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Hywel Williams:
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. If I can beg the indulgence of the Chair for a moment, the proposed changes to the legal aid regime will not help at all in rural areas. Fixed fees and the other changes proposed will lead to legal aid deserts in large parts of rural Wales, and I suspect in parts of
rural England as well. The system of credit unions —another alternative—is less developed, as well.
I have addressed some particular aspects of rurality in terms of my constituency in north-west Wales and Wales in general. However, there are points that are relevant to England and inner-city parts of England. I will turn to a couple of contentious points. The social deprivation and exclusion faced by people in my constituency and elsewhere is not helped by the withdrawal of face-to-face services from public offices such as the Pension Service and the Department for Work and Pensions and the proposed closure of the Revenue and Customs office, which provides a Welsh medium, face-to-face service for local people. Social exclusion will be exacerbated by those moves. Interestingly, that is happening in an area that is defined by the Welsh Assembly Government as an objective 1 area—an area that is deserving of and gets large amounts of Government funding, which we are glad to have, to create jobs. At the same time central Government in London are taking jobs away from people working in those offices and making it more difficult for self-employed people in the constituency to run their businesses, because of the lack of face-to-face services.
The way in which social exclusion is measured or defined influences the way in which resources are allocated. Wales has had the Welsh index of multiple deprivation since 2000. It takes into account a large number of variables and allowed the Welsh Assembly Government to identify and place 750-odd communities in Wales in rank order, so that they were able to say that the 100 bottom communities would get special help through the community first scheme. That is a clear and valuable example of the Welsh Assembly Government intervening.
Unfortunately, the latest version of the Welsh index of multiple deprivation has been changed. I will refer to two changes. First, the geographical access domain has been replaced by a more general measurement. The original index meant that if someone was far away from services, in a place such as Aberdaron in my constituency, and could not get to the hospital, which was 45 miles away, they were in some way deprived. That focused attention on the deprivation experienced by extreme rural communities in mid-Wales and west Wales. If that geographical consideration is taken away, it makes it more difficult to devote resources to those communities. The net effect of that has been to transfer resources from very rural areas to inner-city and valley areas—not that I am for a moment decrying the investment in inner-city or valley areas. However, in some ways, small rural areas have been left behind by the dropping of that geographical measurement.
The other point about the index is probably the most contentious. It should act as a caution to the Government or anybody else thinking of using these sorts of indices. It is said that decisions about the weighting of domains should be based on policy priorities, rather than being objective. That is well and good. Policy is important. However, the virtue of the index initially was that it was objective.
Helen Goodman: Is the hon. Gentleman referring to the index of multiple deprivation as it applies only in Wales or in the UK as a whole?
Hywel Williams: I am talking about the index as it applies to Wales. One of the first steps that the Welsh Assembly Government took was to commission Oxford university to devise an index specifically for Wales. As some hon. Members will know, the previous index—the Townsend one—took the possession of one motor car to be an indication of wealth and the possession of two to be an indication of even greater wealth. However, people in mid-Powys have to have two cars, even though that is the area of Wales with the lowest wages. The index was modified to include an element of geographical isolation, but interestingly, that has been dropped.
Decisions about the weighting of domains should be based on policy priorities. The virtue of the previous index was that it was objective and took the whole decision-making process for where resources should be allocated out of the political domain. I am afraid that this latest move puts that firmly back into the domain of party politics, and just before Assembly elections, that was a negative move.
4.15 pm
Christine Russell (City of Chester) (Lab): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I thank the Ministers for doing a remarkable job of spearheading the renewed drive to tackle deep-seated social exclusion.
I listened with compete incredulity to some of the speeches. Sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) left the Chamber fairly promptly after finishing his speech. If the situation is as bad as he makes out, he should be having a dialogue with his chief executive and local politicians in his constituency as a matter of urgency.
Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has also left the Chamber. I would have liked to assure him that there is no evidence that the new licensing laws have increased alcohol-related disorder on our streets throughout the country. I agree with him that there is a connection between homelessness and social exclusion, but I would have liked the opportunity to remind him in person that much of the homelessness that we have in our society today is a result of the complete collapse over the 18 years of the previous Government of not only social house building but repairs and maintenance work.
Mr. Goodwill: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Christine Russell: I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has made several interventions and other hon. Members wish to speak.
I wish to share with the House some examples from my constituency of really good practice to tackle social exclusion. As many hon. Members have said—Conservative Members have acknowledged this—the Government have every reason to be proud of their achievements. We have heard that 700,000 children and more than 1 million pensioners have been lifted out of poverty. In my constituency, which is fairly affluent, there was 15 per cent. unemployment in some wards in 1997. Thousands of jobs have been created since then
and there is now virtually full employment. They are not low-paid and low-skilled jobs, but jobs in world-class manufacturing companies such as Airbus and in financial services. Indeed, many are jobs in dynamic, young start-up companies that have been helped by Department of Trade and Industry grants.
Government funding in Chester for the Blacon neighbourhood management pathfinder and the Lache regeneration project has totalled more than £10 million. These projects are making a significant contribution towards rebuilding the two most disadvantaged communities in my constituency in which, quite honestly, the people were abandoned by the previous Government’s policies. Homes have been brought up to a decent standard by the Chester and district housing trust. Schools are working together, rather than competing with each other, and children’s educational attainment has improved significantly. The previously high levels of crime and antisocial behaviour have plummeted.
It is always invidious for politicians to single out individuals and organisations for special mention, but I would like to share with the House three excellent examples of partnerships that reach out to communities and transform lives. The first is the Blacon junior youth inclusion project, which works with eight to 13-year-olds who are at risk of offending, being expelled from school, or exclusion in their neighbourhood. It is part of the Cheshire early-prevention programme and is managed by Crime Concern, and it is funded by the Blacon neighbourhood management pathfinder and the Cheshire children’s fund.
The young people who are helped by the project—I met some of them the other week—are identified through a variety of agencies, including the police, youth services and schools. The activities that they are offered are all tailored to their individual needs, and importantly their mums and dads are involved in the project, too. The achievements to date are remarkable, and I invite Ministers to have a look at the project. Most of the children involved have now returned to mainstream education. One in three has successfully participated in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, and not one has received an antisocial behaviour order. In fact, 94 per cent. of those who had previously committed an offence have not reoffended. The Blacon junior youth inclusion partnership is an excellent example of how early intervention, working with parents, can result in successful outcomes. Of course, there are also benefits for the local neighbourhood: people feel much safer, and the fear of crime has been reduced. Such programmes can save the state a great deal of money.
Hon. Members have mentioned that a number of groups in society are at particular risk of social exclusion, including children leaving care, families with complex problems, people with mental health problems, and teenage parents. People in those groups often remain stuck at the bottom of society. They may face a lifetime of disadvantage, and conventional public services have often failed to reach those groups.
A number of hon. Members mentioned Sure Start. The establishment of children’s centres, in which all the
services for young children and their parents are brought together under one roof, is one of the Government’s best achievements so far. We all know that children who miss out on caring and learning opportunities in their early years will probably never achieve their full potential.
The second project that I shall mention centres on three young teenage mums, Tanya, Rose and Gemma, who, with the help of youth workers, have formed a self-help partnership group called Hand to Hand. Having improved their own parenting skills, those three young women are helping other mums. They are encouraging young mums to go back into training and education. They have even organised a teenage pregnancy conference, and they are accepting invitations to visit schools to talk to students about their experiences. I am told that sex education classes led by those three young women are far more effective and persuasive than classes given by a slightly embarrassed 50-year-old biology teacher. That is another innovative project.
Finally, no one has mentioned projects led by fire services. The fire service is a surprising and unusual delivery vehicle for a social exclusion project, but it is a trusted organisation held in high regard by all parts of society, and fire service personnel are excellent role models for young men. Cheshire fire and rescue service has carried out home safety assessments to allow vulnerable older people to stay safe and secure in their homes. It is leading the Prince’s Trust team programme, which is targeted at disaffected and excluded 16 to 25-year-olds and has achieved remarkable results by getting youngsters back into education or into training and employment.
Cheshire fire and rescue service has managed to reach the parts that other service providers cannot reach. The fire cadet scheme in Thorn Cross young offenders institution aims to reduce reoffending by developing self-respect, self-esteem and teamwork, and by helping young offenders to gain qualifications. The results are impressive, and the reoffending rate is virtually nil. My message to Ministers is simple: the fire service is often overlooked, but it has a great deal to offer, and it can be an effective partner in social exclusion programmes.
Many of my colleagues wish to speak, so I shall conclude. We have done a great deal, but pockets of severe deprivation remain. All too often in the past, as many Members have said, public services have managed failure rather than addressing the root cause of problems. There are lessons that we can all learn. Early intervention certainly works and is cost-effective. I used to work with people with mental health problems, and we must stop the practice of shunting socially excluded people from pillar to post. The more one-stop-shop advice centres that we can establish, the better. In future, the role of local area agreements must be strengthened to encourage proper collaboration and joined-up working between public services. Professionals and front-line staff have started to come out of their silos, and we must make sure that they do not retreat back into them.
Services must be tailored to meet individual needs and circumstances. The town or county hall does not always know best, and it is vital, as a number of contributors have said, to engage with communities,
as it is to engage with local people who know the priorities in their neighbourhood or on their estate. Long-term sustainability is required, because social exclusion has affected families in some communities for generations. Breaking the cycle of deprivation takes time—it can take a generation or more. Raising aspirations and building confidence and self-esteem do not happen overnight, and there are no quick fixes. I urge Ministers to be patient and keep the funding going in. We must make jolly certain that the extra investment that has gone into public services—not just universal services, but services targeted specifically on disadvantaged communities—continues.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Six hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. Provided nobody speaks at too great a length, everybody should be able to get in.
4.30 pm
Mr. Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christine Russell), who demonstrated her commitment to her community. She made a telling remark when she said that town hall does not always know best. In many cases individuals—a community group, a head teacher or, as she said, the fire brigade—make a difference. We are often critical of the Government for adopting the fire brigade approach to certain problems, but in Cheshire at least that seems to be working.
I must, however, pick the hon. Lady up on one point. She compared the social housing record of the Government with that of the previous Government. She may recall that earlier in the week we heard from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman, so it must be true, that in their first 10 years the present Government have built less social housing than the last Conservative Government in their final 10 years. That is a record of which we can be proud.
No political party can claim a monopoly of compassion. The fact that so many Labour Members wish to contribute to the debate reflects the areas where the problems are worst. Although we speak of 2.5 per cent. of people in this country being socially excluded, they tend to be concentrated in particular areas. Those of us with more leafy and grassy constituencies do not appreciate the problem so much. We can all welcome the Government’s action plan on social inclusion published by the Cabinet Office in September 2006. It is often in areas of former industrial decline, as we heard from the poignant contribution of the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) earlier, that the problems need tackling.
In 1992 I had the privilege—that is the right word, I think—to be the Conservative parliamentary candidate in Redcar, standing against Marjorie Mowlam. Coming as I do from an agricultural background in rural north Yorkshire, that was a baptism of fire for me. I was the sort of person who had previously thought that a ram raider was some kind of sheep rustler. I was appalled to see the social deprivation and the health problems in areas such as South Bank and Grangetown. At that time the massive local
government housing estate in Grangetown was recognised as the most unhealthy place to live in western Europe, as it was located next to the huge steel and petrochemical complex. Problems of smoking and obesity already existed there.
The big problem that I witnessed in that area was that if anybody managed to break the mould and get a decent education and a decent job—for example, on the oil rigs—and get hold of a bit of money, the first thing they did was to leave that community. They bought a house in Stockton or in one of the nicer parts of Middlesbrough. That is not a problem in the rural community. We have all sections of society together in the same pub or shop. There is much more of a cohesive community spirit. I felt sorry for the people trapped in the communities around Redcar. The very people who would have been organising events—the sort of people described by the hon. Member for City of Chester—were not there. They had joined the exodus to the leafy suburbs.
We witness an economic segregation, which is exacerbated by problems that we all encounter in our surgeries. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) spoke about the sort of issues that come through the door of our surgeries— problems with child benefit, the Child Support Agency and applications for housing benefit. In many instances incompetent or hard-pressed local authorities in the kind of areas that we are discussing do not process housing benefit applications quickly, which means that landlords, especially private sector landlords, do not want people on benefit in their properties. Sadly, many of those areas have been run by Labour local authorities since Adam were a lad, as they say.
I think that the casual observer would see my constituency as almost the garden of Eden, having as we do the North Yorkshire moors and the wonderful areas that so many people visit as tourists or see on their television screens every Sunday night if they tune into “Heartbeat”. However, as we heard from the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams), who is not in his place at the moment, there are pockets of deprivation even in the most well-to-do and prosperous rural communities. Although we have not been subject to the immigration mentioned by the hon. Member for Leeds, East, we have other problems. Rural communities have many people in low-paid jobs. Many people do not have access to the sort of shops where they can get good deals and have to rely on their village shop, which may face pressure to carry on as a post office. Many hill farmers struggle to make ends meet, and not only because of the chaos in the Rural Payments Agency. I spoke to somebody just before Christmas who was eligible for family tax credit but was frightened to spend the money because in the previous year they had been overpaid and made to pay it back, which caused considerable difficulties.
We also have problems as regards access to certain services. There is a wonderful Sure Start scheme in Scarborough, but many people in rural communities cannot get to it. Many parents find that their children cannot participate in out-of-school activities that take place after the end of the school day because if they have not got a car or access to other transport, the children have to come home on the bus and miss out on the activities—sports, computer clubs and so on—in
which children who live in Whitby or Scarborough can take part. In Whitby, we have a wonderful community group called Interactive which takes a playgroup around village halls, but only for one day a week.
In Scarborough, we have the Barrowcliffe estate and Eastfield, which lies just outside the town, both of which were formerly big council housing areas that have been taken over by Yorkshire Coast Homes. I pay tribute to that organisation for investing in those homes by putting in new kitchens, bathrooms, heating and windows. It is doing the sort of work that contributes to cutting social deprivation, because housing is central to that problem.
In the tourist areas of Scarborough, people with certain problems—sometimes they have been released from jail but often they have just had family breakdowns or have been living rough—take advantage of bed-and-breakfast accommodation that was previously used by tourists. The problem is receding a little now because the high value of property means that many of those premises have been turned into high-value apartments. However, those people still cause problems in the centre of town, because they tend to bring alcohol abuse and drug abuse with them.
Several common factors run through these issues. Family breakdown is a problem. As the Minister said, someone who comes from a socially excluded sector of society is twice as likely to become pregnant as a teenager. Many young girls fall pregnant by accident, as a way of trying to get their boyfriend to stay with them, or because they think, rather foolishly, that they may get housing and be looked after if they have a child. In other much more serious cases, where there is sexual or physical abuse in the household, they see falling pregnant as a way of escape. We have particular problems. I do not believe that any hon. Member has mentioned the difficulties of women trying to bring up families when their husbands are in prison—those who have not already absconded, dare I say it? Problems also occur when the prisoner returns because another relationship has often started in the meantime.
Alcohol abuse, and especially drug abuse, lead to crime when people turn to it to fund their habit. Sadly, they often prey on their communities. They do not go to the richer parts of town to commit burglaries to fund their drugs habit, but prey on their neighbours, friends or elderly people in the same community. Many people are frightened because drug-driven crime is on their doorstep—they see those with drug habits on the street and know that they may well be subject to crime.
Some people are stuck in the benefits trap. The Government’s move to more and more means-testing makes it difficult for unemployed people to perceive any benefit in going to work, especially if they are on disability benefit. Some people who are already in part-time work are effectively subject to a 90 per cent. marginal tax rate. The incentive to do more hours and more work is simply not there. Last week, I spoke to a friend who works in Newcastle as an educational welfare officer—in Yorkshire, we call them “kid catchers”; in the north-east, I understand that they are called “wag wifeys”. She said that she had been offered more work—another day a week—but that it would almost cost her money to do it, so she has turned it down.
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