Welfare Spending

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

In the Black Country we work hard, we are proud and we do not lack for personal responsibility, but forces bigger than any individual—deindustrialisation and the cruel 14 years of austerity—mean that good folk earn less, are sicker, and have fewer chances and fewer choices than people elsewhere. As I stand here every day in this place, the kids living behind the doors that I knocked on during the general election and every week since live in my heart, because one in two of them—one in two—in my ends grow up in poverty. That means every second family, every second door, every second kid, and in the 12th most deprived borough in the country, that is our share of the 4.5 million kids growing up in poverty in this national emergency.

I want to thank the churches, mosques, gurdwaras and community organisations in my ends that are serving dignity, love and solidarity alongside food parcels, warm clothes and hot food. But I will also say this: when the state walked away from us, took money from our councils, closed our Sure Starts, cut the social security that we have paid for, and watched as good jobs in heavy industry fled and nothing replaced them, we picked ourselves up, we helped one another and we somehow kept the wolf from the door.

Community self-defence is now exhausted, but I say to those children that at long last the cavalry are coming. In this rich country, no one will go without the basics, and every child will matter again. Just look at the start we have made—ending no-fault evictions, building council homes and banning zero-hours contracts. This autumn, people will see the scale of our ambition in the child poverty strategy. The down payments we have already made include free school meals for every family on universal credit, and free breakfast clubs, including at St John Bosco primary school in West Bromwich in my constituency. There will be family hubs in every single town, and we are fixing local government finance so that it once again takes account of deprivation and of places such as mine.

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech about the resilience of her community and the action that this Labour Government are taking. Her constituents, like mine, are being lectured on personal responsibility. Does she share my astonishment that, despite the opportunity to take some responsibility themselves for a mini-Budget that crashed our economy, and for 3 million people out of work and a welfare system out of control, we are hearing no apology or personal responsibility from the Conservative party?

[Antonia Bance]

My hon. Friend will be unsurprised to hear that I am awaiting that apology, both for that and for the 900,000 more children in poverty under the previous Government.

As I was saying, that is a down payment on the child poverty strategy to come. I know that I do not need to urge ambition on my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. They carry in their hearts every day the children who did not eat last night. They know that whether you have dinner this evening should not depend on how many siblings you have.

There is no need to listen to those on the Opposition Benches, who pushed up child poverty by 900,000. Come and walk around Friar Park or Princes End, meet those kids and tell them why someone’s choices, far away here in London, mean they have no tea tonight. It is time they apologised to the children of this country. And there is no point listening to the absent bandwagon johnnies of Reform. If they cared about people on low wages, they would not have voted against increasing statutory sick pay, banning zero-hours contracts or increasing the national minimum wage. As always, it is Labour that stands for working-class families.