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That is very valuable, no doubt. However, we need to look beyond that at what has happened to what the action plan refers to as deep social exclusion and I and some of my colleagues have referred to as severe poverty. Over the last decade, 400,000 more people have entered severe poverty, if it is defined as less than 40 per cent. of median earnings. That should not be a matter for contention and I am surprised that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster regards it as such, because it is in the report that she published in September. The report makes it clear that virtually all members of society, apart from the bottom 5 per cent., have seen their incomes rise between 2 and 3 per cent. a year over the last decade. However, the bottom 5 per cent. have seen their income rise by just 1 per cent. a year. In other words, the poorest are falling further behind. To be fair, the action plan recognises that and talks about measures to tackle it. It reflects on the fact—this was mentioned by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster—that we need to recognise that the causes of poverty, especially in that hard-to-reach
group are many and various. Multiple deprivation contributes to a difficult set of circumstances to tackle. I was pleased to hear the many contributions that emphasised the role of the voluntary sector. As the shadow Minister responsible for that, I hope that we can harness the voluntary sector’s practical track record in making a difference to those people.
It would be a mistake if we were to look only at deep social exclusion. The Prime Minister’s introduction to the action plan talks of 2.5 per cent. of every generation being stuck in deep social exclusion. That is the consequence or the outcome. It is no good just treating the consequences. We need to catch people before they fall into that very bottom category. We know, for example, that 11 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds are in the NEET category—not in education, employment or training. That figure has been static for 10 years, according to the action plan. We should not take any comfort from that. People must not become detached from society, but neither must society become so ossified that people have to know their place within it and not shift from that.
In that context, it is worrying that a youngster born in the bottom quarter of society 50 years ago had a greater chance of working their way up to a higher economic group than a youngster today. It is remarkable that, although we have expanded higher education, in the bottom 20 per cent. of income groups, 6 per cent. completed a degree in 1981, compared with only 9 per cent., or thereabouts, today. For the top 20 per cent., the figure has risen from 9 per cent. to 46 per cent. That is another example of impaired social mobility relative to some other groups. Let us be clear: 90 per cent. of the poorest do not go to university. That is unacceptable. [ Interruption. ] Of course we welcome the expansion of the university sector, but when most of that eludes the people who could benefit from it most, I am surprised that Members on the Government Front Bench are complacent. We on this side of the House regard that as a problem to be solved and it is significant that that does not seem to be the case on the Government Benches.
The Prime Minister’s introduction to the social exclusion report says that we need a
“radical revision of our methods for tackling social exclusion.”
Ten years on, I do not think that I am alone in thinking that that is a somewhat plaintive summary by the Prime Minister of the progress on and prospects for social exclusion. The matter has been a long-standing interest of new Labour since the days of John Smith—the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), used to be one of his advisers—so there is a certain sense of regret, which was echoed by the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie), that there has not been greater progress, although we acknowledge that some progress has been made.
That situation is perhaps reflected by the status of the social exclusion unit. It was established in 1997 as a flagship initiative of new Labour’s first term. It initially reported directly to the Prime Minister, and then reported to the Deputy Prime Minister. Although I readily acknowledge that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has a long-standing interest in the matter, the unit has moved beyond the Prime Minister and the
Deputy Prime Minister. Just over a year ago, the Minister for Local Government told hon. Members that the social exclusion unit
“arrived at its rightful home when it came to ... the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department dealing with communities and the agencies on the ground where this problem can be tackled.”—[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 20 October 2005; Vol. 437, c. 314WH.]
However, it now seems that the Department for Communities and Local Government, which the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has become, is not the right place for the unit after all, and there is now a different structure.
The action plan shows a lack of ambition—that is one of the themes that has emerged from the debate. Progress has been made, but given the possibilities, we are a little regretful that the report does not display greater ambition. For example, out of 23 recommendations in the report, eight are recommendations to explore and four are recommendations to introduce trials, pilots or demonstration projects. There are four recommendations to publish new Green Papers or guidance, and two recommendations to examine and review. There are two recommendations to promote or encourage. There is no sense in the text of the dynamism that once characterised the debate, and Conservative Members regret that very much. Our report and the report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) show that we are galvanised into taking action.
There are good aspects of the Government’s report. I commend the personalisation agenda, which is long overdue, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster acknowledges in her introduction. An increasing role for the voluntary sector is also welcome. The interesting innovations suggesting using brokers to assist those in social exclusion to cope with some of their choices are a welcome development that we encourage.
Tom Levitt: The hon. Gentleman disparages what he calls a lack of ambition, but he does not take into account the scale of the problem that we had to address in 1997, which was caused—I was in local government before I became a Member—by the deliberate underfunding of services, by a Prime Minister who did not believe that there was any such thing as society, and by a Government who wanted a hands-off approach to the very services about which we are talking. Putting the problem right and getting safety nets in place was the first priority. Moving on from there so that communities and people in deprivation can help themselves is where we are now.
Greg Clark:
I have acknowledged the progress that has been made over the past decade, but it has been a decade —[ Interruption. ] It is getting on for a decade; it will be a decade on 1 May. That is a long time in government. I do not understand why it was not possible to anticipate at the time the problem of severe poverty or the deep social exclusion that is mentioned in the report. I do not understand why those things could not be done together —[ Interruption. ] We will set
out our policies. I want to look forward and talk about what we are going to do. Perhaps I could commend to the Ministers the speech made by the hon. Member for Leeds, East, who decided, in a grown-up way, to put party politics to one side and to reflect on the issue in a non-partisan way, as we will seek to do. His speech should be circulated to all hon. Members because it was an unvarnished yet practical encapsulation of some of the problems that we will all look to resolve.
Edward Miliband: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will reflect, as this does inform the future, on why child poverty trebled under the last Conservative Government, yet has gone down by 700,000 under this Government. Why does he think that happened, and what does it tell him about the future?
Greg Clark: The Minister for the Cabinet Office encouraged us to consider the people who are in deep social exclusion. I have acknowledged that there has been great progress in reducing child poverty, but we need to consider those in severe social exclusion. We have heard countless examples of such exclusion from hon. Members on both sides of the House today, and for Members to try to play party politics with the subject is disappointing. We want to concentrate on the problems that are hard to solve. I share the sadness that the hon. Member for Leeds, East, feels about the social exclusion unit’s lack of ambition. The figures that he quoted on education, which is one of the main ways out of poverty and social exclusion, are shocking, and we should do something about them. I served with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on the Select Committee on Public Accounts, and everyone on that Committee was disturbed by the persistence of failure in schools. [Interruption.] The Minister for the Cabinet Office confirms that she is interested in the matter, and I applaud that, but we still have further to go.
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con): My hon. Friend is making a characteristically excellent speech, but he is being characteristically modest, too. Ministers on the Treasury Bench asked what the Conservative commitment is to enlivening this debate, but is it not the case that my hon. Friend’s contribution to the social justice commission report not only secured the front page of The Guardian, but made relative poverty the central issue of political debate for a week? That is more than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has managed during her period in office.
Greg Clark:
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, but modesty forbids me to comment. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, underlined the issue of lack of ambition. It is interesting that although the action plan is about those in deep social exclusion, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confirms that the Government decided not to publish any figures that would give us an insight into the progress being made. If we are to think about people in severe poverty, why do the Government not publish the figures, which they can make available in the Library in response to Members’ questions? Why do they not do what Save the Children wants and publish regular figures—and not just at the 60 per cent. level, although
we support moves to reduce poverty at that level, but at lower levels, such as the 40 per cent. level, too? It is perfectly possible to do that.
As for the speeches made today, in a very civilised speech, the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) discussed with great courteousness some of the problems in Nottingham. One in seven children there leave primary school and enter secondary school unable to read, and Nottingham has the lowest number of university entrants of any city in the country, despite the fact that it is a great university city. That must impel us to action, and the hon. Gentleman rightly highlighted that. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who has a reputation as a great battler against injustice, gave a passionate speech, in which she spoke from personal experience and with authority about the contribution that SEN education makes to social mobility. That chimes with her commendation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, who has been a stalwart supporter of choice for parents who face the problem of deciding where to educate their children with special educational needs.
I mentioned the contribution of the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt), and I welcome his endorsement of the voluntary sector’s role. It is important to allow projects to be managed in different ways, and that point was echoed by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. We need to relax a bit and tolerate a bit more diversity in failure if we are really to allow innovation to take place. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), gave an elegant and persuasive speech, and he mentioned that obesity can lead to a lethargic approach to life. I gather that he is about to set off on an expedition across the Arctic, so he cannot be accused of taking such an approach. He made a well-rounded and wide-ranging contribution, for which we were grateful. The contribution of the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) left me so perplexed that I could not explain it to myself, until I realised that there must be a vacancy for Deputy Prime Minister. Clearly, her speech was an application for the job, such was the nonsense talked.
There were a wide range of contributions, and most of them were in the spirit of the debate, which was one of concentrating seriously on tackling problems of social exclusion. We Conservative Members intend to do that, and I look forward to hearing that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East, will join us in looking for genuine answers to the problems that we have begun to identify, some of which are in the report before us.
5.44 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr. Pat McFadden):
I am glad that we have had the opportunity to hold a debate on such an important issue. May I begin by welcoming the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) to his post as Front-Bench spokesman, and by giving belated congratulations to the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) on the birth of his baby son? I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in our debate, particularly the many Labour
Members who have stayed late on a Thursday, because they recognise that it is an important issue. Not only do we care about it a great deal, but it is vital to the strength of the country.
So many points were made by hon. Members that they will be disappointed, or perhaps relieved, to learn that I cannot respond to all of them, but I will to try to deal with the main issues. The starting point for this debate is the progress in the battle against poverty and the fight to extend opportunity to people who were denied it in the past. Over the past decade poverty has decreased, more people are in work—in fact, the UK has the highest employment rate in the G7—fewer children are born into poverty, and fewer pensioners are forced to live out a retirement in poverty than was the case a decade ago.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said:
“Child poverty has now fallen in every year since 1998/99, which is the longest period of sustained falls in child poverty since consistent data on relative poverty rates started to be available”
in 1961. That says something about the record on which we are seeking to build. That progress is not accidental—it was achieved because the Government made a decision to attack poverty and enhance people’s life chances. Instead of freezing child benefit, we increased it. Instead of opposing the minimum wage and saying that it would cost jobs, we introduced it, and as a result, employment went up. Instead of two recessions that left 3 million people unemployed, we have 2 million more people in work, and fewer than 1 million people on jobseeker’s allowance. Instead of denying families the support that could help them deal with the twin responsibilities of work and bringing up children, we extended maternity leave and pay, and we introduced paternity leave and other rights to help families in those circumstances.
We wished to hold this debate, because for all the progress that we have made, there is more to do. There are still people who are denied both the chance to make the most of their potential and the opportunities that most of us take for granted. It is precisely because we want to focus on the most excluded individuals—that is a difficult task, because, as we have heard, some people face multiple problems—that the Prime Minister appointed my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong) as Minister for the Cabinet Office last year, and we published the action plan on social exclusion in September. As my right hon. Friend said in her opening speech, in preparing the action plan we asked ourselves not just who were the most excluded groups or what policies would have an impact on the situation, but what could be done to prevent deeply entrenched social exclusion from extending to the next generation.
Early intervention was mentioned by my right hon. Friend, and by my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), for Stockport (Ann Coffey), for Worsley (Barbara Keeley) and others. The social exclusion action plan provided an analysis of who was vulnerable to social exclusion, as well as proposals that could have an impact on the situation. We discussed the way in which the early months and years of a child’s life are vital in influencing their future life chances. Support in the early years can have a greater impact than support later in life, which is why
we established Sure Start and 1,000 children’s centres—that number will increase to 3,500—throughout the country. But for the most vulnerable children we want to do even more. At the heart of the action plan was the offer of extra support to families in the most vulnerable circumstances, with health-led professional help from before the baby is born right through the first couple of years of the child’s life.
Let me be clear: that has nothing to do with social branding and everything to do with social opportunity. It is about trying to break the cycle of disadvantage and offer help to families who need it most, when they need it most. As my right hon. Friend said, analysis of this kind of programme in the United States has shown positive outcomes for both mothers and children, as well as positive impacts on the community as a whole. That is why I am saddened that the Leader of the Opposition described the approach as “ludicrous”. I hope we will see a more constructive approach to such a programme in the future.
Disagreement over this kind of policy exposes an important choice—whether we do what we can to offer the support that could prevent problems from arising, or whether Government should deal only with the consequences of poverty and social exclusion. We believe that the right approach is to take preventive action if we have good evidence that it can make a positive difference, so we will begin piloting this approach later this year to try to head off problems before they develop, and to provide support when it can be most effective.
Michael Gove: I note with interest the Minister’s remarks about early intervention. I also noted his side-swipe at the Leader of the Opposition—but my right hon. Friend has raised up the political agenda the importance of using whatever mechanisms and levers we can to support couples staying together when they have children for whom they have direct responsibility. Does the Minister regard that intervention as helpful? Can he point to the steps that the Government have taken to ensure that parents can stay together to help look after their children?
Mr. McFadden: I am coming to the subject of family. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving us the pleasure of his company for the last five minutes of the debate. I do not withdraw my criticism of his leader’s description of support for the most vulnerable children in the country as “ludicrous”. That is his problem, not mine.
The subject of the family was raised in the debate, and I shall say a little about it. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) spoke about it, with some impact, and the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells mentioned it. I do not propose to go over all the ground again. The debate is not about whether one is pro-family, or about the view that we take of marriage, divorce and family breakdown. We all know that the family is the basic building block of society.
The point that I make, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) made, is that what Government do to support families has an impact too, so it matters if
we offer families some degree of stability and predictability about the economic environment and the labour market in which they live and work, as we have done by maintaining a strong and stable economy in the past decade.
It matters if we act to ensure that families do not have to subsist on poverty pay, as we have tried to do through the introduction of a minimum wage. It matters if we support families at crucial moments such as childbirth, as we have done by extending maternity leave, increasing maternity pay and introducing paternity leave. Being pro-family is not just a moral claim. It is about what Government do. On that score, the Government have tried to support families in effective and multiple ways, and we will continue to do so.
Another issue raised in the debate by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) from the Front Bench, and by others, was the role of the state and the voluntary sector. Our contention is not that the state should do everything or that the state should attempt to replace society, the voluntary sector or the people in local communities who achieve so much throughout the country. We heard, for example, from my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) about the tremendous work being done by the people of Gamesley, which is reflected in other communities throughout the country. We know that individuals have responsibilities, communities have responsibilities, and so, too, do Government. The key question about the voluntary sector is whether it should be a partner or a substitute.
We see the voluntary sector as a crucial partner in fostering social justice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, its role is not, and never can be, the same as that of Government. It has an independence, sometimes a creativity, and a campaigning voice, and those are essential to its success. Of course it has a role to play in the delivery of services and in having a creative input into their design, where many voluntary organisations do a fantastic job. Although the sector has a crucial role in that regard, it cannot be a substitute for the Government’s responsibility to fund public services, to foster opportunity and to try to enhance life chances.
The Conservatives deny that their agenda is one of substituting, or withdrawing Government responsibility. Today we heard Conservative Members talk about the need for more spending on areas such as health and special educational needs, yet we have increased spending in both those areas in a manner completely unrecognisable from the budgets that used to exist under the Conservatives. When the Leader of the Opposition was asked on the “Today” programme about the extent of Government responsibility, he made himself very clear. He said that sharing the proceeds of growth would mean
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