Debate on the Address

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is great to have this opportunity to contribute to this afternoon’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I assure you that I will not outstay my welcome.

I want to make a few remarks arising from the community consultation that I have just finished with people from across my constituency. I do this every September during the recess, and this year almost 1,000 people were involved in one of 37 events over three weeks. More than 1,000 shared their views by completing a survey that I circulated. They set out their concerns and the issues they wanted me to raise, and today’s debate provides a first opportunity to put some of those on the record.

Inevitably, Brexit dominated, and in the survey that formed part of the consultation, 71% of people said they wanted a further public vote; only 18% were against the idea; 77% said that they would vote to remain; 15% said they would support leaving with a close relationship; and only 8% wanted to leave without any agreement. That was reflected in the meetings, too, and it was reflected even more strongly among young people. The Government need to recognise that if they lead this country to a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus, there is a rising generation who will never forgive them.

For that young generation—and, indeed, more widely across all age groups—there was a real concern to see stronger action to address the climate emergency, on which they felt they had been failed over the past nine years and about which they will see little comfort in today’s Gracious Speech. I was interested to hear the Prime Minister’s comment that we lead the world on addressing carbon emissions, and that comment has been echoed by a number of Members during the debate. I have taken the opportunity—on the odd occasion when I was not paying attention—to google every survey I could find, and none of them indicates that Britain is leading the world on this. Other countries—Sweden, Morocco and many others—are playing a leading role, and there is much more that we can do. We also have a responsibility to do much more, given our historical contribution.

A wide range of different issues were raised across the meetings and events that I organised, but there was a common theme. I heard how difficult it is for carers to access the necessary respite, without which their lives are challenging. There was frustration that the Government have failed to meet their post-2017 promise to bring forward proposals to tackle the crisis in adult social care and, indeed, to meet the needs of young carers. Domiciliary care workers told me about how their capacity to care had been eroded by 15-minute appointments, poor support, poor training and inadequate supervision. During the consultation I was conducting, one local residential home announced its closure due to inadequate funding, and we all know that many more across the country will follow that path. There was a real sense that we need a complete paradigm shift on how we meet the challenges of an ageing population and how we provide the resources to support that change.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing up that group of young people and for talking about carers. I made a point at a meeting that the continual contracting out of services causes so many problems for voluntary groups. Does he agree that the Government ought to pay attention to that?

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall return to that point later in my comments.

On health, I was told about the difficulties in securing timely appointments with GPs, sometimes acute difficulties with waiting times in A&E, and difficulties in accessing other services. Young people told me about the pressures that are contributing to the rise in mental health problems, on which the system is failing them badly. Schools told me that they were dipping into teaching budgets to provide support for students in mental health crises. Teaching budgets are there for teaching, but that money has been diverted to cover the crisis in young people’s mental health. We need even more support and substantial investment in child and adolescent mental health services. Young people told me that waiting times of 25 weeks between first diagnosis and a referral to the first opportunity for help are the norm, not the exception, but early intervention is critical to tackling mental health crises.

Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities told me heartbreaking stories of their struggle to get education, health and care plans that met their children’s needs. Parents also talked about the challenges that schools face in delivering the plans once they are in place because of the lack of resources. We know that our schools have been hit by an 8% real-terms budget cut, but the particular failure to address special educational needs and disability funding is causing an enormous crisis.

Young people were increasingly worried about crime, talking about knife crime in particular. They made the case for the out-of-school activities that used to be common before the cuts, which have had a disproportionate impact on our local authorities and have led to a collapse in youth services. In other meetings, people highlighted how we miss Sure Start and the difference that the centres made in supporting families during the crucial early years. They talked about how school exclusions, driven by the lack of resources to support the most difficult children, are feeding gangs with recruits and sucking young people into knife crime.

A big worry across all ages and among all parts of the community was the rise in homelessness, rough sleeping and street begging. At a meeting on housing, we talked about the rising number of people in temporary accommodation without a permanent home of their own, the rise in sofa surfing, and the increasing dependency on friends and relatives for accommodation. People were clear that the only solution is a concerted programme of building affordable social housing. The problem of rough sleeping and street begging is clearly more complex, and we talked about mental health and alcohol and drug dependency problems that need intensive interventions to support people into getting off the streets and rebuilding their lives. There was a huge willingness from people in statutory services and the voluntary sector to resolve such problems, but there was also a real sense that the problems had risen over the past nine years as a consequence of the cuts that had affected statutory services’ ability to support and work with the voluntary sector in a way that has a real impact.

Those are all different issues, but there is a common theme. Nine years of cuts have sapped the capacity of our public services and much of the voluntary sector to meet the needs of those who need them most. Austerity has corroded the quality of too many lives, but it did not have to be like that. Such decisions were not forced by necessity, but by political choice, and those choices need to change. The Gracious Speech offers a few convenient headlines, but there is no real recognition of the scale of the change that we need: the fundamental new direction for our country that my constituents spoke about and which this Government clearly cannot provide.