Poverty: Glasgow North East

18:30:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered poverty in Glasgow North East constituency. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this most serious of subjects. I rise to speak not only as a Member of Parliament for Glasgow North East, but as someone who knows what poverty looks like up close. I grew up in Easterhouse, one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow. I left school at the age of 15 when both my parents were diagnosed with tuberculosis. I joined my siblings to help provide for our family, doing what we had to do to survive, like so many in our communities still do today. It is that experience that drives me now, recognising that behind every stat about poverty, there are people—families, children and friends—facing impossible choices. Fighting for them is the sole reason I am an MP. The idea for this debate was born a number of months ago, when I discovered data from Health Equals, which revealed that my constituency of Glasgow North East has the lowest life expectancy of any UK parliamentary constituency. The truth is that although those figures are shocking, they are sadly not surprising. In Glasgow North East, wages are lower, and the percentage of people with a disability is higher, than the Scottish and UK averages. Deaths from preventable health conditions such as coronary heart disease are higher than compared with Scotland as a whole. Tragically, nearly 38% of children in my constituency live in poverty. As Health Equals tells us, deep inequality between the poorest and the richest cuts lives short. In the UK, one of the richest countries in the world, people are dying because they are poor. When we think about poverty, we need to think of it in context. Glasgow North East having the UK’s lowest life expectancy does not happen by accident, and can be changed only through progressive Government action. For too many years, people in my constituency have operated under a system that has allowed inequality to fester. Opportunities and wealth have been unevenly distributed, and public services have failed people time and again. The last Labour Government made the eradication of poverty a national mission. Families the length and breadth of the UK felt the benefit of that determination, but after a decade of Tory austerity and nearly two decades of SNP neglect in Scotland, that progress has been reversed and the living conditions of far too many are reminiscent of days we thought had been consigned to history. The Britain that this Labour Government inherited was broken. It was a Britain whose leadership had tolerated the intolerable as more people slid into destitution. That cannot be fixed overnight, but it cannot be allowed to continue either. The Trussell Trust tells us that 3.1 million food parcels were handed out across the UK between 2023 and 2024—262,000 in Scotland and 5,846 in Glasgow North East. Sadly, tonight 10,000 children in Scotland will go to sleep in temporary accommodation—a number that has risen every single year in the past decade, bar a slight decrease during the pandemic—and one in six Scots will continue their agonising wait for NHS treatment. This is a wealthy country, but its people are poor. The real lived experiences of people should always be at the centre of debates such as this one, because I believe that they make the most powerful case for change. In the Stobhill area of my constituency, there is a Marie Curie hospice. I am in absolute awe of the work done by Marie Curie to treat people in the final stages of their life with compassion and dignity. However, the staff working at the hospice will openly say that far too many of the people who come through their doors should have more time to live. That is not a hopeful attempt to comfort grieving families, although I am sure it does that too. Rather, it is a reflection of the direct effects that poverty has on people’s living standards. Funded by UK Research and Innovation, Marie Curie and the University of Glasgow conducted a research project that was titled, “Dying in the Margins”. This research showed that one in four working-age people with a terminal illness in Scotland dies in poverty. That challenges the idea that terminal illness is an equaliser of social classes, recognising instead that it actually worsens inequality. In addition, there is a 24-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most deprived communities and the least deprived communities. When faced with a diagnosis of a terminal illness, poorer people are forced into making difficult choices or find themselves suffering hardship because of the associated costs. It is, as one participant in the research noted, a “double burden”. Let us take, for example, Max. He is a 65-year-old gentleman who really wanted to spend his last days in his community and—importantly—with his dog, Lily. On one occasion, despite being in serious pain, Max even fled the hospice to be reunited with Lily, but his home was unsuitable for someone in his condition. He lived in a fourth-floor flat and could not climb into his bath. Sadly, the housing association failed to carry out adaptations to his home and so, in the final days of his life, Max was forced back into the hospice. He died, with his wish of dying in the comfort of his own home and with his beloved companion Lily by his side unrealised. We cannot change Max’s experience, but we can take action to ensure that we treat people who are in similar situations with greater respect and dignity. Poverty can strike at any point, suddenly disrupting lives. That is what happened to my constituent Martin. He was a working homeowner who, because of a relationship breakdown, found himself homeless with three children, one of whom has additional support needs. Martin had to leave his job to care for his children during this traumatic period. Glasgow city council placed the family in a hotel, where Martin and his three children had to pack up and move rooms each night. Although Martin tried to keep his children in a routine and in school during this time, their school attendance suffered and their situation has obviously affected their education. Martin remains in temporary accommodation that is unsuitable for his family. He has been trying to find permanent accommodation since November, but the social housing stock is just not available. Martin wants to work and provide for his family, but he is not receiving the housing support he needs to get him to that point. In short, poverty has put his family’s lives on hold. That is why, when I think of poverty, I think of it as theft. It steals potential and robs opportunity. It denies the world of the brilliance, warmth and talent of so many who may never be seen or heard. Our duty, surely, is to do all we can to make better the lives of people we may never know or ever meet. I am encouraged by the work already being undertaken by the Government to do just that. The Government are legislating to ensure that work can be a genuine route out of poverty, as well as the realisation of a stable and enjoyable life. Our Employment Rights Bill delivers fairer working conditions, stronger rights and improved pay for millions. These are the steps that show our values: that work should offer dignity and security, not trap people in in-work poverty. More recently, the “Pathways to Work” paper outlines additional steps through reforms to the welfare system. I welcome, for example, the scrapping of the work capability assessment, which many charities described as dehumanising and distressing. I also welcome the commitment to reduce assessments for people with longer term health conditions. It would be remiss of me, however, not to acknowledge concerns about other aspects of the proposals, and I hope to hear answers from the Minister today. Can the Government ensure that people receiving end-of-life care will not lose access to their benefits as a result of the plans? Can the Minister set out how new employment support programmes will be delivered in a way that is supportive and empowering, rather than patronising and disparaging? Can the Minister confirm that the Government recognise that for some people work simply is not possible, and that they should continue to receive financial support and assistance? I ask those questions because I recognise that our welfare system is failing people. I support the efforts to fix it, but reform cannot mean regression. Let us also remember that so much of the responsibility for welfare provision lies with the Scottish Government. They hold powers, so they must bear responsibility. My constituents are waiting too long for support, with the majority of adult disability payment applications taking four months to process. In 2023, shockingly, 116 people died while waiting for the outcome of their application. I will hold the UK Government to account, but I expect the Scottish Government to do more than posture on this issue, which I am afraid has been the extent of their contribution so far. When my time as an MP ends, I want to be judged on the following questions. Did I make life better for the people in my community who had the least? Was I part of a Government who worked tirelessly to root out the causes of poverty and low life expectancy? Are people living better lives now than they were under the previous Government? We can be the Parliament that ends the era of excuses, and we can be the country that declares poverty not inevitable but unacceptable.

I would like to get to the Front Benchers by 7.08 pm, so everybody has about three and a half to four minutes.

18:43:00

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) on bringing forward this debate. I particularly liked her driving force, which is: did I make life in my community better? That should be the driving force of all MPs and I commend her for taking that stance. I want to say a couple of things about the social security safety net, and what is being provided to protect people from the worst of poverty to ensure that life expectancies are equalised. Those of us who are lucky enough to live in a level of privilege have the luxury of being able to make mistakes and cope with a few rough barriers in our way. We can cope with our washing machine breaking down and our child needing a new pair of shoes in the same month, whereas people who are living on the breadline do not have that level of privilege and luxury. If two of those things happen at once, through no fault of their own, then getting through that and working out whether to buy a washing machine or a pair of shoes for the child—when someone is struggling to make ends meet as it is—is the most difficult choice. If we can get to a position where people have the luxury of being able to make some choices, and are able to ensure that their children can thrive and not just survive, then we have done a good thing and made life better for our communities. There are issues with the social security safety net. The essentials guarantee has been put forward by the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation among others. In order to pay for an essential basket of goods, someone needs about £120 a week. That includes the most basic food, ensuring an internet connection, heating and rent—it covers those basic things. The universal credit standard allowance is only £92. Most people agree that the essential basket is a reasonable level for the social security safety net to be at. It would be sensible to look at where we are with the universal credit standard allowance, and whether it does meet basic needs. That is before we talk about things such as the child poverty strategy, and the possibility of cancelling the two-child cap, which people are asking for across the board, as well as scrapping the total benefits cap. In Scotland we are doing what we can to mitigate some of that. We have managed to ensure that child poverty in Scotland is reducing rather than increasing, but it is much more stagnant than we would like it to be because we are having to mitigate some of these cuts. I echo the views of the hon. Member for Glasgow North East on disability payments; 55% of children in Scotland who live in poverty have a disabled family member. We do not know how the cuts to eligibility in the personal independence payment are going to interact with the Scottish benefits system. Will people have to do assessments for both adult disability payment and PIP in order to ensure their eligibility for the UC health element, or will the UK Government work out the UC health element on the basis of the ADP assessment? I am not clear on how that will work, or on how the welfare Bill that is hopefully coming in the near future will make it clear. For my constituents, and for those people in Glasgow North East, how those things will interact and what difference it will make to their lives is really key. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us clarity as soon as possible on the interaction between the welfare Bill and the Scottish Government systems on, for example, adult disability payment. I again commend the hon. Member for Glasgow North East on raising this really important issue. I understand why it is the most important issue in her constituency, and more power to her elbow for making life better for her constituents.

18:48:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke), who is my neighbour, for securing this important debate. Glasgow has disgraceful levels of absolute poverty, with families who cannot afford the essentials to live: food, heat, school uniforms and clothes. We do not help those in desperate poverty by making unaffordable promises. But despite the constrained public finances, our Government have taken action. Our last Budget raised billions in extra taxes to fight poverty. In Scotland, that means an extra £4.9 billion for the Scottish Government, so that they can tackle record NHS waiting lists and arrest the alarming decline of Scottish education. Our Employment Rights Bill tackles the evil of in-work poverty, with the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. Our Government have increased the living wage well above inflation. Our Government have been in power for 10 months; the Tories were in power for 10 years and the SNP have been in power for 18 years—at the helm of an incredibly powerful devolved Administration blessed with significant powers. The SNP have run Glasgow city council for eight years.

Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the essential services that families rely on are delivered by local authorities, and that local authorities have had their budgets slashed year on year by the Scottish Government, which impacts their ability to protect and support the most vulnerable people in our societies?

I agree. Local government has been emasculated by the Tory Governments in England and Wales and the SNP Government in Scotland. I must say that they are pretty non-discriminatory in their emasculation, because they have failed to properly fund the SNP council in Glasgow for years. In Scotland, one cause of poverty is the shocking state of the NHS. Record waiting lists do not just delay people getting back to work; the delays mean that their conditions deteriorate to a point where they cannot return to work, and we should be incredibly angry about that. In 2007, the Scottish Government promised to establish a ministerial taskforce on health inequalities, yet Scotland continues to have the worst health inequalities in western and central Europe. On disability health checks, following a successful pilot in 2019-20, the Scottish Government committed to carry out annual health checks for people with learning disabilities in 2022. It was to be completed by 2023, but as of 2023-24, only 6.9% of eligible people had been offered a health check. The SNP’s record in Holyrood on health is absolutely shameful. Education is an essential pathway out of poverty. However, the attainment gap in Scotland is widening, which means that kids in my constituency and others with large working-class populations have fewer life chances, and they are getting worse—it is an absolute scandal. College education is in crisis. Again, this should be a source of anger. Glasgow city council has an opportunity to help some of the most vulnerable in Glasgow. Homeless Project Scotland has a food and night shelter in the Merchant City in Glasgow. It serves free hot meals and provides an immaculately clean shelter for homeless people. However, it has had its planning permission refused. The shelter is at serious risk of closing, but I am heartened to hear that Glasgow city council has said: “We are available to engage...and do whatever we can to help them secure suitable property”. I hope that the council does that. It has two golden keys to a resolution. It has an extensive property portfolio and it is the planning authority. I cannot think of an organisation better placed to help. I helped at the shelter on Sunday night. That night, it served over 100 men and women, but because children are also homeless in Glasgow, it serves them too. On Sunday night, there was a boy—just like my boy—with his dad, a teenage boy with his mum, and a girl perhaps the same age as my daughter. If the shelter is closed, where will those children and their mums and dads get a hot meal? Where will the most vulnerable in my city get a safe bed for the night? I hope that Glasgow city council delivers on its promise.

18:53:00

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) on securing this debate and on her heartfelt speech about the impact of poverty in her constituency. My constituency of Glasgow North, which adjoins hers, also faces many of the same factors that contribute to low life expectancy—factors that are clearly linked to poverty. Recent data from the Office for National Statistics has shown that the average life expectancy in Glasgow North is 75.9 years, which is 8.7 years shorter than in the healthiest parts of the UK. However, in a way, that number also acts as a smokescreen. Because it is an average that includes the most affluent areas, it conceals the true life expectancy of the most deprived communities in my constituency. Where someone is born, where they live, and even which streets they grow up on, can help determine how long they live. Although the figures highlight a shocking level of health inequality, they ultimately reflect the deeper and more complex realities of poverty. Poverty does not come from one place; it stems from a web of economic, social and cultural factors. Those are shaped by issues related to class, health, social security, wages, job security, education, housing and access to credit, to name just a few. It is the way that those pressures interact, often reinforcing one another, that sustains the poverty that we see in Glasgow and across the country. The history of place can accentuate those issues, Glasgow’s history being an example. The deindustrialisation of the city combined with the lack of necessary support, planning and investment in the late ’70s and ’80s led to mass unemployment and growing inequalities that are still felt in communities today. Although the previous Labour Government made great progress combating child poverty rates, that has not been sustained. Subsequent national policy choices and global events have only made those systemic issues of poverty worse, with the financial crash, the cuts to public services from Tory austerity and the long-term impact of a global pandemic hampering Glasgow’s prosperity. Poverty can also create vicious cycles, which can appear in many different aspects of someone’s life. For example, if someone’s job is insecure, it is harder for them to afford stable housing. Without a fixed address, it is harder for them to access social security. Without that safety net, the risk of homelessness rises and the cycle continues. That is why it is not enough to talk about employment alone. We need to ensure that work provides security and pays a real living wage. I welcome this Government’s decision to uplift the minimum wage, a vital move that ensures that more people can earn enough to live with dignity. The Employment Rights Bill will go further, ending exploitative zero-hours contracts and helping to ensure that anyone in paid work has stability and protection. But let us be clear: no single policy will solve poverty. What is needed is a joined-up approach—one that brings together housing, health, education, employment and social security. That is why the Government’s focus on building houses, improving the education system, restoring the NHS and promoting economic growth is vital to helping to deliver for those who are most vulnerable. I am also confident that the work of this Labour Government’s child poverty taskforce will be vital in delivering a cross-Government child poverty strategy to reduce and alleviate child poverty. That will be essential in improving children’s lives and life chances now and address the root causes of poverty in the long term. Glasgow is a city of immense potential, rich in culture, talent and resilience. The fact that some of its communities have the lowest life expectancies in the UK is not an inevitability—it is the result of decisions taken in the past. If we make different choices, we can build a city and a country where every child has the opportunity to thrive and every community the chance to prosper. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in her response.

18:58:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) on securing this important debate and on being such a doughty champion for her constituents. Poverty is experienced by many communities across Glasgow, as we have heard, and my constituency of Glasgow West is no exception. In 2022-23, 19.3% of all people in Glasgow were income-deprived, compared with 12.1% in Scotland across the board. In Glasgow in 2023, 41.1% of secondary pupils were registered for free school meals. The figure for Scotland is just 13.2%. The Drumchapel/Anniesland ward in my constituency has the greatest depth of poverty in Glasgow. That is a lot of statistics, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East says, there is a family or an individual behind every single one. Earlier this year, I held a child poverty taskforce event. The submission from that has been fed into the Government’s taskforce. It was attended by many organisations that work with children and families in Glasgow West. The stories they told and the evidence they offered were truly shocking. One participant, a volunteer with a youth club, reflected on her experience of taking a group of children on a day out and giving each child £5 to buy lunch. One child asked if he could forgo lunch and give the money to his mum so that she could buy bread and milk for the family. As you will gather, I find that story horrific, but that is the reality for many children who are all too aware of the financial pressures that their parents are facing. In effect, it takes away their ability to enjoy their childhood and be children. As we have heard, since 2013-14 the funding received by Glasgow city council has reduced significantly, putting severe pressure on services across the city. Hopefully, the record settlement that this Government has passed to the Scottish Government will allow them to address what is now chronic underfunding. Over recent years, I have been disappointed that the SNP administration in Glasgow has not seemed to feel it either necessary or required that it should challenge its colleagues in the Scottish Government at Holyrood about that funding situation, because it should not have been allowed to continue. We have heard a lot about the mortality rate in Glasgow. I will not rehearse that; I will just say that we have known for a very long time that health inequalities, housing conditions, educational opportunities and poverty are all connected. A lifetime ago, I worked in the health service, and we were proud of but challenged by the Black report, which drew attention to all those facts. We have known about them since 1980, and have had the opportunity to do something about them over the years. We made some progress under the Blair Government, and we began to look at poverty, particularly child poverty, in the early days of the Scottish Parliament, but we need to do much more. All these issues are connected. If one part of that jigsaw is in the wrong place, the life chances and life opportunities of all those families and young people are badly affected. I close by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East again. She was absolutely right to be challenging about what we all have to do, what all Governments have to do and what all local authorities have to do. It is only by working together that we will begin to make a difference for the people who rely on us to do that.

I would like to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the mover of the debate to wind up. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

19:02:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) for securing this important debate and for her very moving speech. It is clear that she is committed to her constituents. We need to break the cycle of inequality. As we heard, on the streets of north-east Glasgow and in parts of my constituency of Mid Dunbartonshire—including Auchinairn, which neighbours Glasgow North East—too many young people begin life weighed down by poverty rather than uplifted by potential. Across Glasgow, 33% of children are growing up poor, but that figure rises to over 37% in the Glasgow East constituency, the highest rate in Scotland. Behind every percentage point are hundreds of pupils whose concentration is broken by hunger, and whose homework, if it is done at all, is done under blankets because the heating is off. New figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveal that 6 million people in the UK today are living in “very deep poverty”, and nearly half a million of them are in Scotland. Poverty on that scale is not just a social failure. It is an economic own goal and a drag on growth. The OECD has long shown that inequality depresses GDP by stunting skills and productivity. A cold, hungry child suffering from illness and missing school is unlikely to become the skilled, creative adult our economy needs. We need investment, not in handouts but in the human capital that will pay Scotland dividends for decades. Three interventions stand out. First, we must extend free school meals to every child in poverty throughout primary and secondary school. Scotland rightly offers universal provision in primary 1 to 5, yet pupils in primary 6 and 7 and early secondary school still fall through the net. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies finds that a reliable, nutritious lunch raises attainment by the equivalent of two months’ learning each year and boosts lifetime earnings. That is growth economics in a dinner hall: healthier children today, higher productivity tomorrow, and lower long-term welfare and NHS costs. Secondly, we must make every home in north-east Glasgow and beyond warm and efficient. The Warmer Homes Scotland programme helped over 7,000 households last year, cutting bills and carbon alike, and demand has soared as energy prices climb. Accelerating retrofits in social housing across the region would create skilled jobs and boost economic activity through local supply chains. For families, it means that money saved on energy bills can be spent on essentials such as food, school shoes or a local after-school club. Thirdly, we must ensure universal access to NHS dental care for all children. Despite school dentists, all too frequently families simply cannot get an NHS dentist. Routine care is being missed and tooth decay remains one of the leading causes of hospital admissions for children. That is not just a public health failure; it is a productivity issue. Dental pain keeps children off school, affects their speech and self-esteem and entrenches disadvantage. Good oral health must be seen as a core part of a child’s educational and developmental success.

I spoke in a debate in Westminster Hall on NHS dentists a wee while ago. Something like 95% of people in Scotland are registered with NHS dentists, whereas the figure in the England is that only about 50% of adults will ever see an NHS dentist in their life. Is the hon. Member making this case specifically for Scotland? I would love to hear more about where the gaps are in service provision in Scotland.

That is not my experience in my constituency of Mid Dunbartonshire. We did a survey recently that showed that there was quite a lot of difficulty in finding an NHS dentist, and that many people who were with NHS dentists found that they were moving to private practice. In fact, I know of many constituents in east Dunbartonshire who are travelling to Springburn to reach an NHS dentist, so they have to travel quite a long distance. Tackling poverty means addressing the full range of barriers that hold children back. Hunger, cold homes and preventable health issues are among them. Those are devolved levers that Holyrood can and should pull. The Scottish child payment is a start, but Westminster must also play its part. The Liberal Democrats are calling on the UK Government to tackle child poverty by removing the two-child limit and the benefits cap, and to reduce the wait for the first payment of universal credit from five weeks to five days. Instead, a UK-wide poverty premium continues to strip cash from low-income households through their higher tariffs and costlier services. Scotland cannot build fairness on funding shortfalls. Hungry children cannot learn. Cold, unwell children cannot thrive. Nourished pupils, warm homes and healthy children are the engines for future growth. By investing in all our children, school meals, energy efficiency and basic healthcare access, we will not only spare a generation the misery of deprivation, but unlock the skills, health and enterprise that can power north-east Glasgow and the whole of the United Kingdom to a more prosperous future. This is not just a moral choice; it is the smart one, both socially and economically.

19:09:00

May I start by acknowledging the very powerful speeches that we have heard this afternoon from the Members for Glasgow? I would not say that my view is that the people of Glasgow are generally well represented by Scottish Labour, but they have been very well represented in this debate. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) for the way she highlighted the tragedy of low life expectancy and of poverty in general in her constituency. She mentioned Easterhouse, which occupies a particular place in the pantheon of Conservative thinking about welfare because my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) visited it 20 years ago and had his epiphany about what she described as the context of poverty. He described the interconnectedness of the different factors that drive poverty, which go so far beyond simple income poverty—issues around welfare itself but also joblessness, family breakdown, addiction and so on. The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) talked about the long consequences of deindustrialisation, which are relevant across our country but especially in places such as Glasgow. He also mentioned the consequence of the 2008 global financial crisis. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East mentioned the stagnation of wages in her constituency. Low wage growth has been a problem across the United Kingdom since that time. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green became the Welfare Secretary in 2010, he introduced reforms that offered real, direct benefits and improvements in welfare and in worklessness. There were 1 million fewer workless households in 2020 than in 2010 and, after housing costs, 1 million fewer people in absolute poverty—100,000 fewer children, 200,000 fewer pensioners and 700,000 fewer working-age people in poverty. The last Government did make a real impact on poverty. Nevertheless, I want to acknowledge some of the points that have been made in this debate. The fact is that the fiscal situation that we inherited and the choices made by the coalition Government meant that insufficient support was given to people who needed it, particularly as a result of cuts to local authority budgets and reforms to the DWP budgets. I echo what the hon. Member for Glasgow North East says about the neglect of Glasgow under the SNP since devolution and over the past decade, but I do not agree with her about the value of the reforms being introduced by the new Government. What we have seen is a rushed effort driven by the imperative to balance the books in consequence of a failed Budget last year, leaving a real crisis in the public finances that is now being felt by the recipients of benefits. The Government are balancing the books on the backs of the people least able to sustain that weight.

On failed Budgets, my constituents go to the shops with terror at the rising prices that followed the Budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is the very definition of a failed Budget—one that plunged many of my constituents into poverty?

I am not going to defend the mini-Budget to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I do not accept that the rise in prices that all our constituents have experienced are solely, or even in large part, due to that event. They are a result of wider global events—and since this Government came in, I am afraid to say, of a failed economic policy that has driven the necessity of the disability benefit cuts that have been introduced and the winter fuel payment cut, causing 10 million people to lose a vital part of their income. Since the cut, 100,000 more pensioners have been admitted to A&E and 50,000 children have been plunged into poverty in consequence of what is happening at the DWP. I am very concerned about the announcement of cuts to the benefits regime before the review of the assessment system that gives people the entitlement to benefits. We have a genuine failure at the DWP. In addition to that, jobs are being destroyed by Treasury decisions to raise national insurance on employers, drive up energy costs and introduce a new Bill that will make employers much less keen to take on new workers. My suggestion to the Minister, if she will allow me to make it, is to rethink the changes to winter fuel payments. I am conscious that in Scotland the Scottish Government are taking over responsibility for this area of policy and I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) that it would be good to hear from the Minister about how the interaction of the benefits reforms will work in the light of Scottish Government policy. I also hope that the UK Government will rethink the disability benefit cuts until we get the review of the eligibility assessment schemes. We need more support for people who need help to navigate the system and get into work. Let me return to the point I made in response to the reference to Easterhouse by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East. We need to attack the drivers of poverty—the interconnected factors that account for the demand for welfare, which is so high. It is social breakdown rather than purely DWP systems that account for the high— indeed, unsustainable—benefit bills that we have. We need to grow the economy to create jobs—good jobs, as the hon. Lady said, that will be right for Glasgow and right for the UK.

19:15:00

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) on securing this debate on a topic that could hardly be more important. I will take the transcript of this debate as a submission to the child poverty taskforce because Members have made significant points today. I know that my colleagues in the ministerial taskforce and in the Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office will read the transcript of this debate with interest, because, as I say, Members have made very important points. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), and my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow East (John Grady), for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) and for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), for their contributions. I had the pleasure of reading the submission from the child poverty taskforce event that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West held recently. I, too, read the story of the child she mentioned. We should not apologise for engaging emotionally with this issue, because nothing matters more than the fortunes of our kids in this country. I also thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray). I welcome all the contributions that have been made as we move towards the publication of our child poverty strategy. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North recently met some of my DWP colleagues at the Springburn Jobcentre Plus office. I hope that she found them to be really helpful, because they will have enjoyed meeting her. I encourage all Members from all parties to engage with their local DWP teams in their local jobcentres. They are brilliant human beings and all constituency MPs can get a lot out of working with them, so I thank my hon. Friend for doing just that. As has been made evident by this debate, poverty is a stain on this country, and tackling it is a priority. Our plan for change as a Government includes giving children the best start in life, as well as raising living standards in each and every part of the United Kingdom. Reducing poverty is vital to achieving both those ambitions, and to the lives and life chances of millions of people living in hardship right now. That hardship has been caused, as Members have said, by a combination of social and economic failures. I feel an affinity with Glasgow. It is a wonderful city and shares many features with my own Merseyside. As on Merseyside, Glasgow’s industrial past of shipbuilding and the long-running effects of deindustrialisation have had huge consequences. One of the points that has come out of this debate really clearly is that all of that not only has poverty consequences but consequential health impacts. I know that picture in Glasgow and it is true for my home as well, so I feel it. These problems are acute and places like Glasgow have felt the consequences of policy failures over a very long period. We have heard some of the statistics already. Glasgow, the city, has the second highest level of people on out-of-work benefits in Britain. That is not a good enough future for a wonderful city. In my role as Minister for Employment—though in my life, many times before—I have been fortunate to be in Glasgow to hear directly about not only the problems that the city faces, but the opportunities and the work to support people in Glasgow. Last October, I was pleased to meet a number of partners tackling child poverty there. We see good results when we are able to join up support for people, and that is the kind of approach I want to feed into our child poverty strategy when it is published. I apologise in advance for not being able to give all the details of what will be in the strategy, but I know that Members will understand and be patient. The strategy, which we are all anxious to have, is coming. The DWP in Scotland is working closely with partners in Glasgow, including on identifying where we can join up support to make it better and employers that can help to give people a good chance in life. In November, as part of the child poverty taskforce, I was fortunate to meet child poverty charities, experts, parents and children in Glasgow. They told me their stories, their challenges and their priorities, putting those into the development of our strategy, which is focused on increasing incomes, reducing costs and supporting families with better local services, so Glasgow will influence it. We have heard from people, as we have done again today. We understand what they need. This has to be a cross-Government strategy. Members have mentioned health, housing and education, and we will work across the UK Government and with the Scottish Government to ensure that it is an effective strategy. I will take a moment to describe action we have already delivered to tackle the scourge of poverty. We have taken some urgent steps before being able to publish the strategy. We extended the household support fund, which councils in England can use to support low-income households, so there was extra funding for Scotland through the Barnett formula. That support is there for crises, which is important, but beyond that, we know that we need to act on incomes and ensure that people can do better. Just last week, therefore, our fair repayment rate for universal credit came into effect, reducing how much people in debt can have taken off their benefits to pay what they owe. A maximum of 25% of someone’s universal credit standard allowance has been reduced to 15%. On average, affected households will benefit by £420 a year, reducing the impact of debt on people. As my dad always used to say, “Out of debt, out of danger.” As a result of the change, 110,000 of Scotland’s poorest households will now be better off. That marks the Government’s first step into a wider review of universal credit to ensure that it works to help lift people out of poverty. Thanks to our commitment to the triple lock, more than 1 million pensioners in Scotland will benefit from as much as £470 a year being added to their state pension this year, following the increase we implemented last month. That is on top of the biggest-ever pension credit take-up campaign, helping to drive up claims by 81% in the 30 weeks since July, compared with the same period a year earlier. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East asked a couple of questions about the Green Paper and our proposed changes. She asked me specifically about end-of-life care—I agree that the work of Marie Curie and others is deeply impressive. The DWP supports people nearing the end of life through the special rules for end of life. Those rules enable such people to get faster and easier access to certain benefits without needing to attend a medical assessment or to serve waiting periods. In most cases, they receive the highest rate of benefits. Those rules have been extended to apply to people who have 12 months of life to live, rather than six months, so that people can receive that vital support through the special rules six months earlier. My hon. Friend also asked me about new employment support and how we will protect people where work is simply not possible. That is a really important point, because we know that there are people who need to be protected. The Green Paper outlines how we will consult on that and work on our safeguarding policies to make sure the process of protecting those people is improved. My particular passion on employment support is making sure that people are treated with real dignity, and that our fantastic frontline staff in jobcentres are able to see the person in front of them, not for it to be a box-ticking exercise, but to make sure that person has access to great opportunities. That is the whole point of our employment support changes. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked about the process in Scotland. That will be finalised as we get towards the White Paper in autumn. As she pointed out, we need to make sure that we have got the solution right for Scotland. We will work with the Scottish Government to do that. In her maiden speech last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East said: “Education and further education are a route out of poverty. It gives you a sense of achievement, self-belief and the confidence that anything is possible.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 765.] My hon. Friend was absolutely spot on with that sense that anything is possible. She was also right when she said earlier that poverty is theft, because you rob people of that sense of what is possible when you leave them with the indignity of poverty. That is why our whole strategy is about giving people chances and choices in life, with them learning skills and gaining qualifications. We are creating more good jobs through the modern industrial strategy. It is about unleashing the full potential of great cities like Glasgow so they have the growth and prosperity that they should have. Good jobs, with our plan to make work pay, will put money in the pockets of people in Glasgow and give them the dignity, self-respect, chances and choices that they deserve. We need radical change to the help that we give people to escape poverty and to get a good job, but we need the whole Government to act together, and with devolved Administrations, collaborating in work that will see people do much better. I know that Glasgow is a wonderful place, which I have been welcomed to many times, but I also know the truth of what we have heard today—that people in Glasgow are robbed of years of good life that they should have, because of the shame of poverty. I am glad to be able to work with good colleagues from all parties who care about ending poverty to get the right set of policies in our strategy and to make those policies real, so that people have the chances, choices and dignity they deserve.

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I will have to talk quickly. I thank the Minister for her speech. I put on the record that the Springburn jobcentre is doing an amazing job at getting people into work; I was blown away by what they are doing, and wanted to state that here today. I thank all Members for their contributions; it has been a very good debate. We are here because we care for our constituents. On a more personal note, I have to say that people are, and will be, dying sooner than they should. My sister died in her 30s, leaving her 10-year-old girl behind. My brother died in his early 50s with pancreatic cancer. My mum died of a heart attack. I know what it is to lose people, and it is all because of where they lived and what shaped their life. Was it their fate being where they were—where we were brought up? There is lots more that I wanted to say, but I obviously do not have time. This has been a great debate. I am here for my constituents, and for the loss that I felt that I do not want anybody else to feel going forward. I thank the Minister for being here and I thank everybody for their contributions. Thank you, Ms Butler, for giving me this opportunity. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered poverty in Glasgow North East constituency.

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