Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

It would assist us if the Minister looked towards and spoke into the microphone. That tends to assist amplification in these circumstances.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T2. The importance of students’ electoral registration was recognised by the Cabinet Office in allocating welcome if belated funds to the National Union of Students to get people on the register in the run-up to the general election. Will the Minister commit to providing similar funds to boost student electoral registration at the start of the new academic year to ensure that they are represented properly on the register on which the parliamentary boundary review will be based?

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman raises a serious question about student registration. As he will know, we now have a system of individual registration, which people can do in about three minutes on an iPhone. We are going to make that even easier, and we will work with the NUS and others to try to encourage students to do exactly as he suggests.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we need to see is successful development going ahead and brownfield sites being used. If those sites cannot be used for retail, they should be made available for other uses. One change we have made is to liberalise the use classes in planning so that we do not have the long-term planning blight of development not going ahead in towns and cities where houses, jobs and investment are needed.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Q3. Given the Prime Minister’s new-found concern that employers should give their staff decent pay rises, can he explain why he did not apply that principle to his own Government when they decided not to implement the recommended 1% pay increase for NHS staff?

[The Prime Minister]

What we have done with NHS staff is ensure that the lowest paid are getting a pay rise. In the NHS, there is progression pay, so everyone will get at least a 1% rise, but many people, because of progression, will get a 2%, 3% or 4% pay rise. Alongside that pay rise, they will be paying less in tax, council tax in many areas has been frozen, and diesel and petrol prices are coming down. People’s standards of living are rising because we have a long-term economic plan and we are sticking to it.

Higher Education Funding

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who said that one of the advantages of speaking towards the end of a debate is being able to reflect on the quality of the speeches so far.

As we head towards a general election, it is fitting to debate an issue that was central to the last one; I very much feel that as the Member of Parliament who, according to the last census, represents more students than any other. It was certainly an issue on which the Liberal Democrats, who are conspicuously absent from today’s discussion—

[Ian Swales]

indicated dissent.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Liberal Democrats are absent in terms of their contribution. They put the issue at the very centre of the campaign in my constituency. My political neighbour, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), was very busy at both the universities in Sheffield—they are both in my constituency—emphasising the pledge that he subsequently quickly forgot.

The debate in the early days of this Parliament arguably introduced the biggest changes to higher education funding since those introduced in 1962, following the Anderson committee report. I have enormous respect for the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), but I do not agree when he says that the Government simply in some way tweaked the system that they inherited. The fundamental changes introduced in 2012 effectively removed all public funding from the majority of undergraduate courses in most of our universities, which was a very significant alteration to the model that had been in place for the previous 50 years.

As other hon. Members have mentioned, the changes have put huge debts on students. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Sutton Trust—I think this is the most recent calculation—we are talking of a debt of about £44,000, when maintenance costs are added in, for an ordinary three-year course, and the debt is clearly much higher for medicine, dentistry and other longer courses.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield was right to view such debts in the context of the other burdens we are placing on the generation graduating this year, who face such debts for the first time. They are also having to deal with a housing market in crisis, and all the costs associated with buying or renting. That generation will not be able to enjoy the benefits of final salary pensions, which many of us expected to have in our careers, and will have to put aside very substantial sums to provide for their old age. We have created a real financial crisis for them.

The problem is not just one for that generation, but one for the public purse. That is the key point of our Select Committee’s report. I underline and echo many of the points made by my good friend and Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley). In the unanimously agreed report we said that we were

“concerned that Government is rapidly approaching a tipping point for the financial viability of the student loans system.”

Our point about the tipping point is based on our assessment of the RAB charge. We have discussed that a great deal, and I will talk about it a bit more. The Government, like the right hon. Member for Havant, are keen now—it was not always thus—to talk down the importance of the RAB charge. He said earlier that we are not talking about spending, but about a forecast. That is absolutely right, but it is a forecast of costs that will fall on the public purse, and we cannot get away from that.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills was much more cavalier at last year’s Liberal Democrat conference, when he said:

“These losses crystallise in 30 or 40 years’ time—when I’m well over 100. I shan’t be sitting round, spending the rest of my life worrying about what happens in the year 2000 and whatever it is.”

Actually, the responsibility of this place is to worry about such issues.

It was a very different story when, back in December 2010, we debated proposals to treble fees and to shift the cost of higher education from the Exchequer to students. The Secretary of State was keen to justify the measure by reference to cost savings, and he talked a lot about the RAB charge. Of course, he talked about a RAB charge of 28%, which was subsequently amended to 30%.

At the time, many of us questioned the Government’s assumptions. Most notably, the Higher Education Policy Institute—now led by the former special adviser to the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Havant—argued that the Government had significantly underestimated the RAB charge, and published its own analysis suggesting that it would be about 40%.

When the Select Committee questioned the Secretary of State in October 2012, soon after the introduction of the new system, he was very quick to defend the RAB charge assessment. He refuted HEPI:

“We do not accept that they are right… We had the HEPI view put to us two years ago, when we were thinking of the current changes, so we are aware. But they are an outlier in this whole debate.”

At least in one respect, he was right and HEPI was wrong—not because it overestimated the charge, but because it underestimated it.

We now know that the Government have assessed the RAB charge at 45% and, in an exchange in the Select Committee last year, BIS acknowledged that it is modelling a RAB charge of more than 50%. That is important because once it exceeds 48.6% the new system will cost more than the system it replaced. The new system, introduced in response to the Browne review, was supposed to last for a generation, but after less than three years, it is broken.

The RAB charge is only one part of the problem. In the debate back in 2010, the Deputy Prime Minister desperately tried to save some face on the fees issue by saying that one of the new system’s benefits would be the introduction of loans for part-time students. He said that it was an important initiative and a progressive development, but he did not say that it would be linked to an increase in fees. It has contributed to a 50% fall in the number of part-time students between 2010-11 and 2013-14, according to Higher Education Funding Council for England analysis.

There was also a miscalculation of how fees for full-time students would be set. The assurances given to the House back then have proved worthless. In particular, I remember that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) sought reassurances that fees of £9,000 would be exceptional. The Business Secretary gave him a clear pledge, saying that he would not allow another

“migration of all universities to the top of the range”.—[Official Report, 9 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 547.]

Where did we end up? We saw precisely such a migration. Far from being exceptional, £9,000 became the norm, because universities needed to cover their costs, as they told the Government they would.

The Government’s objective was to create a market of fees set between £6,000 and £9,000. Rather than universities meeting their costs, the Government somehow expected them to set their fees in order of perceived quality, presumably with Oxbridge at the top and the rest neatly ranking themselves below. When that did not work, they started tinkering with the controls on student numbers. More recently, they have made an unfunded commitment to lift those controls altogether.

When the Chancellor announced that policy, he suggested that it would be funded from the sale of the income-contingent loan book. As it has become clear that the sale of the loan book is unachievable, the report asks how the Government will fund the expansion of student numbers—however desirable that objective might be—without creating a further £5.5 billion black hole in the Department’s books. Of course, there is already a smaller, but significant, black hole of some £650 million on loans and grants to students in private colleges. That is because of a lack of Department control, which the Select Committee has consistently raised.

There are other issues. Although it is not part of the report, we should not forget the way in which the Home Office’s approach to international students is limiting our ability to maximise university income and the wider economic benefits of a growing worldwide market, preferring to let our competitors benefit by increasing their market share, as the United States, Canada and Australia are doing. I particularly congratulate the right hon. Member for Havant on his comments about the further Home Office proposals that seemed to appear before Christmas but are now retreating.

Where do we go from here? We clearly need to look at alternatives to the current system, and that was the conclusion of the Higher Education Commission inquiry into the sustainability of the current funding model which, as the Chair of the BIS Committee pointed out, was co-led by Conservative peer Lord Norton of Louth. The inquiry involved Members of both Houses from all main parties and experts from the sector and from business. Over nine months they considered the risks to sustainability for student numbers, students, institutions and government, and concluded that it was

“the cumulative impact of these risks that is most concerning. The current funding system represents the worst of both worlds. We have created a system where everybody feels like they are getting a bad deal. This is not sustainable”.

The report went on to argue that we must look at alternatives. The first of those is tweaking the current system, which I guess is probably closest to the Minister’s thinking. I would therefore be grateful if when winding up the debate he answered three questions. First, there will be growing and understandable pressure from universities for an increase in fees. He suggested soon after taking his job that he did not accept that there was a case for increasing fees during the next Parliament, but is that still his view? Secondly, some top universities argue, as they always have done, for a substantial increase in the fee cap—I think the latest argument from the vice-chancellor of Oxford is for a cap of £16,000 a year. Does the Minister rule out any such increase? Thirdly, some have argued that the RAB charge could be reduced by lowering the salary threshold for repayments or increasing interest rates. Will he rule out any such changes?

The Higher Education Commission report offers six options. There are clearly more, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) made a convincing argument for a different approach. The commission’s second option is one that many of us have supported for years and has been mentioned in the debate, which is that of breaking with income-contingent loans and moving to a more progressive model that replaces fees with a graduate tax.

Although it does not endorse any of the options, the commission highlights the work of London Economics in providing strong evidence to back a graduate tax. That would break the link between the cost of tuition and repayments from students, moving to a graduate contribution that we all accept and that would be based on ability to pay and not on what a student needs to borrow to get through university. The right hon. Member for Havant will know that the modelling by London Economics is specific in the percentages it proposes for different levels of income and the period for which such a model might work. We would need to consider hypothecation and seek a system that covers all tertiary students, addresses the problems with undergraduate maintenance costs, establishes viable support for postgraduate taught courses, which risk becoming the new barrier to social mobility, and deals with issues of transition and historic debt. Those challenges have to be faced because we need a system that is fair and sustainable, and that is why the report calls for, and why we need, a comprehensive review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I can only repeat what I have said already: the papers have been released, subject to the normal considerations about protecting sensitive and personal documents, with the same considerations that are applied to all Government papers.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policies of the findings of the report from the National Audit Office entitled “Follow-up: grants to the Big Society Network and the Society Network Foundation”, HC 840.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

I welcome the NAO report into the matter, which found that there were no issues with Cabinet Office processes and, as a result, did not make any recommendations. Therefore, I do not feel that there are any wider implications for the policies of my Department.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister clearly must have read a different version of the report. Voluntary sector organisations in my constituency tell me that they are struggling to maintain vital services for the most vulnerable as a result of this Government’s polices, yet the NAO report shows that millions of pounds of public money was wasted on failing projects as a direct result of prime ministerial interference and ministerial decisions taken despite

“concerns raised about financial sustainability and weak performance”.

Is not that truly shocking? When other charities are struggling to survive, how does the Minister justify it?

[Mr Wilson]

I simply disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I disagree that we should avoid funding new and innovative approaches, despite the risks that come with doing so. I note that according to the Charity Commission, the number of registered charities went up from 162,000 to 164,000 between 2010 and 2014, and the total income of all registered charities has grown from £54 billion to £64 billion in the same period.

Youth Service Provision

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend is correct. I will not take anything away from the NCS; I think it is a tremendous and very effective programme. The young people whom I spoke to were really enjoying it and they told me that they were learning tremendous things, but as my hon. Friend said, it does not address year-round provision. It is six weeks, then there is a cliff edge and the provision ends.

The loss of specialist staff and locally tailored services should worry us all in that context. Young people want and need to be able to socialise in a safe and secure environment, but they also need specific professional support in many areas of their life, yet the Government measures forced on local authorities will leave many young people with nowhere to go but street corners. What my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned is probably an example of that. It does not just risk encouraging antisocial behaviour; more importantly, it will leave young people in very vulnerable situations and potentially victims of who knows what as they spend their time on the streets.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is outlining some consequences for socialisation and for the benefits of engaging young people in constructive behaviour. Does he agree—this is on the basis of my discussion with youth workers in Sheffield—that there is an even more significant loss related to youth provision during school holidays, because youth workers have said to me, “Frankly, if people do not engage in these schemes and these schemes are threatened, they will not eat that day”? Is the provision of food within these activities not a serious dimension of this problem that we ought to consider?

[Alex Cunningham]

Most certainly, because a lot of these programmes are aimed specifically at young people from deprived backgrounds who may not have access to the theme parks and holiday experiences that are enjoyed by other young people. It is all the more important that the service provision is there—and that they can eat there. When I went to the NCS in Stockton, they were doing some cooking. I did not care for the famous Parmo pork, with cheese spread over the top, and the pizzas that they made, but they were actually doing something. People said, “It is not very healthy food,” but at least they were eating, and we need to make sure that young people can eat along the way as well.

In many poorer communities, youth clubs and similar facilities are the only service available to young people and provide opportunities to learn new skills and channel their energies productively, but youth centres are so much more than simply a hangout place for young people. Yes, that is one element of the function they serve, and a very welcome one, but well-managed youth centres serve a dual purpose that will now be missed.

That open-access provision is a gateway to early intervention, reaching out to vulnerable youngsters who might otherwise be missed by other services or whose needs might escalate before they are picked up by targeted services. These open-access services are often more appropriate than targeted interventions when it comes to improving outcomes for young people. However, the large numbers of young people at risk of falling through the cracks in provision will not become evident for perhaps five or 10 years, by which time it will be too late.

Stockton-on-Tees borough council, which is responsible for youth services within my constituency, has seen the number of youth centres halved to just 12. That said, through much hard work, I understand that they have succeeded in attracting greater numbers of young people and on a more frequent basis. I take my hat off to them; that is very positive. However, in outlying areas, where provision for young people is generally poorest, the loss of somewhere to go that is close to home is a real problem for communities.

Across the country, the remaining youth provision is provided by youth workers who are thinly spread, overworked and, consequently, less able to fulfil their roles effectively. There is an obvious detriment to the services that they provide and to the young people with whom they work. Although local authorities are limiting the extent of cuts in youth service spending as best they can, that has largely been achieved by reducing the numbers of professional youth workers with the important JNC—Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers—qualification and the skills that come with that.

Again, the context is crucial. In the same two-year period that has seen the number of youth centres dwindle, 2,000 valuable skilled youth workers have been lost from the system. The Unison report highlighted the fact that, as a result, 41,000 youth service places for young people have disappeared, meaning that 35,000 hours of outreach have vanished from youth service provision. That loss is particularly concerning because by building relationships of trust and support with young people, specialist youth workers can actively engage with their communities and help young people to make their own informed decisions about their lives and develop confidence and resilience. In short, youth workers play a central role in supporting young people, yet their years of hard work are being dispensed with and the successes that they have worked hard to achieve are being jeopardised by scything Government cutbacks.

As if that was not bad enough, it has emerged that, as has often been the case under this Government, the impact of the cuts has been felt particularly hard in some of our most deprived communities. In such areas, youth services play an even more significant role: helping young people into work, avoiding and preventing substance abuse and tackling problems of antisocial behaviour and gang violence, as well as boosting community cohesion. However, the effects of austerity have been concentrated in those very communities. The education maintenance allowance has been removed, while support from the access to learning fund and the student opportunity fund has been cut. Housing benefit for the under-25s has been cut, tuition fees have trebled, making higher education more expensive than ever before, and careers services have been slashed. Those cuts are severely short-sighted and will add up to even greater problems as we move forward.

Let us take, for example, the careers service. At a sitting of the Select Committee on Education last week, Lorna Fitzjohn, Ofsted’s national director for further education and skills, reminded MPs that their assessment of the quality of careers advice in schools was that it was less than good in four out of five. It is no wonder: the Government dumped the careers service on schools—I acknowledge that they have the National Careers Service—but did not provide them with the funding that went with the responsibility. They were relying on the national service to offer additional guidance, but few young people have even heard of it.

There are some examples of very good practice, but in most cases, it is left to ill-equipped teachers to cobble something together and, if they have the right contacts, encourage a few employers to come in and chat to the young people. Association of Colleges research indicates that less than half of all colleges have reported that schools in their area are delivering the requirement to provide independent careers advice and guidance. Largely gone are the professional people who had the breadth of knowledge of different opportunities that provided the young with options best suited to their needs.

The Unison survey found that the majority of schools had reduced their careers advice and had no place for careers experts. Research by the university of Derby found that out of 144 local authorities, only 15 would maintain a substantial careers service. Ofsted’s promised review of careers guidance—that particular area of youth services—in 2015-16 cannot come soon enough.

In the current economic climate, which has seen unprecedented levels of youth unemployment and witnessed 1 million young people being out of work, education or training, there can be no doubt about the need for qualified youth workers, who are able to guide our young people into making the right choices for their lives and provide the support necessary for them to enter the work force. We cannot ignore the fact that young people are far more likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups, who are more likely to have experience on their side.

I am fortunate that Stockton borough council is very much a forward-thinking local authority. Its Youth Direction service is therefore geared to provide to young people across the borough a range of resources, including careers advice, business support and an array of targeted youth support projects, but it is the innovation that comes with that proactive provision that is particularly impressive. Working alongside the council’s antisocial behaviour team to carry out joint patrols in Billingham, the Youth Direction service is assisting with the targeting of identified hot spot areas and is actively contributing to reduced instances of antisocial behaviour according to police statistics.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wilson]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he does. I hope that he and people in his constituency will support Giving Tuesday, which is on 2 December. That is a great opportunity for smaller charities to raise substantial sums of money and I hope that he will support it along with me.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking to maintain the level of youth services provision.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

We are working to offer practical support to the youth sector at a time when local authorities continue to make difficult decisions on how to deliver services. Our support focuses on promoting delivery models for innovative services, including mutuals, and better measurement of the impact of youth services on the lives of young people.

[Paul Blomfield]

Last week, BBC Look North revealed that more than £30 million had been cut from youth services across Yorkshire—deep cuts that had been forced on councils by the disproportionate reduction in local authority funding for areas with the highest need. What discussions is the Minister having with colleagues in other Departments about the impact of those cuts on young people?

[Mr Wilson]

I am slightly surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman’s criticisms, because I did not notice his campaigning in Sheffield on the cuts made by his local authority and I could not find a single letter that he has written to the Department about those cuts. Sheffield city council is one of 10 local authorities that are co-operating with the Government to transform youth services using the new delivery models that we are talking about. I would add that we are working with the youth sector to launch the centre for social impact, which will make it much easier for the youth sector to justify the things that it does and to get the buy-in of local authorities to keep those services going.

European Council

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support on the issue of the EU payments. May I also thank him for what he said about the incident in Leeds? It would be nice to put on the record for once the debt I owe to the close protection team who look after me and the very good job they do. I was in a meeting in Leeds speaking to a group of city leaders and other politicians. John Prescott was in the room as I gave the speech. As I left the room I thought the moment of maximum danger had probably passed, but clearly that was not the case. [Laughter.]

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister heralded the appointment of Lord Hill to a key economic portfolio in the Commission as evidence of his influence in Europe. Will he therefore explain to the House why the overwhelming majority of Conservative MEPs last week refused to support the nomination of Lord Hill and other commissioners, despite his attempts to persuade them otherwise?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, let me agree with the first half of the hon. Gentleman’s question. It is excellent that Lord Hill has the crucial portfolio of financial stability and financial services, including much of banking union. This is exactly the sort of job that Britain should have in the European Commission to maximise our influence. That is very important. MEPs vote for a range of different reasons and I am sure some of them were bearing in mind other elements at the Commission, but I am clear that it is a great success for Britain that our commissioner has such an important job.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My understanding is that my hon. Friend came to the signing of the growth deal last week. He will be aware that, since the launch of city deals in December 2011, we have made it clear that we want to see more and more city deals and growth deals being entered into. So far, 28 city deals and 39 growth deals have been negotiated, and the cities and local growth unit—working to the Minister of State —continues to work with local areas on that agenda so that we can announce further deals in the future.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T9. As part of a community consultation in the city that the right hon. Gentleman and I both represent, I have spoken to hundreds of people over the past few weeks. One of the main concerns that they raised was the consequences of the cuts to local authority spending, particularly on adult social care. Will he explain why, on the Government’s own measure, Sheffield council will have had a 22% reduction in spending power over this Parliament, while areas of lesser need such as Wokingham have had an increase? Does he think that that is fair?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman and I have debated this before. As he knows, those reductions have been spread across the country as fairly as possible to ensure that areas with the greatest needs have those needs reflected. He will be equally aware of my dismay at the actions of the local Labour council in Sheffield in cutting and closing swaths of public libraries, depriving local communities of their libraries when so many councils in a similar position in other parts of the country have not done so.

EU Council, Security and Middle East

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

With others, we should be working to protect these minorities, including the Christians in northern Iraq, and I set out to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) the sort of steps we would be prepared to contemplate. We should not rule out future measures; we should use all those things that we have at our disposal, while recognising that there is not some unique military solution that can be put in place.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

On a number of occasions this afternoon the Prime Minister has repeated his welcome condemnation of the Israeli appropriation of Palestinian land, but does he recognise that over many years words alone have failed to move the Israeli policy of illegal occupation and that now is the time for concerted action to force the Israeli Government to shift their policy?

[The Prime Minister]

To be fair, the reason I have repeated myself is that I have been on my feet for about two hours so there is bound to be some repetition—and even hesitation and deviation at moments. The point I make is that we have in the past been prepared to back up our actions, as we did with other EU partners over the issue of research grants to Israel. However, as I said, the first step is to make absolutely clear our condemnation of this, and I will work with others to make sure it is reversed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Despite some claims to the contrary, this policy has been researched and worked on for many years, including two two-year pilots. The evidence shows not only that children get a health benefit from eating more healthy meals and a social benefit as they sit together to share those meals but that the policy is having dramatic effects on closing the attainment gap, which is still too wide in far too many of our schools across the country.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T4. Last week, I met a disabled Sheffield grandmother who helped her two daughters to stay in work by looking after her grandchildren a few times a week, but two of her three bedrooms were deemed surplus by the Government. In tears, she told me that she could not make ends meet because of the bedroom tax. The Deputy Prime Minister is trying to distance himself from the Conservatives, but why not on the bedroom tax, which was only voted through with his support?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman and I have debated in the past, the fact that many families, including in Sheffield, live in overcrowded properties where there is no space for young children to do their homework, and not enough space for people to live in decent conditions, is a fundamental problem. Overcrowding is a real issue, yet we have many other places where people live in social rented accommodation with rooms that they do not need. In some way—I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to put his head in the sand like the rest of his party and does not want to deal with any of these difficult issues—we need to make sense of that, and that is what we are trying to do.