make sure that we measure outputs rather than simply inputs in the health service.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I just wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman lives in the same world as I do. I have families who pay £2,000 per calendar month to live in a really grotty basement flat, and he thinks that they can do without a percentage uplift on their benefits. Really?

[Mr Clarke]

It is very important that we do not indirectly increase the disincentives to work. That sits at the heart of the wider debate around the affordability of the welfare system. The hon. Lady is quick to forget that we spent some £37 billion compensating people for the cost of living increases they have suffered in the past year, including £1,200 for any family on benefits.

The second issue is one where I believe spending does need to increase, and that is defence. We heard reference to this earlier, and I note that the former Prime Minister committed us to spending 3% of our GDP on defence by 2030. I believe that is a pledge that should be honoured. In a world where the challenge not only of Putin’s Russia, but frankly of China, too, is only worsening, we need to make sure we do not regard ourselves as having some kind of peace dividend. The only dividend of peace is peace. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said in his intervention, defence spending during the cold war was significantly higher as a percentage of GDP. We should return to that, not least because delivering our existing defence commitments will require some 2.5% of GDP by the middle of this decade. There is a clear priority for us to move on defence.

Ultimately, the only sustainable way to fund public services is if we can grow the economy, and that leads to the third and final point that needs to be addressed in today’s debate. We need to facilitate more robust underlying economic growth. I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said about solvency in his statement, too. This is a welcome opportunity to address that. Our reforms should be delivered at the maximum possible pace.

I put on record just how strongly I would oppose any move to a Swiss-style relationship with the European Union, which the Prime Minister has addressed decisively today. I just put a marker down that I do not believe that would be the right approach. We need more divergence, rather than less, if we are to make a success of Brexit.

We have to confront the harsh reality that the typical British family are set to be poorer than a Polish family by the early 2030s if we do not achieve more robust growth. That will not come if we have a blizzard in taxes and regulation under the Labour party; it will come if we deliver robust supply-side reform. The most important reform we can offer is on housing. There are specific challenges here around nutrient neutrality, but there are also general ones about our attitude to new homes, which need to be addressed. We need to make sure that, on the Government Benches, we are standing in support of families who wish to own homes of their own by building them where they are needed, but the challenge is not restricted to housing. We need to adjust childcare ratios, which are driving up the cost of childcare unnecessarily, and we need to tackle the cost of judicial review and the curse and problem that so much infrastructure is thwarted or delayed by abuse of that system.

We also want to see rational energy generation, including the use of onshore wind. I will give the Government my loyal support in the Lobby tomorrow, but if we can address these fundamental pro-growth measures, we will be in a much better position to weather the challenges that lie ahead. I look forward to hearing more from Ministers in this debate and over the weeks ahead about how we will deliver the growth that ultimately was the whole purpose of the autumn statement in September, and which needs to be the animating principle of this Government over the years ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

After 12 years of Tory Government, the outlook is just so bleak. Forecasters now say that real wages may not return to 2008 levels until 2027—not one lost decade, but two. What does that mean for Newham, where we already have the highest rate of homelessness in the country and the second-highest rate of child poverty?

Last Friday, I was at one of our overwhelmed food banks and I heard about Geetha, who is pregnant, homeless and lives with her children in temporary accommodation in a hotel. The food available is nowhere near nutritious, which puts her and her family’s health at risk. Our food bank can offer ingredients, but she has no means of cooking them in her hotel room. What can she do? How much worse will it get?

Now the Government are slashing housing benefit again. Surely that will push homelessness up even more by making private rents less affordable than they already are. Frankly, there are no social homes available, so yet more Newham families will end up having to live out of hotel rooms like Geetha, because of Tory failure.

Before I got to the food bank, I had been at one of our secondary schools, which is considering laying off staff to feed students—it is that bad. Let me tell hon. Members how poverty is affecting our children. I know of one boy who stands by the shoulder of his friend every day to eat the leftovers—he gets no breakfast either—and he stays in school as long as he can because mum cannot afford to put the heating on. Effectively, the school is becoming yet another food bank and a warm bank, and all at the expense of children’s learning. In reality, this is all at the expense of our country’s future economy.

I have told the House before about the time, just a few years ago, when a little girl was sat at a table in her school eating her school meal, with her little plate piled high, and I, like the stupid politician I am sometimes, turned to her and said, “That’s a huge plate for such a small person.” “Yes,” she said, as she beamed at me, “it’s not my turn to eat tonight.” This is the reality, and it is getting much worse because of the failures of this Government.

There is the same link between poverty and our health, too. Our doctors are seeing more illness due to colder homes—it is a fact—and we have all heard the shameful story of what happened to Awaab Ishak, dying because of the untreated damp and mould in his home just after his second birthday. I can tell the Government that, based on my casework, there are thousands of children in Newham facing the same risks, so how many more children will die when these families simply cannot afford to heat their homes?

Locally, we are seeing reduced collection of asthma inhalers among patients who are not exempt from the prescription charges. They have simply got no money, so patients turn up at A&E saying they have lost their inhaler to get a free one. What if someone has a medical condition that needs daily treatment from a machine? Here are the numbers from one Newham family, with a frail grandmother who needs a pressurised mattress and a grandson who needs a breathing machine at night. The running costs have increased by £600 just since September, even with the energy price cap. It will now cost £3,600 a year to run those medical machines alone, without even thinking about heating for the rest of the home. How is that possibly affordable for many families living in London? Either the machines are not used, with a massive health impact on the most vulnerable, or patients cannot be treated at home and must go into hospital instead, with an even higher bill for our NHS.

Medical staff are enduring brutal working conditions and financial worries—our local NHS is doing more and more to support them not just with food banks for our nurses and porters, but with debt advice. And then there is social care. What a surprise: the Government are yet again hiking the regressive council tax to keep our care systems going just a little bit longer. It is not affordable for my constituents. Frankly, I wonder how the Chancellor sleeps at night, because there have been 12 years of Tory economic failure. Let us face it: this Government have done nothing but offer despair. Truly, Newham cannot afford a Tory Government any more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the robust Conservative good sense of the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). Most of the time, I agree with everything he says. Of course I acknowledge the difficulties facing the Government from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, although many of those difficulties were exacerbated by our over-intrusive attitude to regulation during the pandemic—successive lockdowns, furloughs and all the rest, for which we are now paying the price.

I am also very worried about the disincentives to work, particularly for the lower paid. We have heard a lot about those on benefit. I understand that this is an extremely complex area. We have to help those genuinely in need—those with genuine long-term sickness issues, disabled people—but we do have a massive problem in this country, with more and more people choosing not to work. If benefits are increasing with inflation, which is very high, while public sector pay is being kept down, that is a disincentive to work. Many people who are striving—working very hard, perhaps in low-paid jobs—wonder why their pay is being kept down, while those on benefits who could work see their benefits rising with inflation. It is a complex area; there is no easy solution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has done some wonderful work with the Social Justice Institute that he heads, but we have to find a way forward.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, we have heard from the hon. Lady. I want to get through my remarks as quickly as possible.

As there are these disincentives to work, people say that we need mass migration. We are told by the bosses of the NHS that they cannot fill all the vacancies, so we need more mass migration. Mass migration is deeply unpopular with the British public. It is particularly unpopular with those who are working hard, particularly those on relatively low wages. They see their wages are kept down by employers who will always get people in from abroad. We have to defeat this argument as a Conservative Government that the way to achieve growth is through mass migration. That is the easy way to achieve growth. The best way to achieve growth is through high productivity, encouraging people to work.

May I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on the subject of channel migration? Frankly, the Government must grip this. It is utterly destabilising. We have thousands of people pouring across the channel, making the Government look incredibly foolish. We could solve the problem: we need to get out of the Human Rights Act and out of the refugee convention. We need to have our own Bill of Rights and ensure that when people land on these shores, they can be detained, arrested, dealt with quickly and deported, because it is utterly debilitating to our reputation.

We have heard a lot about the NHS. The fact is that the country has been increasingly weighed down by an ever-increasing benefit bill, and we are pouring, every year, more and more of our gross national product into the NHS. I do not have private health insurance; I rely entirely on the NHS, as does my family. People of my age are now frightened. Up to now, Conservative Governments have assumed that the NHS was very popular. I can assure Members that it is not very popular at the moment when we are facing these enormous delays. If a person has a non-urgent condition, they can be required to wait for up to two years. Then we are told that the NHS is the supreme example of healthcare in the world. We all recognise the wonderful work that our doctors and nurses do, but I read today that perhaps up to 50,000 people working in NHS quangos and other NHS bodies never actually see a patient. That organisation is riddled with low productivity, waste and incompetence, and we must learn from what other countries are doing, because someone elderly is much better looked after in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden. Indeed, in his statement the Chancellor recommended what is happening in Sweden and Singapore, and all those nations have social insurance policies. Under our system, someone pays taxes all their life, and when they get to a certain age and have a medical condition they are told to join the back of the queue. In France, Germany, Italy or Sweden, they have rights, and the Government have to address that. We cannot just go on repeating the mantra that the NHS is the best health system in the world. It simply is not. Its outcomes on cancer and in many other areas are lagging behind those of similar nations.

As well as considering social insurance, one simple thing that the Government could do—I have suggested it many times—is what Ken Clarke did in the last Conservative Government and provide tax relief for those of pensionable age who take out private health insurance. We could at least give some guarantee that if the NHS fails to deal with someone’s case within a year, or two years, the Government will fund them to go private.

Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I like re-emphasising that we should not jump to conclusions—we need to know why. If we misdiagnose, we are not able to solve the problem. We need to find out the exact reasons why things are occurring so that we can have the right solutions.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I totally and utterly agree with that. I thank the Minister for her statement and promise to read it carefully after today in order to work out what I can personally do in my constituency to aid this work. In June, I urged the Government to act upon the unequal risks before the second wave, and I pointed out that black and Asian people were not properly represented in the clinical trials. The second wave is here and the data has shown that the same inequalities are occurring. So will the Minister assure me and my constituents that from now on research projects and clinical trials will have the appropriate numbers of people from black and minority communities, reflecting their higher risk?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I agree with the hon. Lady; she and I are not going to have a disagreement on this issue. We need to get as many people from all communities represented, but we cannot force people; we need to encourage them and get them to see the benefits of that, so I urge everyone across the House to do that. If we scare people or allow those who are sending misinformation about vaccines to continue with their messaging, we will not see that. So I agree with her and thank her for raising the question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As we level up opportunity in every region, we will make sure that the whole country benefits, including the east midlands. That includes, for example, the £3.6 billion towns fund that we have announced, with 16 town deals in the east midlands. The Government are also committed to the £250 million growth deal, which provides funding for the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire areas and will include projects such as the Gedling access road.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

This is beyond parody. The reality is that after 10 years of Tory rule, the five richest families in this country own more wealth than 13 million of us put together. Fourteen million of us live in poverty. Two out of three of those are in working households. Childcare, transport and the cost of rent hold millions back, so will the Chancellor accept some tests for his Budget? Will he cut child poverty? Will he cut homelessness? Will he end the need for food banks? Will his Budget match his words? The hell it will.

[Sajid Javid]

Let me tell the hon. Lady what we have seen under 10 years of Tory rule, after Labour’s great recession. We have had nine consecutive years of growth. We have an economy that is nearly 17% bigger than it was in 2010, and 3.9 million jobs have been created—I would think that a party that calls itself the Labour party would welcome that. Unemployment is at its lowest level for 45 years, and according to the International Monetary Fund, our economy will grow faster this year than those of Italy, Japan, France and Germany.

School Meals: Hull

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I pay tribute to the amazing work that my hon. Friend has done over the years on school food and free school meals in particular. I absolutely agree with her.

It is worth reflecting that in Hull 23% of primary school children claim free school meals, yet Hull City Council has estimated that as many as 800 pupils entitled to free school meals are not claiming them, and we know that many thousands across the country do not take up their entitlements, largely due to parental fears of social isolation or bullying. In addition, thousands of children classed as living in poverty or just above the poverty line but not entitled to free school meals could access Hull City Council’s Eat Well Do Well scheme.

Sadly, the scheme came to an end in the summer of 2007 after the Liberal Democrats took control of Hull City Council and reintroduced charges of £1 per meal. At a time when budgets were not under pressure, Hull’s Liberal Democrats decided to scrap the progressive measure for what I can only consider ideological reasons.

Following on from the undoubted success of Hull’s Eat Well Do Well scheme, two events followed. First, I remember sitting on the Front Bench 10 years ago as an Education Minister in the last Labour Government, and one of the things I was responsible for was helping to set up the free school meals pilots in Durham, Newham and Wolverhampton to get further evidence of the link between nutrition and educational attainment through free school meals. To this day, Newham still provides free school meals.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend is saying, there is undeniably a link between educational attainment and free school meals. It is suggested that it can add two months of schooling, which is why Newham Council, in collaboration with its schools, is currently funding again free school meals for children. It is that important. In an area that is arguably the second worst in the country for child poverty, it is an essential. Does she agree that the Government should adopt the same priorities as Newham Council and Newham’s schools?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Let me return to my questions for the Minister. I want her to be clear about whether it is right that all schools have to take individual decisions on school meal prices, because there was some dispute in Hull about the role of the headteachers association, not being a lawful decision-making body, and each academy school having to go through its governing body to make decisions about school meal prices. I want her to confirm that that is her understanding as well. What do the Minister and the Government think about the postcode lottery that has developed in Hull, with prices in schools varying? How does she feel about one parent taking a child to school and paying 50p a day and another taking their child to a different school down the road and being charged £1.50? Is that what she wants to see happening? Is she aware that there appears to be no restriction on the maximum price that an academy can charge per meal? Does that need to be considered?

The other point is about the efforts made to increase registration of those eligible for free school meals, which obviously is right. We need to ensure that eligible children can access those meals. I am told that the academies are saying that one of the issues in Hull is that the reduced price of school meals acts as a disincentive to getting families signed up for the free school meals that they might well be entitled to. That has an impact on the pupil premium. I am sure that the Minister has looked at that issue already and is concerned about it, so what is her thinking about that? Obviously we want to encourage people to apply for free school meals, but where they are just above the entitlement level—there are a lot of those families in Hull; the working poor—how do we ensure that they can access good, nutritious food at a reasonable cost without causing problems for the school because of the pupil premium policy?

[Ms Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I say gently to the Minister that the criteria might be outdated, given what is happening in our communities, with 75% of families in poverty having somebody in work. We should not be stopping children who are experiencing real deprivation having a decent meal each day. I genuinely think that the criteria are outdated, outmoded and need some attention.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I echo my hon. Friend’s sentiments; that is right. While we need to make sure that money is made available for those children most in need, that particular scheme now needs to be reviewed in the light of what is happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

The hon. Member has highlighted the academies programme’s facilitating this, and the Government and I see it as providing opportunities through the key principles of autonomy, accountability and collaboration. Schools are ultimately responsible for delivering the free school meals policy and the actual meals, but the academies programme gives schools the opportunity to collaborate by coming together in strong trusts.

We encourage all academy trusts to build proactive relationships with parents and local communities to create a shared ownership of their school strategy and vision, which is what I think the hon. Member wants to happen. I stress that it is right that decisions are based on the local priorities of the school that has to administer the policy.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

I have some sympathy with the Minister, as I have sat on the Treasury Bench and have had to deliver uncomfortable news to Opposition Members on things they are campaigning for, but will she meet me and my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) to talk about poverty proofing for schools generally and the kind of advice the Government might be able to provide to councils and schools about how that might proceed? We would find it really useful to talk to her about free school meals and other issues for working families who are struggling because they simply do not have the wherewithal to pay for rent and food. We would very much appreciate an opportunity to talk to her outside this Chamber.

[Michelle Donelan]

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member, or any other Member, to discuss this subject or any other within my brief, because these are important topics and there is a lot of mileage in what has been brought up today.

I was going to say that it is reasonable that we empower our local academies to make these decisions. It is also absolutely right that we are targeting our support at the families most in need. I have heard the pleas from those opposite and from my own side questioning the current eligibility criteria, to make sure that we are reaching those who are genuinely the most in need. Our Government have committed to review this once the roll-out of universal credit is finished, and I will ensure that I personally examine the eligibility criteria.

On wider funding, the Government have recognised the pressures that schools have faced and we have listened to teachers. That is why we have recently announced the biggest funding boost for schools in a decade, which will give every school the money it needs for its children. This includes levelling up all primary schools to receive a minimum of £4,000 from 2021-22, so the biggest increases are going to the schools that genuinely most need it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

This is an important issue, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised it today. He will know that there are multiple causes of rough sleeping, which means that we need action across Government. That is why the Government have set out a rough sleeping initiative to deal with the causes, such as mental health, family breakdown and addictions. I think he will appreciate that we need cross-Government work. That needs to be properly funded. The £422 million that I referred to a moment ago is a 13% real-terms increase, and it will end rough sleeping by 2022.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Many people going to work today, not just in London but in cities and towns across England, will have seen at least one fellow citizen sleeping rough. Eight thousand beds have been lost, universal credit has cost tenants their homes, and as we have heard, 726 people died on the streets last year. Charities say that the funding gap is £1 billion. The Chancellor has said that ending rough sleeping is in our gift, but how many more of our fellow citizens will have slept on our streets before he delivers?

Summer Adjournment

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I usually use this debate to talk about very local issues. Today I want to deviate a little, because many of my constituents have written to me about their concerns for people who live elsewhere in the world and their fear that our voice might be silenced or muted because of Brexit and our pursuit of trade deals.

My constituents have pointed out Trump’s obsession with walls and putting children in cages, and his insidious support for the damaging and highly dangerous great replacement conspiracy theory. They asked, “What did we do in response?” Well, we gave him a state visit.

There are concerns about other powerful countries too, like China. As we know, more than a million men, women and children are in detention camps, based on their ethnicity and their Muslim faith. Families have been torn apart by the state, children from their parents. Credible reports say that detainees are forced to swear oaths of allegiance, renounce their religion and learn Mandarin in place of their mother tongue. Some reports even talk of summary execution and the harvesting of organs.

Our Government have recognised that human rights abuses are happening today on a huge, almost unimaginable scale. Uyghur Muslims fear a genocide. Why have we not taken targeted steps? Frankly, we do not need more words. It is clearly a business. We could identify those who develop racist software to identify the targets. We could identify those who are building the camps. We could refuse them contracts with the UK, couldn’t we? We could speak up much more strongly about Hong Kong as well, couldn’t we? We could address the increasing fear of Hong Kongers that their free society is just slipping away. We could help—but we have not, and I fear that we will not because China might move away from freer trade, and we need that free trade now as a substitute for what we are losing.

I fear that it is the same with Modi’s Government. On 17 June, when the new Indian Parliament was being sworn in, members of the ruling party chanted the Hindu nationalist slogan “Jai Sri Ram” whenever a Muslim representative stood up to take their oath. It was an attempt to intimidate and delegitimise those elected representatives based on their religion. Those words could simply be an expression of faith, but they have been twisted into something horrifying.

Since then, there have been repeated Islamophobic attacks, accompanied by that same chant. On 22 June, Tabrez Ansari was tied to a pole, beaten and abused by a crowd in the open. He cried and begged for mercy. After the crowd were done with Tabrez—after they had forced him to repeat their slogan and taken yet another step to erase his difference—the police took him into custody. Reportedly, he was refused medical help. His family members were threatened with similar beatings and not permitted even to see him until, four days later, he died of his injuries. There have been many further attacks. A Hindu video is being shared, with the lyric:

“Whoever doesn’t say Jai Sri Ram, send him to the graveyard.”

Frankly, that is the language of genocide.

As hon. Members will know, I could go on. I wanted to talk about Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Saudi Arabia and our arms deals as well. To be entirely honest, it seems to me that FCO Ministers, many of whom I deeply respect, have raised human rights issues in terms just vague enough not to cause trouble. What is our role in this new world if we swallow our words and turn away when we see persecution escalating, risk to lives and liberty, and possible genocide on the horizon? How will this new Government show us that they are not cowards, they are not distracted and they are not restricted because of Brexit?

Youth Services

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who I know is passionate about this area and absolutely doing all the right work to promote the positives available for our young people. It is absolutely right that they should know what they can expect from this Government and from the community. I will come on to that in relation to the youth charter, but let me briefly address the charter now. It is absolutely right that our young people get a chance to grow, mature and find things for themselves, and that is absolutely about a youth offer. That is why, when I came into this post, it was clear to me that a youth charter—a youth offer—setting out what our next generation could and should expect had to be addressed. I am very pleased to be taking that work forward, and I will say more about it shortly.

We are committed to keeping our young people safe, and tackling serious violence is a priority for this Government and our communities. At April’s knife crime summit, at which the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) joined us, all Government Departments were at the table, as were Sport England, the Premier League, sporting governing bodies, and representatives of the arts, culture and civil society. They all agreed to work together to strengthen the sporting offer to tackle serious violence and other problems. The Home Office has launched a £200 million endowment to fund grassroots interventions. That is in addition to the £22 million early intervention youth fund. This week, I announced that Sport England will provide a further £400,000 of national lottery funding to 49 projects to deliver strong, targeted sports offers ahead of the summer holidays.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that, and I have to say that Newham has in the past benefited from such projects. However, the applications were due in yesterday, and the money has to be spent by March. It is a complete waste of money to try to do these projects in an ad hoc way, year after year. We need a proper, costed programme that runs from the beginning of the year and can be planned properly, instead of squandering the money that is put in place.

[Mims Davies]

I agree. A concerted effort for our young people through long-term funding is the way forward. Salami-slicing is not helpful in this situation. I am sure that my officials will have heard that. This offer is about knowing what works, amplifying that, spreading it out, and supporting it.

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[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Between January 2017 and March 2018, nine young people were killed in my constituency. Most of them died as a result of knife crime. That number represents only the very worst cases. It does not include young people who have been injured. It does not include the children being exploited, and trafficked, along county lines. It does not include the videos of teenagers driving around our local streets with their faces covered, brandishing knives and threatening violence. It does not include the fear that all these things breed in my community: the fear of parents sending their children to school; the fear of teachers with a duty of care; and the fear—real, palpable fear—of the young people themselves.

I have spoken several times in this place about knife crime and what we need to do to stop it. I have been making seven key demands of Government. Some are responsive, such as peripatetic mental health units that would help families and communities deal with the trauma of a violent attack once it has happened, but some are preventive, such as establishing new and trusted reporting systems for young people, so that we can work with young people to stop these tragedies happening.

My demand for proper youth investment is different, because youth services can do both—they can play a role in the prevention of crime as well as providing a comfortable, safe place. Spending time with a youth worker enables children to build up resilience. It allows them to test ideas and to develop coping strategies. It allows them to get support, to talk, to share and to question. When they are facing problems, a youth service helps a young person connect with agencies that can help them. Youth services can often broker that and provide trust in those agencies. Alternatively, a youth service can simply give advice from a trusted adult.

Youth services are about so much more than just fixing crime. I remember going to a youth club when I was young. It was at St John’s in north Woolwich. I received validation of my rights as a young person that I did not get from anywhere else. I do not think I would have got the confidence that has eventually led to me being here without that youth service. I want to publicly and belatedly thank Esther Wilson, Anne King, Nick Nicholls and Dave Butcher. I would not have made it without them.

Youth workers provide a really important education to young people. That is not a formal, academic education, but an education in skills that are massively important. For some young people, youth clubs will be the only place where there are older people who they can trust. Those adults can help all young people to learn to interpret the world with their peers and to interact with adults, as well as providing them with role models and safe places for creativity, cultural expression and cultural exploration. They allow young people to develop so many different skills. It is what policy wonks call cultural and social capital—basically, many of the things that middle-class children hopefully take for granted.

Since 2010, we have lost so many excellent youth workers. Across this city, since the 2011-12 financial year, 104 youth centres and projects have permanently closed and a massive 562 youth workers have been put out of a job. That is a tragedy, because it has led to tragedy. That is why I am delighted that the London Borough of Newham is pursuing a huge expansion of youth services. There will be £1.4 million of investment and 33 new full-time roles—potentially the largest ever recruitment of youth workers in the UK. Our young people in Newham have been asking for that. Fortunately, the Labour Mayor and the Labour council have listened to them.

The new services will be up and ready by the end of this year, and I know they will make a huge positive difference. We only need to listen to the testimony of children to understand why. Newham parents whose children spent last summer with youth clubs and council-funded youth services said it was the best summer their children had had. One young man said:

“The youth centre was a place that they offered me support, and the only worker who didn’t judge me, and actually attended all my meetings, was the youth worker. She never gave up on me, even when I gave up on myself.”

Those life-changing and, I suggest, life-preserving experiences need to be available to children across the country. How about the Minister matching the Labour promise of statutory youth services in every single area, so that no child misses out? Once she does that, she must ensure she does not pass the youth service buck without the bucks to match.

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[Mims Davies]

With the leave of the House, I will close this debate for the Government, and it is a pleasure to do so. I thank hon. Members for such a passionate and informed debate. Let me repeat that the all-party group has done outstanding work on its report. I will, and we will, fully consider all its recommendations, and all the contributions made by Members today. I think that we do need to look at the workforce strategy. We need to make sure that we have a formal response to the report. I am delighted to hear that UK Youth has written to the new Prime Minister today. I do not want to give away secrets at the Dispatch Box, but I very much encouraged it to do so, so I am delighted that it has undertaken that.

As we have seen from the passionate speeches around the Chamber, there is absolutely a need to consider this report. The message from this debate is that we need somewhere to go in talking about youth work and our young people. We need to offer the opportunity that comes through the youth charter. I am delighted with the way that the sector has got to grips with supporting that. As we have heard, we are committed to the revision of the youth work qualifications, the bursary programme and the revision of the guidance for local authorities. That has met with warm support, but I absolutely recognise that many Members around the Chamber feel that it is just the start. On the issue of youth loneliness, the new policies that will come into place later this year, I hope, will have a focus on our young people—on our care leavers, on our young carers and on people who need further support.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who is no longer in his place, talked about fast-track opportunities to get into youth service. The role of the NCS is extraordinarily valuable and important. The opportunity to bring people into this realm is a chance to give back through NCS—a great way to explore. Talking of exploring, it is very important for us to look at the future underspend in the NCS. I would personally love to see it directed towards detached youth services. I would welcome, as anybody would, more funding going that way, but obviously we will have to wait and see. The NCS is delivering a more confident, capable group of young people. We want that for all our young people, and it is absolutely right that we focus on that.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) spoke about long-term funding, which is what the youth endowment fund is about. It is absolutely right that we look at the 10-year plan—and that is exactly what it is—on top of the £22 million early intervention plan. On the joined-up approach, it is absolutely right that we link up with our communities and schools. Our schools know where the young people who are going to be at risk are at the end of the day—from 3 pm to 6 pm, after school. It is therefore absolutely right that we use the opportunities and understanding that our schools have.

The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) made an emotional speech. I understand what she said; my goddaughter lives in a rural community in Derbyshire. I do not want anyone to feel, from talking to young people, that it is a terrible time to be young. That is not where we want to be. The innovation and opportunities in this sphere should reach everyone, wherever they live. I hope that, through the additional £16 million in the rural services delivery grant for local authorities, we can give hope to young people. As we have heard, we need to balance the urban, rural and coastal challenges. The Government have a proud record of putting more money into coastal communities, supporting 295 projects nationwide with £174 million since 2012.

I want to talk about the youth charter. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) spoke about the importance of youth positivity and not needing to reinvent the wheel. He asked about where we are with the NYA on the evaluation of current youth work. That is ongoing between us and the Department for Education, and no final decision has been made, but his plea has been heard.

It is true that there has been a challenge regarding our youth services. Local authorities are responsible for assessing local needs, and we have given them flexibility to make decisions. As we have heard today, where we use innovation, our community and our understanding of it, we can get things right and do things better.

We heard from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) that this is not just about ping-pong, but I would like to look at ping-pong, because the Brighton Table Tennis Club in the constituency of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown is fantastic. I have never been to a youth centre or youth club that does not have table tennis, and I would like to praise that one in particular. It works with a pupil referral unit and with people with dementia. There are fantastic, elite table tennis players. There are people who suffer loneliness and isolation, and it is table tennis that has brought them together. That just shows how services can be innovative and welcoming by opening up their facilities. Through the loneliness fund, we have ensured that local facilities are available for people to come to and feel welcome in.

I want to pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). If we are lucky, we can look back to a teacher, youth worker, mentor or grandparent who told us that we matter and that we had chances and opportunities. We must ensure that we use our opportunities to give confidence to our young people—not to talk them down but to give them the skills and opportunities to move forward. I am delighted to hear about the extra £1.4 million in her constituency, which is being used wisely to support young people. We need to look at the basic level of sufficiency and how we are ensuring that our young people are not at risk and are safeguarded.

[Lyn Brown]

I thank the Minister for recognising what the London Borough of Newham is doing, despite the financial restraints, but I gently say that £1.4 million is very difficult for my local council to find. We collectively need to find ways of funding local government to fund local youth services, otherwise there will not be the people I had in my constituency to help young people through the difficulties they face.

[Mims Davies]

Absolutely. A strong economy, working with communities and using all the tools we have—including, for example, social impact bonds and our dormant assets—to fund our local communities, is vital.

As someone who has young girls growing up, I want to reiterate the importance of a youth voice in this policy area and the youth charter. We know what it was like when we grew up, but we have heard today that it is very different for young people growing up now. Members have asked why the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is the right place for youth policy. I think it really is the right place, but I will not be ungrateful to the rest of Government, who we have hauled in to speak to about amplifying and recognising where we are all working together. We have three youth voice projects: the youth voice steering group, which sits in civil society; the young inspectors group; and our new digital solutions group. It is right that we engage with our young people and listen to them, to ensure that these policies are right for them.

I do not think anyone can deny the challenge of serious violence and the fact that we need to make sure our young people stay safe on our streets. I am personally delighted to make sure that we have more police on our streets, and the Home Secretary—I am not quite sure who it is right now—will, I hope, be following through on this.

I am very proud to have heard from so many Members across the House about the importance of our young people. I say again that this Government are determined to support all our young people in reaching their full potential and in giving them skills and opportunities. We truly do want this to be the best place in the world to be young, and I am determined that my Department will make that so.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the role and sufficiency of youth services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the Chancellor slapped down both Tory leadership candidates for making irresponsible spending promises. Has the Minister noticed, as we have, that not one of those promises was aimed at lifting the 4 million children out of poverty? She is responsible for the management of Government finances—heaven help us! What does she think this says about the Tory party and the next Prime Minister?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am incredibly proud of our record, as a Government, of reducing inequality. Income inequality is now lower than it was in 2010. We have also cut taxes for basic rate taxpayers by £1,200 a year and put an extra £630 into universal credit for working families.

Social Mobility: Treasury Reform

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I was going to wait until my contribution to respond to the right hon. Lady, but it is quite clear that that is not the policy of the Labour party or of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). We want as many people as possible to do well, not just a chosen few in a grammar-school society of the type the right hon. Lady proposes.

[Justine Greening]

I thought the hon. Lady would probably say that. Unfortunately, that illustrates that the Opposition have not understood what social mobility means. It means equality of opportunity. It would probably be better—this is why I raised the point—if we stopped arguing about semantics and started talking about finding common ground on how to get change for the better for millions of young people and communities currently disconnected from opportunity or too far from it. If this just becomes a debate on semantics, which is what I worry the right hon. Member for Islington North is trying to turn it into, we will not get anywhere fast. I will come on to why that is a problem, but the topic of this debate is that, while there are broader problems around how we debate achieving social mobility, which is why it has not happened, there is a bigger problem, which is about how the Government approach social mobility and the Treasury’s place within that.

Let us be absolutely clear: achieving social mobility means we achieve equality of opportunity for everyone in our country, irrespective of where they start, who they are and what their background is. It is not—I repeat, not—just about the gifted few.

I want to see system change. I have talked about the practical work I am doing on the ground with businesses and organisations through the social mobility pledge, outside of the Government, but if we are to finally crack the nut—unlike the Labour party, I do not believe we should give up trying to achieve social mobility—we have to ensure change inside the Government. To my mind, that starts with the Treasury, and that is why I called this debate.

After eight years in government, overwhelmingly as a Cabinet Minister and running three different Departments, my conclusion is that we effectively need to abolish the Treasury in its current form. What we have right now is dysfunctional and not fit for purpose. It does not achieve the transformation in opportunity and social mobility that Britain needs.

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[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. This has been a good debate; it is nice to watch friendly fire and I enjoyed listening to the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) make an excoriating attack on the Treasury. I will come to her comments about social mobility later, but the fundamental truth is that when she talks about the current Tory Treasury, she is absolutely right. This Government do not treat spending on social infrastructure as the investment in our future that it should be. Unsurprisingly, as she says, this Government have failed to invest in our children, our young people and in all of us.

During the last year of the Labour Government, we spent almost 6% of our GDP on publicly funded education and training. By last year, that had fallen to just over 4%—a cut of more than a quarter. Given the challenges we face, we clearly need far more investment in skills and knowledge, to transform our economy, to deal with the climate crisis and to make the fourth industrial revolution prosperous and fair. Instead, as we know, during Tory rule school funding per pupil has fallen by 8% in real terms.

The consequences are blindingly obvious. More than 1,000 schools have had to rely on crowdfunding for basics such as pencils and textbooks. At least 26 schools are closing their classrooms early because they do not have the money to keep teaching. The proportion of pupils in supersized classes with more than 31 pupils to a single teacher is at its highest level for 36 years. The number of pupils doing a GCSE in music has fallen by almost a quarter since 2010, just as industry is asking us for more creativity and collaboration in education, because those are the skills needed. Can the Minister honestly say his Government have put in the investment that our schools need?

Our further education providers have been cut by even more: sixth forms by 21% and colleges by 8%. The Social Mobility Commission found that 41% of FE providers had reduced their careers guidance and 48% their mental health support. In its report, it also cited evidence that 51% of colleges had stopped teaching modern languages courses. What about the notion of a global Britain post Brexit? Some 38% of schools and colleges have dropped courses in science, technology, engineering and maths—the courses our economy needs to prepare for the fourth industrial revolution. It is jaw-dropping that schools and colleges have been forced into that.

We have a recruitment crisis in nursing thanks to the Government’s scrapping of bursaries. We have a productivity crisis linked to a skills deficit and a lack of progression during people’s careers. Surely, the Government must have invested in adult education, given that we know people have to change course in their careers—nobody goes into a job at 18 and stays till they are 67 any longer—but no: that has been cut almost in half since 2009-10. Apprenticeship spending has fallen by 44%. The Open University, which has given a second chance to millions of people, is on its knees because of the Government’s tuition fees regime. It could not be clearer that older and part-time learners are simply scared off by the level of debt they are now expected to take on if they want to improve their education and change their course in life.

That is the situation in schools, colleges and adult education—cuts, not investment. What about early years? Sure Start has been cut by two thirds since 2010, with 1,000 centres closed. We know about the amazing benefits of Sure Start—we heard about them again this month—so it is not that the Government do not know about Sure Start’s value to society and the economy. Children are almost 20% less likely to be hospitalised by the age of 11 if their family has access to a Sure Start centre—that is massive—and the most disadvantaged children benefit the most. The impact on the NHS of fewer children being hospitalised is enough by itself to pay for 6% of Sure Start’s costs, and it is one impact among many.

The 2010 evaluation of Sure Start found that access to Sure Start increased children’s physical health, including their chance of being a healthy weight. We all know that childhood obesity, apart from causing misery, costs the state money. The 2012 evaluation found improvements in parenting and the home learning environment. The 2015 evaluation found improvements in children’s behaviour and more. All those evaluations were funded by the Government, but this Government have not learned that investing in Sure Start saves money. It pays off. Even looking at it from this Government’s ideological position, it saves money. It does not just improve lives.

The story is the same with youth centres, which have been cut by 40% on average across the country and by as much as 91% in some places. I understand that Tory Treasury Ministers might not understand that making a bat and a ball and a table tennis table available to young people creates wealth; it is hard enough to get them to understand that that is what happens when they open a Sure Start centre or invest in teachers in our schools. When investment in youth services is taken away, young people are far more likely to have their lives blighted and their potential wasted by becoming victims of exploitation.

In east London, we know that only too well. Youth centres and youth workers provide young people with spaces away from the county lines groomers on our streets. Youth centres are places where young people know they can find an adult to talk to—somebody who can listen to their problems, offer them real resilience against the troubles on our streets and point them towards opportunity. What is so essential is not the bat and ball and the table tennis table in the youth club, but the professional who stands by the young person’s side and can give them different ways of dealing with the man on the street who offers them chicken to be a lookout for him while he sells his drugs.

Good youth work stops children being groomed, stops children’s potential being wasted and stops children’s future contributions to our economy and our society being stifled. Ultimately, it stops the young people I have been speaking about ending up in prison, which I am sure the Minister knows is massively expensive—more than £3,000 per prisoner per month.

If we had invested earlier, how many of the lives that have been blighted by county lines exploitation could have been saved, and how much money would the Treasury have saved? How much more would have been contributed to our economy? Investment in social infrastructure benefits our economy and our society in so many ways for decades into the future. This pro-austerity Tory Treasury just does not get it. It is a barrier to the investment our communities need. The right hon. Member for Putney knows that from her first-hand experience as Education Secretary.

The situation is no different on other issues, such as the climate change crisis: the Chancellor is still trying to obstruct the green investment we need. Thankfully, the right hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) will not be at the Treasury much longer. Unfortunately, the reckless, regressive and plain idiotic pledges of the Tory leadership contenders do not inspire confidence that anything will change. It is a great pity that the right hon. Lady did not throw her hat in the ring. I have watched what she has been doing over the past few months—I have even watched her videos online—and I thought she might be building up to a bid, but sadly not.

Instead, we have the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who has promised £10 billion of tax cuts. That money would pay for more than 400,000 new teachers, but of course it is not teachers or nurses who would benefit from those tax cuts. More than 80% of the financial gains would go to the highest earning 10% of families. It is clear where his priorities lie, and it ain’t in investing in our children.

A Labour Treasury would be totally different. At the last election, we committed to providing over £6 billion more for schools and over £5 billion more for free childcare, as well as nearly £14 billion for post-school education, including free further education and higher education tuition. But this is not just about individual pledges; it is about how we will work across Government to ensure that our investments build social justice as we rebuild Britain.

We will support cumulative impact assessments of our Budgets to ensure that they help the many and not the few, and we will adopt the Select Committee on Education’s recommendations for reform of the Social Mobility Commission. The right hon. Member for Putney will know that that Committee is chaired by one of her hon. Friends. I have not seen him of late; I wonder whether he, too, is suffering from friendly fire. I share that Committee’s diagnosis of the problem. We have had many years of initiatives to improve social mobility that simply have not succeeded. I think the right hon. Lady agrees that sometimes, in the case of opportunity areas, those initiatives have been just a bit too small. At other times, they have had to fight against the headwind of austerity Budgets that have increased poverty and inequality while cutting the public services that protect us from them. Even when Budgets have been progressive and investment significant, focusing on social mobility has not made our country just, because the aim has been to help only a few to get on, and not to make our country fairer for all.

The right hon. Lady disagrees with that as a definition of social mobility, but from what she has said in the past about how we have never actually had social mobility in this country, I do not think she disagrees with that as a description of reality. I agree we should not get too caught up in semantics, but talking about social justice does not do that. Instead, it expands the debate back out to where we both agree it should be.

When I introduce myself I do not know what title to use. I say, “I’m the shadow Minister for social mobility, kind of against social injustice. I’m anti-poverty and for social justice.” I do it all the time because we do not have a term that adequately explains where we think we should be going. I do not want to argue about words with the right hon. Lady. I think we should focus not just on narrow, voluntary programmes that are based in the Department for Education, but on joined-up strategies to transform our country and make it fairer and more just for all. That should be backed by the investment that only the Treasury can provide.

Labour would appoint a social justice Minister, despite the problems that the definition of that term might cause, and we will ensure that that Minister co-ordinates action across Government, drives forward our social justice agenda, and ensures it is matched by needed investment. The Treasury must properly support all the actions that should be taken by Departments—not just the Department for Education or the Department for Work and Pensions, but the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and even the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—so as to tackle the injustice and poverty that this Government have effectively created through their austerity measures. That new Minister will have the full support of the Treasury because they will be based there. There will be no separation between the wider Labour agenda and Treasury strategy, such as that described by the right hon. Lady. We are talking about serious investment and long-term commitment to social justice, and that is what Labour will offer.

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[Jesse Norman]

It certainly has been; if the hon. Lady looks at the record, she can see that. I also pointed out that Scottish schools had performed worse than ever before in the PISA rankings in 2016. She can check that; it is an objective fact, not a matter for debate. She is entitled to her views, but not to the facts.

The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Ham—I apologise, I mean the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown); I am sure many footballers will not thank me for that. The hon. Lady mentioned table tennis tables; having been a director of the Roundhouse in London for many years, I know the value of local social involvement and engagement. I agree with it, and the Government have invested significantly in it. She seems to have forgotten that the Government will have spent almost £6 billion in 2019-20 on childcare, which is a record amount. They have doubled the amount of free childcare available for working parents of three and four-year-olds to 30 hours. The Government have a tremendous record in this area in many ways. I am glad she mentioned table tennis tables; I was playing at a free table tennis table, provided through public funding, only last weekend, in the village of Little Dewchurch in my constituency.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I am sorry; I have no time. If the hon. Lady had spoken for less time, I would have had more time to respond.

I will respond to the question raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney. It is a very interesting attack, not just on the Treasury but on the model of Government that we have in this country. It deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness. The point has often been made before, although not quite in the same terms. Historically, there is a tension in British Government between the Treasury as a finance ministry and the Treasury as an economics ministry; that is well understood.

My right hon. Friend’s concerns about short-termism in public policy making are also criticisms that have often been made. The extent to which this Government, their immediate predecessor and the one before that, have taken steps to attempt to ameliorate and address some of these issues is interesting. For example, we now have multi-year funding strategies for road and rail infrastructure, which we did not have before; there is a separate independent economics ministry, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which is specifically designed to provide an economic counterpart to the Treasury; and, other steps have been taken to try to combat embedded institutional concerns about short-termism in public funding. Undoubtedly, there is more to do. The criticisms have weight, as has been shown by the responses that the Government have made; it is a point that the Government have well taken and are making significant progress.

There is an embedded tension between the desire for longevity in funding and the desire for democracy. If we lived in China, we would operate according to a 100-year economic plan; we cannot do that because this country has always been bound by the principle that no Government can bind their successors. It is right that we should try to build more longevity into public policy; I have touched on some of the ways in which that can be done, but I have no doubt there are many areas in which it can be done better. This embedded tension between cash constraints, managing the public exchequer, the democratic accountability of Ministers and long-term funding is one that will not be removed by abolishing the Treasury.

My right hon. Friend said that no company would ever see a contradiction between the chief executive and the financial director; I think she is mistaken. There are many companies in which the chief executive would like to spend money and the finance director, in league with the chair, prevents him from doing so. There have been many points in British government when that has been true. It is often true in a Labour Government, when the wisdom of having an independent Treasury, with a degree of control over public finances, stops a Labour Government from thoroughly spendthrift public spending policies. I close by saying that I encourage my right hon. Friend to be careful what she wishes for.