Ruth Cadbury
Main Page: Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who has spoken eloquently about many of the things that I also see in my constituency on the other side of London. The Chancellor started his speech by referring to people who get up early every morning and open up factories, shops and building sites, and then implied that he was about to make life better for them. Some in my constituency have done well in recent years, but the vast majority of families, particularly those led by women, do not feel better off. That is hardly surprising when, nationally, real wage growth in the UK has fallen by 3% in the past eight years and when the impact of pay freezes and low pay falls hardest on women. This Government have overseen the biggest rise in poverty since the 1980s, when we last had eight years of Tory Budgets.
I want to focus on what this Government have done to the children in those families, particularly the children who need additional help. The Chancellor hardly mentioned children in his speech. What they need is a budget that works for them, not a Government who are driving an economy in which their parents’ real pay is declining, and who are creating a housing crisis that forces their parents to pay rent almost equivalent to their take-home pay and a work culture in which the only jobs their parents can get have zero-hours contracts so they never know how much is coming in from month to month. No child in this country needs a Government who make a political choice to respond to the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 by implementing, then continuing with, politically driven austerity in which the whole burden falls on the poor and the rich get off scot-free.
Austerity means that our public services continue to struggle with less money and more pressures, and it is not coming to an end. Let me give some examples. The Local Government Association says that Government cuts have forced councils to cut services, including the very services that are designed to help children and families before their problems start or escalate. There have been cuts to children’s centres, to places providing advice, information and support, to youth services and so on, and another £1.3 billion of cuts is still planned for councils next year.
The London Borough of Hounslow has lost 80% of its Government grants in the past eight years, meaning a 40% loss of total real income. Like others across the country, councillors are having to find another £27 million of cuts over the next three years, with £5.5 million to come from education and early intervention. I heard nothing in the Budget to address the growing number of children on child protection plans, which has surged 84% in the past 10 years, and there is not enough to reopen the youth centres that do such a great job of identifying and supporting vulnerable youngsters before they get into real trouble.
On schools, Councillor Tom Bruce, Hounslow’s lead member for children and education, told me:
“The Government tell us that there is more money in schools than ever before, but if you ask the heads, the teachers, the pupils, the parents and the governors, that is simply not the reality.”
The Chancellor’s £400 million titbit for schools will not replace the lost teaching assistants or the welfare and counselling support that headteachers have had to cut. On top of that, Government grant funding for children with identified additional educational need is not enough for the growing number of children who should benefit. Schools have had to cut specialists who provide early interventions, and the NHS has cut school nurses, but those excellent professionals identify and support children at risk and families in crisis.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who rightly said that the burden of austerity has fallen on families with children who need to claim benefits, driving them to destitution. Some of the symptoms of that extreme poverty include teachers having to buy shoes, coats and warm clothes for children whose parents cannot afford to buy them. Universal credit was rolled out in Hounslow two and a half years ago in the first wave to affect families with children. Pressure on the food bank shot up almost immediately, as we predicted, and evictions from private tenancies has led to queues of homeless families, many of whom have had to take temporary accommodation, often at such a distance that they are too far from work, school and their community.
Universal credit is claimed both by families with no adult in work due to disability, who are losing the benefit to cover the extra costs they incur, and by working families—the majority of UC claimants in my constituency are in work. People in west London would starve without their claim for UC being honoured because rents are an average of £1,200 a month while take-home pay can hover at around £1,500—although it is a lot less for a parent on the national minimum wage. Universal Credit is leaving families in poverty for three reasons: it is underfunded; it is chaotic; and it is designed to be a punishment for being poor. Today’s increases in the work allowances only replace cuts that were made previously.
The Chancellor’s £2 billion for mental health is half of what is needed. The money will fund a new crisis mental health service, but why wait for a crisis? Why not support early intervention?
Children in primary school now were born during and have grown up only knowing rising austerity and rising inequality. Based on today’s Budget, they will continue to do so for years to come unless we have a change of Government—a Labour Government.