Liverpool City Region (Poverty)

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing this really important debate.

I would like to comment on how strong all the contributions have been this afternoon. My hon. Friend’s speech was wide ranging. He focused on fairness and the fact that we have had a strong economic renaissance in very recent years in the Liverpool city region, which he would like to see re-stimulated. He also focused on the bedroom tax and child poverty, which many Members picked up on, as well as the closure of jobcentres, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) mentioned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) made a good contribution on the impact of the cuts to FE colleges and what they mean for apprenticeships. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) made an excellent speech, looking in particular at the Government’s delivery of social security support and the failures in that regard. She gave a visceral description of what it means to so many of her constituents not to have food or money for food.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree also spoke powerfully about the impact of poverty, citing the shocking statistic that one in three children in her constituency live in poverty, and about the shame that we live in the sixth richest country in the world and yet last year saw an increase of 200,000 in the number of children living in poverty. She focused on the cuts to local authority spending, which have had a real impact on support services and the local economy as a whole. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) also spoke about the impact of those cuts to local authority spending and the 10-year disparity in life expectancy between the east and west of Wirral.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) made really strong points about the need to feed children. The example he gave of a mother with cancer lowering her child into a waste bin was Dickensian; we really do not expect to have to picture that kind of scene in this day and age. He also gave an example of a little girl asking for food, saying she could manage without fun but not without food. That has to shame us all. I hope the Minister will respond to the specific requests that my right hon. Friend made.

The Merseyside area, which equates to a large part of the Liverpool city region, has some of the most deprived communities in all of the UK. The latest statistics from the Church Urban Fund suggest that within its boundaries, Liverpool city region has three of the 10 most deprived parts of the UK: Anfield, Walton Breck and Everton. Five of the 20 most deprived constituencies in the country are in the Liverpool city region: Liverpool, Walton; Knowsley; Liverpool, West Derby; Birkenhead; and Bootle. It is clear that the Government’s obsession with austerity, their cuts to local authority spending—which have hit Liverpool and Wirral particularly hard, with cuts of 58% and 57%—and their failure to promote growth and opportunity, coupled with the impact of their social security changes since 2010, have hit the people of the region hard.

My hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood, for Liverpool, Wavertree and for Liverpool, Walton all spoke compellingly about the increase in food bank use. In Merseyside, the number of adults and children receiving help from food banks run by the Trussell Trust leapt from just over 56,000 in 2014 to nearly 61,000 the following year. The figure remained around the 60,000 mark for 2016.

There are many reasons that force a family to visit a food bank, such as delays in being paid, particularly when someone is in insecure work and does irregular hours or is on a zero-hours contract, which we sadly see only too frequently in the current working environment. According to the latest ONS figures for April to June 2016, the number of people employed on zero-hours contracts in their main job was more than 900,000—nearly 1 million people, or nearly 3% of all people in employment. That figure was 156,000 higher than for the same period in 2015.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s 2016 study of poverty and exclusion found that 46% of residents in poverty in the north-west belonged to households containing at least one person in work. The Government repeat as a mantra that work is the best route out of poverty. Yes, work should be a route out of poverty, but for many families it leaves them struggling to cope with basic bills. We have heard plenty of examples this afternoon to back that up. Will the Government take urgent action to ensure that work pays, by reversing the cuts to work allowances under universal credit, which was first rolled out in the north-west?

Some 31% of families in the north-west are private renters, and the reduction in the household benefit cap outside London to £20,000 from November last year means that for the first time, the cap is having a real impact outside London. In 2014, 12% of families on Merseyside were in fuel poverty, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree spoke about with real passion. With inflation expected to rise over the coming year, the number of families who are in poverty despite being in work looks likely to rise even further.

Delays in receiving universal credit or other forms of social security are causing many people real hardship. The Trussell Trust has stated that 44% of all referrals in 2016 were due to changes and delays in social security payments. Of course, that has been reflected in the testimonies of several Members this afternoon about the cases they see coming to their surgeries on a weekly basis. The 2014 independent review by Matthew Oakley of sanctions for JSA claimants on the Work programme recommended that the DWP should pilot the use of warnings and non-financial sanctions, as did the Work and Pensions Committee in 2015.

The last available DWP figures for sanctions, for 2014-15 to 2015-16, show a fall, but their use in particular areas such as Bootle and Liverpool, Riverside remains consistently higher than in other areas. I know those areas well, because I taught in Bootle and in Liverpool, Riverside, and had first-hand experience of the kind of hardship that people have to deal with. I understand that the DWP has not yet carried out a pilot of using warnings in place of sanctions for first sanctionable offences in England or Wales. Will the Government commit to extending the pilot to other areas outside Scotland?

It recently became clear how the delay of at least six weeks at the start of a claim for universal credit is leading to people falling into rent arrears or being forced to look to food banks for help. What will the Minister do to address that? Does he consider it right that families should be forced to turn to food banks for help or fall into rent arrears due to the basic design of the Government’s flagship social security policy, designed to lift people out of poverty?

I recently went to a cross-party event on the issue of poverty. There was a girl called Kelly there who spoke of what it felt like when her mum was not able to pay the rent and they had to move into a hostel. That little girl did not want to let people know how ashamed she felt and how upset she was, so she used to pinch herself to stop herself crying. That should not be happening in a country as rich as ours.

The first pledge the Prime Minister made was that she would lead a Government driven by the interests of families struggling to manage, not the interests of the “privileged few”. She referred to the

“burning injustice that if you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others.”

Within the Liverpool city region, the difference in life expectancy is as much as 12 years for men and 14 for women, as several colleagues mentioned. Life expectancy is highest for men in parts of Childwall, at 83 years, and for women in Ainsdale, at 90. It is lowest for both sexes in Bootle, at 71 for men and 76 for women. Both Ainsdale and Childwall are a 20 to 30-minute drive away from Bootle, but the difference in people’s life chances is stark.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey remarked, at the other end of the age scale, the figures for child poverty are also sobering. Some 29% of children in the UK as a whole live in households on relative low income after housing costs—in other words, they live in poverty. The figure for Knowsley is 30% and for Liverpool it is nearly 34%. In the Picton and Princes Park wards of Liverpool, over 50% of children are growing up in poverty after the housing costs of their families are taken into account.

The Government have abandoned targets set in the Child Poverty Act 2010 to reduce child poverty based on household income. Are they still seriously committed to tackling child poverty? It is a concern when the goalposts are moved in such a manner. Perhaps the Government just do not want to see the figures for what they are.

In my own constituency of Wirral West, there is a great deal of hidden poverty, despite some areas being among the most affluent. For example, volunteers at the community shop in Royden Road, Upton, provide food parcels to families from right across Wirral, and they talk of things such as people being on statutory sick pay and not having enough money to make ends meet. Wirral Free Uniform for Secondary School distributes recycled school uniforms free of charge. It told me of one woman who had walked all the way from Birkenhead to Hoylake to pick up a uniform for her child. That is a distance of more than 8 miles, but she walked it because she did not have enough money to pay for a bus.

The Liverpool city region contains areas of deeply entrenched poverty, and the policies pursued by the coalition and the current Government have hit communities on Merseyside hard. Two of the early pioneers in identifying and combating poverty, Charles Booth and Eleanor Rathbone, were born in Liverpool. Eleanor Rathbone fought for the introduction of family allowances—the forerunner of child benefit—in the inter-war period. Charles Booth produced groundbreaking maps of London, based on poverty, to identify the areas of most need. I think that both would be really shocked and greatly disappointed to find that families in work, in the city of their birth, in the 21st century are still forced to turn to food banks for help. It is time the Government took action to alleviate the suffering of those experiencing poverty, not just in Liverpool but across the whole of the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

The reasons that people use food banks are complex and overlapping, as the hon. Lady knows. Assistance provided by voluntary sector organisations can take a number of different forms. She will know that the Trussell Trust, an umbrella group for food banks, does in fact produce statistics on a regular basis.

Once universal credit is fully rolled out, we estimate that it will generate around £7 billion in economic benefit every year and boost employment by up to 300,000. We believe that making work pay and opening up opportunity for people to realise their potential are central to building an economy that works for all. By reducing the universal credit taper rate to 63%, we will further improve the incentive to progress in work, helping up to 3 million households to earn their way out of requiring welfare support.

Jobcentres across the city region were mentioned. Our jobcentres have an absolutely key role to play in supporting people out of poverty across the country, and I am proud of what our staff—our work coaches and others—do. Day in, day out, they help people to access both the financial and practical support they need to move into employment. As society has changed, so have our jobcentres; the offer in a jobcentre today is unrecognisable compared with what people would have seen in the 1970s. Reforms such as universal credit are revolutionising the relationship between our clients—our claimants—and work coaches, ensuring that the support we offer is more personalised and better suited to their needs. That includes enabling claimants to access our services in different ways that suit them.

It is right that the future of the estate reflects not only those fundamental changes, but the record levels in employment across the country, while always allowing a margin of flexibility for potentially unforeseen circumstances. In 2006, DWP employed 113,000 staff. Today that figure is 79,000, but on the same estate—because we have been locked into a 20-year private finance initiative contract that was signed in 1998. That means money is being spent on space that is not being fully utilised. That contract comes to its end, after 20 years, at the end of March 2018, which is an opportunity to review which offices we need in the future across the country, saving the taxpayer money while ensuring our customers are able to access the support they need.

[Margaret Greenwood]

On PFI contracts, and personal to my constituency, could the Minister look at the Hoylake jobcentre? I understand that there is a different arrangement there. This is not just about the ending of a PFI contract; I think there is something else going on here. Could he give us a picture as to what percentage of the jobcentres are about PFI and what are about something else?

[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.