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5.9 pm
The Minister for Children (Margaret Hodge): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to insert instead thereof:
- "welcomes the fact that this Government acknowledged the importance of children's issues by appointing the first ever Minister with responsibility for children and young people; congratulates the Government's commitment to Lord Laming's report on safeguarding children, shown in the Green Paper Every Child Matters, and its determination to turn words into action by publishing the Children's Bill in the other place today; acknowledges that the £885 million Quality Protects Programme is already improving the life chances of vulnerable children; commends the Government for the 8.7% increase in funding for children's social services in the next financial year; and is alarmed by the Opposition's proposals to freeze spending on children's services."
The Bill that has been presented in the House of Lords today, about which I will say more tomorrow, sets out a legislative framework for children's services and places the well-being and safeguarding of children and young people, particularly the most vulnerable, at its heart. The Bill supports a much wider programme of reform, which I want to touch on in my contribution, but I have to say that it is a bit rich for this Conservative Opposition to try to claim the protection of the vulnerable as central to their political concerns and spending priorities.
I do not understand, nor will any rational person listening to the debate be able to begin to understand, how the Opposition can say that they care about vulnerable children, yet make public spending cuts the central theme of their political programme. We are determined to invest in the vital services that will better safeguard and protect the most vulnerable children, but they want to slash public spending and destroy our public services in the name of an ideological obsession with cutting taxation.
Tim Loughton: I am sorry that the Minister did not listen to the point that I made earlier, because what she is saying is complete and utter garbage. Will she confirm what she has said and is quoted as saying—that all the proposals in the forthcoming Bill will be cost-neutral?
Margaret Hodge: I have to say first that what I said is not garbage, because the commitment made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the shadow Chancellor, is simply to protect health and schools, not education. The hon. Gentleman should go away, re-read the speech and come back to the Chamber better informed for the debate.
Jonathan Shaw: A central agency involved in protecting children is the police, in respect of whom the Opposition have said they will make dramatic cuts.
Margaret Hodge: My hon. Friend is right to draw to the House's attention the impact that cuts in police spending would have on the police's ability to protect vulnerable children.
We are determined to invest in the vital services—
Margaret Hodge: I will deal with that point as well: over time, if I may say so, we have increased spending year on year on social services and children's social services, whereas the Opposition, year on year when they were in government, cut expenditure on and investment in children's social services, which protect vulnerable children.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con): Will the Minister give way?
Margaret Hodge: May I make a little progress? I will give way to the hon. Lady in a while.
I do not understand how the Opposition can claim to want to protect vulnerable children when the shadow Chancellor—I say again what he has clearly and unambiguously stated—says that he will freeze spending on all but schools, and therefore on children's services, in cash terms for two years.
The shadow Chancellor says that he will allow only a 2 per cent. increase in expenditure after that point, so where will the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) find the money to protect vulnerable children when the Opposition would cut services by £100 million in the first year? Where would he be when that figure rose to £230 million in the second year? What does he intend—9,000 fewer social workers or 3,000 fewer Sure Start programmes? Is that where the cuts would fall? How would those cuts, in the terms of the Opposition's own motion, give vulnerable children the priority they need and deserve?
Mrs. Laing: Is the right hon. Lady aware of the enormous cuts in Government grant to Essex county council last year, which meant that in my constituency, and throughout Essex, social services, which were trying hard to provide services for children, including vulnerable children, had to be cut, directly because of the red pen of the Deputy Prime Minister?
Margaret Hodge: That is arrant nonsense. I am aware that Essex social services, along with every other social services department, will get an almost 9 per cent. increase in its spending on children's social services, so it will continue to do the effective job that it is currently doing, building on it and showing the way on the reforms that we want to provide a better chance for vulnerable children.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con): I thank the Minister for her courtesy in giving way, but I must tell her that she is incorrect. There has been a large movement of resources away from local authorities in the home counties towards local authorities in the midlands and the north of England. When the change was made last year, Essex county council had the lowest grant increase of any authority in the entire country, and it suffered badly because of it. That is the reality, not the spin that the Minister is giving out.
Margaret Hodge: There has been a year-on-year increase in expenditure across the board on local authority services. That has been coupled with a proper and totally appropriate redistribution so that areas that suffered from lack of investment because they were mainly Labour-controlled local authority areas got a proper slice of the cake in the distribution of local authority resources.
Mrs. Humble: On the Labour Benches, the increase in resources for social services departments has been very much welcomed. Will my right hon. Friend address the issue that I do not recollect that the Opposition mentioned: child mental health services? Vulnerable children often have behavioural and mental health problems. Is she liaising with her colleagues to ensure that mental health services, as well as social services departments, have additional investment that helps those young people and their families?
Margaret Hodge: I concur completely with the important point that my hon. Friend makes. Indeed, the
Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman), who has responsibility for children's mental health services, will reply to the debate, which shows how closely we work across Government, and he will reflect on the 10 per cent. increase year on year that we are investing in children's mental health services.
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West) (Con): Is the Minister telling the House that for purely party political reasons this rotten Government have given Southend children's social services department only a 2.4 per cent. increase, which is way below the national average? Is she saying that that is just because we have Conservative MPs in Southend? That is what she has been telling the House.
Margaret Hodge: I am telling the hon. Gentleman that this good Government have put right the rotten actions of the previous Conservative Government in deliberately—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The Minister was replying to an intervention.
Margaret Hodge: I will now make some progress.
I want to go further, because I do not believe that the Opposition begin to understand what we need to do to provide a stronger framework to support children and families. Let me give some instances. While we want to use the public purse to build a quality child care infrastructure, which will support choice for children and their parents and which will enhance the opportunity for families to climb out of poverty, the Opposition want to use the money to give mothers no choice but to stay in the home. While we understand that we can safeguard vulnerable children and enhance their opportunity only by ensuring that all our mainstream services deliver effectively for children—as well as strengthening the targeted services—they want only to offer the specialist services that families and children see as stigmatised and paternalistic. Poor services for poor children: that is the Conservative mantra. While Labour Members understand that parents want and need support to bring up their children throughout their lives, particularly at key transition points in their development, the Conservatives believe that parenting should always remain the private concern of individuals, with the state intervening only when things go wrong.
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