Tackling Poverty in the UK

Mark Tami Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point very well and I commend him for the work that he has done to highlight the subject. One of the most disappointing things about the last Administration is that, despite talking as much as they did about child poverty, they missed their 2010 target. In their later years in office, child poverty was rising, and not simply as a result of the recession.

The reality is that being in poverty shapes those children’s lives and too often ends the lives of too many people. On average, people living in the poorest neighbourhoods in England will die seven years earlier than those living in wealthier neighbourhoods. Health inequalities today are worse than they were in the 1970s and the gap in educational attainment between children from rich and poor backgrounds remains persistently great.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that one form of poverty that is little mentioned is poverty of aspiration for young people who come from very deprived backgrounds? They do not see further or higher education as something that is for them. That is why it is important that we continue to put money into education: if we do not, that gap will worsen.

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman is right. What he says about higher education is one reason why I am proud that the present Administration will provide more university places this year than were planned by the previous Administration. He makes a valid point. I remember the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) saying in the House some years ago that in his constituency, a person was seen to be weird if he or she stayed on in education past the age of 16. That underlines the challenge in communities where there is too little experience of educational achievement. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami): there is a need to break down the barriers and to raise aspirations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

Of course, we have not been in office since 1997. One of the tragedies of the past 13 years is seeing the amount of money spent leading to so little in the way of results. The point made by the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside about poverty of aspiration is a crucial one. I shall come on to discuss worklessness, but a lack of experience of work or educational achievement in a household, and other factors, can make such a difference. The divides are enormous. If one goes to a city such as Liverpool, one only has to walk for 20 minutes from one of the smartest, newest shopping centres in the country to streets where almost no one is working. Worklessness is central to the challenges faced by many of our communities.

[Mark Tami]

What are the right hon. Gentleman’s views on the comments made earlier by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who said that local authority cuts will fall hardest on the poorest areas?

[Chris Grayling]

We have to look at this in a far more three-dimensional way. It is about changing educational achievement, which is why we have said that it is important to focus on a pupil premium for the most deprived areas. It is also why we have said that it is important to ensure, as the economy recovers and as the employment market picks up, that we do not make the mistakes of the past 10 years. Too many of the jobs that were created went to people coming into the country from overseas, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead has identified on more than one occasion. We have to make sure that we break down the culture of worklessness and educational failure, which is as essential to dealing with poverty as any other factor.

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[Helen Goodman]

No, I do not suggest that at all. I suggest that those statistics are selective and that, if we take the decade as a whole, we see an extremely positive record on poverty across the board.

[Mark Tami]

Will my hon. Friend express a view on the comments of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)? I asked about them earlier and did not receive an answer, but the Under-Secretary said that the poorest would bear the brunt of the cuts.

[Helen Goodman]

That is the big worry, and if even Government Back Benchers can see it, I hope that Government Front Benchers will take that concern very seriously. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said earlier, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies also stated that Labour’s tax and benefit reforms have reduced income inequality. If we had maintained the policies that we inherited in 1997, there would have been a much greater degree of income inequality.

The Minister before us this afternoon also overstated his case on worklessness. In fact, the number of people on inactive benefits is now 350,000 lower than the number that we inherited, and the number of lone parents in work has increased substantially from 46 to 58%, because of the positive measures that we took. I hope he does not mind my saying that he will find the problems rather more intractable than he implied in his speech.

We welcome the commitment to restoring the earnings link to pensions, and we are extremely pleased that the Government have decided to maintain the winter fuel allowance and free bus passes, which we introduced. As the Minister said, encouraging a savings culture is obviously important, but Labour Members cannot quite marry that with the halt that seems to have been put on the auto-enrolment programme.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

The Minister talked about the importance of the problem of debt facing the very poorest people, and the Secretary of State mentioned credit unions in his speech on Tuesday night. The Labour Government introduced a growth fund for credit unions, and we put £86 million into credit unions across the country. I very much hope that the new Government will maintain that level of support in the public spending round that they are going to undertake.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important that we keep that support for credit unions, because if they are not there, such people will, yet again, have to turn to loan sharks and others who demand very high interest rates, often with menaces?

[Helen Goodman]

That is absolutely right. It is vital that we prevent the poorest people from being exploited in the way they have been. There is a lot of work to be done on this subject.