Budget Resolutions

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

I wish to focus on three areas of deficiency in the Budget: education, social care and the public sector.

Many schools across the country are struggling financially. The Chancellor, while promising an extra £40 million to train future maths teachers, seems sadly to have missed the point. The Government’s ideologically driven onslaught on education has led to an exodus of teachers, and many schools are now struggling to recruit. More teachers are now leaving the profession than joining it. The Government do not fully understand the low morale of teachers and staff in schools following the underfunding of education by successive Tory-led Governments. Why would any high-calibre maths graduate now choose teaching instead of a job as an analyst in the City making large amounts of money with half the paperwork and stress?

There was nothing in the Budget for primary school funding either. In order to entice students to study maths A-level, the Chancellor has offered a maths premium of £600, but if primary schools are not properly funded, the children could be struggling at secondary school. The £1.3 billion previously announced by the Secretary of State for Education will do nothing to reverse the £2.7 billion of cuts to school budgets since 2015. The Chancellor could have addressed the fact that schools now have to pay more in national insurance and pension contributions than they once did. These are the real issues squeezing schools.

There was also no increase in the budget for special educational needs and disability funding, which has been frozen for several years. Earlier this year, the Local Government Association warned that due to the lack of funding and rising demand, SEND children were at risk of being turned away from mainstream schools. If schools and local authorities cannot meet the needs of SEND children, what are they supposed to do? The sad thing is that the most vulnerable children will suffer, which is totally unacceptable. More investment is urgently needed in this area.

While I am on the subject of the vulnerable, the Chancellor has decided to give insufficient funds to the NHS, rather than the £4 billion that the head of NHS England called for in order to meet the urgent demands faced by the NHS this winter. The Chancellor seems to think that those pressing demands end at the hospital door. He has decided to give nothing for social care, which will no doubt lead to more bed blocking and seriously affect the help that people need coming out of hospital. This is a massive snub to the elderly and those needing social care services. Social care has seen cuts of £6.8 billion over the past seven years, and there is an estimated annual £2.5 billion funding gap.

Once again, there is nothing in the Budget for local authorities, many of which are at breaking point following year-on-year cuts to their budgets since 2010. Social services is the largest area of expenditure for many local authorities, and failure to properly fund it is leading to untold damage and distress to our most vulnerable and often elderly citizens. The Chancellor and the Government seem to be willing to borrow more but not to invest it in educating children, supporting the most vulnerable or supporting local services. A sign of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Stripping the state to the bone hits the vulnerable first and hardest. The Government are failing our society.