Mick Whitley
Main Page: Mick Whitley (Labour - Birkenhead)Department Debates - View all Mick Whitley's debates with the Department for Education
(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, although it is a source of shame on this country that we are having to discuss this issue at all. The fact that over 900,000 food parcels were delivered to children in the last year, in one of the richest countries in the world, is a national scandal, and responsibility lies squarely at the feet of this Government.
This issue has a special resonance in my constituency, where over a third of all children are living in poverty. In fact, there are few communities in the country more left behind than the north end of Birkenhead. Here, a male resident can expect to live 11 fewer healthy years than the national average. The typical household income after housing costs is just £16,000, and over half of all children are living in poverty.
The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, but it is particularly bad for young people living in north Birkenhead and the many communities like it. For too long, they have borne the brunt of an austerity agenda that has decimated frontline services. For many of these children, a school dinner is the only hot meal they can rely on in a day, and with schools closed and unemployment soaring, covid-19 has plunged many of them into deprivation and food poverty.
These young people desperately needed this Government to be true to their word and ensure that no child was left behind as we battle this virus, but time and again this Government have had to be shamed into taking even the smallest steps to support these children, whether that is extending free school meals over the summer holidays or maintaining even temporarily the £20 uplift to universal credit. I welcome the Minister’s presence here today, but she should know that defending this Government’s disgraceful record on child hunger is an almost impossible task.
As public health restrictions are eased, I look forward to visiting schools across my constituency. I will be meeting the dedicated educators and support staff who everyday bear witness to the devastating impact that child hunger has on their students and, of course, I will be speaking to the young people who sit at the very heart of this debate. When those children ask me why we have a Parliament and a Government, I would like nothing better than to be able to say, “To look after you,” but in all conscience, I cannot do so while this Government continue to let so many children languish in poverty and hunger.
I urge the Minister to do everything she can to ensure that the blight of child food poverty is stamped out once and for all. That means listening to organisations such as the Trussell Trust and making the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent. It means heeding the calls of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and incorporating the right to food in the national food strategy. With 72% of all children struggling with food poverty having at least one parent in employment, it means delivering on the promise of an employment Bill that can end, at long last, in-work poverty.