Funding for Youth Services

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I place it on the record that my husband is the chair of YMCA Liverpool, which is a non-paid role. I pay tribute to all the organisations and volunteers who provide youth services in my constituency of Liverpool, Wavertree and the city of Liverpool, in particular Harthill Youth Centre, which does incredibly innovative work in my constituency.

I also pay tribute to my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), who spoke eloquently about the desperate need to reinvest in youth services. I agree with her that we must nurture the confidence, skills and resilience of our young people and ensure that they get the best start in life.

Austerity has been a political con, and we live with its consequences today. We see them everywhere in our communities and in our public sector’s depleted resilience. Our children and young adults have borne the brunt more than most. The economic decisions taken post 2010, particularly between 2010 and 2015, have gutted the ability of the state to help people to help themselves. Local authorities have become beleaguered vessels of the British state: owning nothing, running nothing and commissioning everything—and very little at that. In the bonfire of austerity, young people and the services they relied on were always the most expendable for the coalition Government.

The record of the last Labour Government on children and young adults is a proud one. The likes of Sure Start and the Connexions service were truly radical ideas, which showed the value of a social democratic Government that prioritised the needs of future generations.

In the late 2000s and in government, the Conservative party droned on and on about dependency and waste in the public sector. That was rather insulting for those, like me, who worked in local government at the time. The rhetoric never matched the reality of the well-funded services that my colleagues and I worked hard to deliver. Youth services were about career advice, housing support, assistance for those with learning disabilities and so much more besides. They were about social inclusion, removing barriers, and helping young adults to get into education or training in a post-industrial society in which a job in the local factory was no longer guaranteed.

The economic vandalism of austerity was most pronounced in our cities. I suppose it was those pesky Labour funding formulas that, according to the Prime Minister, used to stuff all the money into deprived areas rather than into the likes of Royal Tunbridge Wells. According to the YMCA, the cuts have meant that Liverpool City Council has lost 86% of its youth service provision since 2010. That has brought its spending to just under £40 for each young person. In comparison, the Prime Minister’s North Yorkshire constituency can spend over double that: £89 per young person. This is not about playing one area off against another, but those numbers betray the fact that this Government have no regard for and no interest in equality of opportunity, despite all their claims to the contrary. Young people in Liverpool, and across all our cities and towns, deserve better.

Behind those numbers is an entire generation of young people who are blissfully unaware of what they have lost and what their predecessors were afforded. Whether they are gen Z or millennial—or, indeed, just under the age of 40—our people know that for 14 years they have been subject to a Government whose ability to cement intergenerational inequality has never been surpassed, with no youth clubs or youth services, violent crime up, social isolation, a lack of mental health provision, tuition fees trebled, no homes, a housing crisis, people unable to afford to buy or rent, minimum wage discrimination, no action on the gig economy, precarious work, underemployment, and a low-wage economy. The age-old offer that each generation will have it better than the last is in the dustbin, and now we have the grim spectacle of over 136,000 of our young people homeless, with nowhere else to go. There is no plan to tackle the scourge of youth homelessness that the likes of Centrepoint and the New Horizon Youth Centre in north London are calling for.

The cuts to youth services and youth provision have been the tip of the iceberg for the prevailing attitude that many politicians do not care about young people. The young people of the noughties have gone on to become the 30 and 40-year-olds waiting so very keenly to vote in this year’s election, and they, like the people in my home city of Liverpool, have exceptionally long memories. The same will no doubt be true of gen Z, who will not have any reference point for the likes of Connexions or the importance of the youth club and youth workers in their local communities, but they are angry for other reasons. Quite frankly, they have every right to be.

Autumn Statement Resolutions

Paula Barker Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

As someone who was in business myself, starting and scaling up businesses for 30 years prior to entering Parliament, it is a privilege to open this debate on behalf of the Government.

For any ambitious entrepreneur, “growth” is the most exciting word in the lexicon. The Chancellor’s autumn statement contains 110 separate measures to help businesses achieve exactly that. It will help to close the UK’s productivity gap by boosting investment by £20 billion a year in a decade. That is why I am wholly unsurprised by the positive response it has received from some of our most prominent business organisations.

The Federation of Small Businesses described the autumn statement as “game-changing”, adding:

“The Chancellor and his Treasury team deserve credit for driving pro-small business change and…acting to help build future prosperity.”

UK Finance said the autumn statement

“demonstrates a continued commitment to growth”.

And the manufacturing trade body Make UK said:

“This was a bold statement by the Chancellor who has”—

delivered—

“a transformational strategy designed to turbo charge investment.”

As the Chancellor rightly said, this is indeed an autumn statement for growth, but it is also clearly an autumn statement for business. I am very proud that my Department has been at the heart of developing these measures, which will have such a profoundly positive impact on this country. Our autumn statement will enable businesses to confidently invest in their futures. It will cut their costs through lower taxes and strip away burdensome red tape. Any of these measures in isolation would be a reason to be cheerful, but taken together, and alongside measures from the spring, they are expected to permanently increase the size of our economy, raise investment, reduce inflation, increase GDP and get more people into work.

On this side of the House, we know that the best way to grow the UK’s finances is not to embrace big government and high spending, but to boost businesses and boost competition—this is the so-called “supply side” of the economy. We will provide our innovators and risk takers with the right infrastructure, regulations and support, so that they can lead this country to greater prosperity.

As the Chancellor said yesterday, every big business was once a small business. For me, those words could not ring more true. This House will know about my passion for promoting the entrepreneurs, start-ups and independent shop owners that are the life and soul of our communities and economies alike. These businesses need investment so that they can flourish. They need freedom from overly burdensome taxes and regulations so that they can grow.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I am delighted with the feedback that the Chancellor has received from businesses, but analysis by the Resolution Foundation finds that households will be £1,900 poorer at the end of this Parliament than they were at the start of it. That means people in our communities have less to spend in these businesses. So is it not the case that families are worse off under this Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

My constituents in Liverpool, Wavertree have suffered immensely over the past 13 years. I listened to the Chancellor talk about “compassionate” conservatism yesterday—a truly disgraceful claim. Where is the compassion in implementing mandatory work placements for those on long-term disability benefits, or they run the risk of having their benefits cut off? The Government must think that we have forgotten the nightmare that came into force on 31 October this year when they lifted the cap on bankers’ bonuses. Where is the compassion in that? It is the same old story, just a different day.

The story of the first five years of this Government were of the very poorest under attack, with savage cuts to local government and continual blows to the frontline services that those living at the sharp end relied on. However, house prices continued to rise, and the middle were squeezed but largely shielded from the effects of austerity. Household debt rose too, and now we have come full circle. One of the key architects of austerity is back as our new unelected Foreign Secretary, while his Chancellor, the former Member for Tatton, is thankfully sticking to podcasts and museums.

In so many of our communities over the past 13 years, the state has been peeled back, yet as a country we now spend more, working people are taxed through the nose and, worst of all, we receive significantly less in the way of essential services. School buildings are crumbling, statutory services such as social care are on their knees, and people cannot see their GP or get a hip replacement. Put a bit aside for a rainy day? Not a chance—that is now being spent on increased mortgage payments. Splash out on that much-needed family holiday abroad? Maybe next year.

The sums simply do not add up. People feel ripped off because they are getting ripped off by a Government who have abandoned their self-proclaimed base and retreated to their friends amongst the 1%—a Cabinet of millionaires who look after millionaires. No one in my economically diverse constituency in south Liverpool is now immune to the effects of the Government and their economic dogma—the rising tide that sinks all boats, apart from the yacht.

In Liverpool, those on moderate to higher incomes do not vote for the Conservative party, and where Liverpool leads, others of course follow. People are awakening to the con elsewhere. Using the Conservative party’s own terms, it does not pay to be a striver under this Government. It certainly does not pay for someone to own their own home or be on a moderate income. No longer can Government Members sit there and hoodwink the British public. No longer can they take with one hand and give back with another.

I hope that my constituents tuned in to watch yesterday’s autumn statement, to see at first hand the unedifying spectacle and back-slapping that we witnessed on the Government Front Bench. While the Chancellor was as pleased as Punch with his cut to national insurance, it was simply to lessen the blow that, come January, the energy price cap will rise by 5%, meaning that a typical household will pay between £30 and £45 more per month. That is the difference between heating and eating, as we so often hear. It was yet more of the smoke and mirrors that we have become accustomed to from the Government.

In the real world, my constituents are making real-life choices about how best to provide for themselves and their family, day in and day out, to make their rent and mortgage payments and have enough left over for a trip to the cinema later in the week, or to buy that item on their children’s Christmas list that would induce a sharp intake of breath from any parent. That is what economics is. It is how ordinary people live their lives—the lives that they are afforded to lead, and the choices that they can make. Are they able to flourish, provide for their loved ones and lead a life with human dignity at its core? For many millions of our people, life is so difficult now, and the Conservative party bears the responsibility.

Let me warn all major parties of Government. The private rented sector is out of control and has lost all sense of proportion. While I welcome yesterday’s announcement on local housing allowance, the uplift in LHA is merely the Tories trying to rectify their own disastrous policies. Three years of freezing local housing allowance has resulted in a catastrophic surge in homelessness, with more than 130,000 children forced into temporary accommodation, and a soaring rise in destitution across the country. Never again can a Government freeze LHA without knowing that they are deliberately pouring gasoline on to the housing and homelessness emergency. To do so is not just morally reprehensible but economically illiterate. It shifts the responsibility to cash-strapped local authorities that are buckling under the strain of runaway costs in temporary accommodation, with the bill for England now sitting at a staggering £1.7 billion.

Behind the temporary accommodation figures are individual stories—over 100,000 human stories of trauma and despair. Children penned up in bed and breakfasts. Babies without cots, increasing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Domestic abuse victims languishing in hostels. Ex-offenders contemplating reoffending to spare themselves the indignity of years in a hostel. Like social care, the housing crisis is another elephant in the room. Until we have built the homes that this country needs, and brought the private rented sector under control, never again can we freeze local housing allowance. The consequences are simply far too grave.

Following yesterday’s autumn statement, everyone in this House, in the media, and among the public is clear that Government Members are gearing up for a general election, probably in May. The simple thing would be for them to put us all out of our misery and call a general election now.