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This is a timely debate. After 10 years of the social exclusion unit, and now with the introduction of the new taskforce, this is an appropriate time to consider how we have fared on social exclusion. I am afraid that I do not accept the parameters laid down by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong), in relation to either supporting the taskforce and its programme or being seen as disloyal or lacking in sympathy for social exclusion.
I am saddened by the lack of ambition displayed by the social exclusion unit during its nine years of operation. I was generously given a list of things that we have done, and it was gratefully received. There are some tremendous achievements, including taking 700,000 children and 1.1 million pensioners out of poverty, and getting 2.5 million people into work. The only trouble is that the major achievements in tackling social exclusion, of which the minimum wage is another, have come from the Treasury and, if it is not too provocative to some Ministers on the Front Bench to say so—perhaps it is—the Chancellor. If the Chancellor had not introduced such fiscal changes and initiatives, today’s debate would be pretty subdued.
Although the social exclusion unit did some good work and produced 40 important reports, they are very much on the margin. It failed, or perhaps was not allowed to do, one of the jobs that, organisationally, it was ideally placed to undertake: to persuade and even bully Departments into mainstreaming, which is in its original terms of reference. That would mean making social inclusion a part of a Department’s job and persuading it to fund initiatives. Instead, we had the time-honoured practice whereby Departments agreed to take measures relating to social exclusion as long as new money was provided.
That is an important issue. The Government’s spending this year is £554 billion. Were we to take 1 per cent. of that—£5 billion—each year, we could make massive inroads into social exclusion. Such an amount would dwarf the neighbourhood renewal fund and all the programmes for which we fight one another and beg Ministers. I have seen this in local and national Government. Just 1 per cent. should be easy, but it has not been done. That is what always happens. Departments will do what we want only if we get the Chancellor to give them the money; they will not give up their main budget.
With regard to terms of reference and the four objectives, the taskforce has been sold a pup. I will not have a word spoken against any of the four objectives; they are admirable. Ten years have passed, however, and we must now ask the Prime Minister, who set the four objectives, “Where have you been?” Were I setting the taskforce objectives now, unemployment would be at the top of my list. I would say, “Why don’t you get the Departments together and have another look at unemployment?” The situation is worrying.
In the first four years of the Labour Government, when the Chancellor had money from the utilities to fund welfare to work, unemployment in my constituency and in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) dropped by 50 per cent. Since then, it has not moved, until this year when it increased by 15.9 per cent. In Nottingham in the past year, unemployment in two constituencies
has increased by more than 20 per cent., and the other two constituencies have seen an unemployment percentage increase in double figures. Are the Government satisfied that no inroads have been made into unemployment—the first signpost of poverty and social exclusion—in places such as Leeds, East or Nottingham? I would have thought that someone somewhere should say, “We’d better take another look at it.”
The Government’s initiative worked for four years in which we saw 54 consecutive months of economic growth. We have therefore had the benefit of a stable and growing economy. If that changes, I dread to think what will happen. If anyone thinks that social exclusion has disappeared from Leeds, East, I can tell them that it has not. On that basis, however, it will come back fairly quickly if economic growth slows or goes into reverse.
I do not dismiss the four objectives of the taskforce; it is just that, as someone mentioned, they lack ambition. That is shown in the failure to address unemployment and ethnic minority unemployment in particular. After 10 years of a Labour Government, I still go into wards that have large ethnic minority communities and feel ashamed, because there is three times as much unemployment in the 16 to 24 age group in those communities as there is among white youngsters. Is it any surprise that community relations are not as good as they should be? After 10 years of a Labour Government, should not we be ashamed that there is still such a disparity in economic activity between white and ethnic minority people? Why is the taskforce not being invited by the Prime Minister to have a fresh look at something that seems to have eluded the social exclusion unit— [Interruption.] If the Minister says she is not allowed—
Hilary Armstrong indicated dissent.
Mr. Mudie: After 10 years of a Labour Government, ethnic minority unemployment is still at the same levels, and unemployment is still at the same levels in the inner cities of places such as Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester and Liverpool. If, after 10 years of Labour Government, the inner city still exists, we should tell the social exclusion unit to revisit the issue, as the policy is not working.
The other area that I would discuss today, although I know why we are not being invited to consider it, is education. I am surprised at the Opposition’s generosity in not raising the issue of education and GCSE figures. After 10 years of education, education, education, out of 43 schools listed in Leeds— [Interruption.] The Minister must contain herself. Out of 43 schools listed in Leeds, the four in my constituency are placed 19th, 37th, 40th and 41st. Clearly, something is not working. Year after year, we have had education legislation, and we have been told that we must vote for this or that legislation because it is the way forward and it will deliver. It is therefore saddening to see such figures.
In GCSE English and Maths, the schools concerned have 21, 16, 17 and 44 per cent. pass rates. The school with 44 per cent. is the one that everyone fights to get into, but 56 per cent. of pupils do not get passes in English and Maths. That is the successful school, and there are three unsuccessful ones.
If we are talking about life chances and social exclusion, but we are so unambitious and perhaps complacent—or perhaps afraid to fall out with the leader—that we do not revisit our policies on unemployment or education, we need to consider again. We must swallow our pride, because youngsters are having their futures severely damaged, and we cannot blame the Conservative party for that. It was nice to do that a few years ago, but we have now had 10 years in government, and I would have expected a far better position. Certainly, I would not have expected us to be satisfied with three high schools in one constituency in a major city such as Leeds having 16, 17 and 21 per cent. pass rates in GCSE Maths and English.
On health, I do not even think that I will read the figures; it makes too hard reading. I walk about and live in the place. I have had two debates in the House on inner-city poverty in my constituency and been assured from the Front Bench and by the Government office that I live in a place of prosperity—paradise in Leeds, East. Every week, I go around where I live and see the lives of the people and I think, after 10 years we should be making a difference. They have sad lives. [Interruption.] Yes, I am looking at the clock as well. They have sad lives, bad education, bad health, high crime figures, bad housing, high unemployment, or double the national average unemployment, and I think, we cannot blame anyone else now, we are the Government, why is it happening? The taskforce has not been asked by the Prime Minister to look at those issues.
The last issue that I shall raise briefly is another that I do not understand in respect of social exclusion: asylum seekers. The redeployment of asylum seekers to the northern cities has been a total disaster. They came out of Hounslow and Dover because they were concentrated there and they caused difficulty, with competition for school and hospital services, doctors and housing, so they were sent to the north and concentrated in the inner city. Why? There are two reasons. First, inner-city people tend to be less articulate than the middle class of the leafy suburbs, so they do not fight it. Secondly, the housing is cheaper. The authorities bought up the cheap housing and put the asylum seekers in communities that are already greatly deprived and under strain.
Garforth and Elmet have two asylum seekers; I have 1,300—I think that that is a conservative estimate. They are all concentrated in the inner city causing great problems. Let us look at how we are treating these individuals. I had a wee lass at my surgery at Christmas. She was perhaps in her 30s and suffering from deep depression and mental health problems. She had been told the week before Christmas that she was being thrown out. The authorities were taking section 4 help from her and she was homeless. Think of the weather the week before Christmas! She was on the street. They do not bother. They recently wrote to 500 Iraqis who were receiving section 4 help and said, “Sign up to say that you will go back or we will take your accommodation from you.” Instead of signing up, 450 disappeared. Where are they living? How are they earning a living? How are they feeding themselves?
I know the sheer bureaucratic incompetence sounds amusing but in human terms it is devastating. Every Member who has asylum seekers in their constituency
knows that that is going on. At every surgery I have at least one asylum seeker. In fact, it is never one; it is always more. They are homeless, living with friends or at an indeterminate address. They are keeping themselves either by charity or by “other means”. We know what that means.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make this brief speech. [Interruption.] As someone who took an hour, the Minister should not mutter at me. I am simply making the point. I support the taskforce. I support the four objectives, but I would like the opportunity for a rethink of the list to make it a bit longer.
2.14 pm
Matthew Taylor (Truro and St. Austell) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) on his speech. Arguably, his was the first Opposition speech on behalf of the next Prime Minister. Whether it will catapult him into office in a few months remains to be seen. I will be a little more moderate in some of my criticisms than the hon. Gentleman has been of Government Front Benchers. He certainly managed to do a rather more effective job than the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman.
There is some genuine good news. The hon. Member for Leeds, East started in similar terms. That has to be said. It is important for anyone looking at these issues to realise how big a change there has been since the Conservative Administration. I hope that the Conservatives really have changed. It is a little hard to believe that 165 changed their minds about everything the day after they lost the last general election—but if they have, it is a conversion worth having.
The fact is that there are some 700,000 fewer children now in income poverty. There have been particularly big falls in pensioner poverty, which fell from some 27 per cent. of all pensioners to 17 per cent., and among single pensioners it has halved. Employment rates are much higher. Those are all good pieces of news.
I would not say, as the hon. Gentleman said, that the Government have been unambitious and complacent, but I would say that some of what the Minister has said, or perhaps more accurately a lot of what the Government say in presenting their record, oversimplifies the problem. In addition, in policy terms, the reason they have struggled is that they have overcomplicated the solutions. Therefore, they present the problem in simplistic terms and come up with solutions so complex that they do not deliver the goals that they are designed to deliver. They simply create a bureaucratic nightmare that all of us experience as MPs in dealing with the problem of, for example, constituents’ tax credits. That is the single biggest work load going through my office, and, I suspect, the offices of a lot of other MPs who represent poorer communities—but much the same could be said of many of the other systems.
The Minister likes to describe the success, which I have outlined, in terms of a hard-core minority now being left—a few who fall outside the mainstream, a last hurdle—but I do not think that that is true. I wish
it were, but I think the problems go much further. For the poorer, the less educated, and minority groups, there are still huge inequalities and problems at all life stages: problems with child poverty, with skills, at working age, later in life and because of geographical exclusion.
It is true, for example, that under the Conservatives we were effectively the child poverty capital of Europe. Child poverty tripled to one in three, and the situation is much better now, but the Government have fallen short of their target. We had an interesting exchange earlier when the Minister criticised the Conservatives for using figures before deducting housing costs for those most excluded, because the Government, too, use figures before deducting housing costs to claim an improvement in child poverty that exceeds the reality. The Government claim they have reduced the number of children in poverty by 23 per cent. Actually, it is more like 17 per cent., against the Government target of 25 per cent. According to the estimates of Save the Children and others working on that issue, 1 million children continue to live in severe poverty—that is, on less than 40 per cent. of median income.
The significance of that figure is that it has not changed. I think that the explanation is that those who are relatively able have through Government policies been helped into work, but those who have the greatest problems, who tend to be in the severest poverty, have not benefited from Government policy. The Minister says that the Government have considered releasing the statistical data on that and tracking it, but that it changes fast and is unreliable. On her own terms, we are talking about the most significant group, the hardest to shift. Both targets and data are necessary and if there are caveats around the reliability of it, add those caveats, but we need that information. We certainly need it to set targets. While she may not agree publicly, I think that many of the Minister’s comments imply that she accepts that that is a real need.
It is interesting to note that tax credits are helping more children than ever. That is true, but the number needing them has sharply risen. We seem to be creating a circumstance, therefore, in which the Government are having to pour more and more resources into an ever bigger problem, rather than tackling the underlying problem.
If we are going to meet the 2020 target, which we support, and welcome the fact that the Minister and the Government are working towards it, we will need to overhaul the entire tax and benefits system. The Liberal Democrats have said a lot about that and are doing a lot of work on it.
Mr. Heald: May I make the point that we accept the 2020 target? I was asked about that but I forgot to make it clear.
Matthew Taylor: Good. Whether the Conservative party will ever be in a position where it will be held to account for that is another matter, but it is good that all of us can focus on the issue.
The social exclusion unit—I would rather it were called the social inclusion unit—has not been as effective as was originally intended, as the hon. Member for Leeds, East said, and some of the recent changes suggest that the Government are aware of
that. These debates, which cross Departments, encourage the Conservatives to put things on the record. However, we need to look at benefits reform, non-means-tested child benefit, and second and further children, since doing so could provide a way to raise many hundreds of thousands of further children out of poverty.
On maintaining family units, I am cautious about providing more income for the support of children who have two parents within a family unit to the disadvantage of children who do not. However, we need to make sure that there are no financial incentives for people to move out of the household, and the possibility of a couples premium in child tax credit can be looked at. We do not want to end up with children being financially penalised at the same time as they are being penalised in so many other ways by the break-up of their family unit.
The biggest single change that could and should be made concerns the 1.5 million children in poverty in households that nevertheless pay full council tax. As a party, we are committed to a move towards relating the amount that people pay to the council to their income. If we made the change to a local income tax, there would be an immediate impact on those 1.5 million children. It is hard to understand why any such household would pay full council tax, but that is the nature of the system.
On skills, there are headline improvements in educational standards at 11 and 16. Today it has been announced that Truro college, in my constituency, is the first to be rated as outstanding anywhere in the country. That is good news from a college that I worked hard to make sure came into being. It has been delivering the goods partly because the Government have helped with resources, and also as a result of European objective 1 funding.
However, 27 per cent. of 19-year-olds still fail to reach minimum educational standards, and poverty and low achievement reinforce each other. My fear is that the Government’s emphasis on getting people into work ignores the fact that the groups that we are now dealing with tend to be people whose problems are not simply related to work. The fact that they are out of work reflects other issues, and pushing them into part-time low-paid employment, while it may be good for statistics, does not necessarily do much to tackle social exclusion.
There have been big falls in poverty and exclusion for pensioners and children, but for those of working age the reverse has been true, which is partly related to educational achievement and abilities. We know that that relates specifically to certain groups, such as ethnic minority groups, Traveller children—in my area—and pupils with special educational needs. If we are to tackle child poverty, we need to twin it with basic numeracy and literacy goals, for which we need to move from our current relatively poor European levels to among the highest.
We particularly need to increase investment in the early years. We would use the child trust fund differently, putting it into early years investment rather than a fund that can be spent on a holiday when the child reaches 18. Choices have to be made; perhaps that is a better use of the money.
Parenting is also vital. There is a lot of knocking copy when the Government take a lead on parenting; there are suggestions that parenting education would be all about whether people should smack their children, whether they should leave babies to cry so that they get three or four hours between feeds, or whether babies should be fed on demand. It has nothing to do with that; it is about fundamental issues such as understanding child development, the importance of interaction between the adult and the child from birth, how one can help the child to read, and the importance of interaction as opposed to sitting the child in front of a video.
Teachers are talking about children coming to school with no basic skills at all, such as being able to listen, communicate or participate in groups, because they have simply sat in a house in front of one form or another of electronic entertainment. Schools are starting with basic child development that should have taken place at six months. Such children tend to come from backgrounds of social exclusion, poverty and so on, but in the modern world—without extended families, and where children can grow up without ever interacting with much younger children as they would have done in the past—they can come from middle class families as well, particularly with the pressure to work, and high mortgages and housing costs. Those are real pressures, and there is a role for education.
We can be sure that many seven and eight-year-olds will be parents themselves within 10 or 15 years, and they will need those skills, whereas very few of them will be using French or German, or much else in the curriculum. This is not about criticising people for being bad parents; it is about recognising social change. If we want to tackle those issues, we must start not with remedial treatment but by giving everyone the basic skills of parenting. I feel passionate about that, and I hope to see it incorporated more fully into our party policy. I hope that will be the case for both other main parties as well.
Mr. Heald: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should not undermine the health visitor network, which plays a very useful part in helping families with some of the issues that he has just raised?
Matthew Taylor: I strongly agree. I am experiencing all this myself, because I have a seven-week-old baby son. Both the maternity services—excellent but overstretched individuals—and health visitors, who are too overstretched to make the visits that should in theory take place, are rightly targeting where they think the greatest pressures are, but the fact that resources are so stretched does nothing to help tackle issues from the early stages, including basic ones such as helping people with breastfeeding. Many women start to breastfeed but find it increasingly difficult. The more support they get, the more likely it is that breastfeeding will continue; we all know about the health benefits of breastfeeding, but there are also socialisation benefits.
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