Disadvantaged Communities

Jayne Kirkham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with your Chair, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge) on securing the debate. Poverty has affected the work that I have done over the last decade, and I probably would not be in the House today had it not been for some of the things I have witnessed over the past 10 to 15 years.

While I was researching for the debate, I found a report on child poverty dating back over a decade. The foreword reads:

“In the UK today, millions of children”

and

“adults are daily experiencing the crushing disadvantage that poverty brings. They are living at the margins of society, unable to achieve their aspirations and trapped”.

The report goes on to say that that is unacceptable in “today’s” society—obviously, it was written over a decade ago. It is not usual for me to quote the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), but those comments are particularly pertinent. In 2013, when the report was written, poverty in Nuneaton stood at around 18%, but it is now 33%—almost double—and in some communities it is over 50%.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the question of barriers to opportunity, the potential for growth in some areas is high, but access to funding and education—particularly further education—can be difficult, as it is in Cornwall. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as a result, the people who live in an area cannot always take advantage of that growth potential?

[Jodie Gosling]

I thank my hon. Friend for her valuable intervention, and I absolutely agree. One challenge is under-skilled children who have left school without the right qualifications. As a result, they experience a lag in getting qualified and being able to access opportunities.

In one of my wards, Chilvers Coton, over 65% of households—two out of three—live with one marker of deprivation. The majority of them are defined as living in deep poverty and destitution, and they are not able to meet basic needs. That is not my understanding of the word “eradicate”, and it appears that the strategy that was laid out over a decade ago actually perpetuated significant poverty, rather than eradicating it.

Poverty eats into every corner of people’s lives. It drains people and grinds them down, and it makes every aspect of life harder. The physiological and psychological impacts are profound. As poverty has soared, we have seen healthy life expectancy fall by over four years, with cardiopulmonary conditions, diabetes and preventable death statistics among those affected by poverty well above the national average. Poverty strips people of their dignity and their power to shape their lives and livelihoods and those of the people they love.

Living in poverty is a full-time job, as people juggle making sure that they can pay their debts, get their kids out, do the daily shopping—which involves having to look for the yellow stickers in the aisles—and deal with the chaos of managing arrears, evictions and sleepless nights, as they worry about how to just get through tomorrow. Despite that, the vast majority of Nuneaton households in poverty still work, with over 60% of affected households having at least one working adult.

Poverty is also wasteful. It is expensive; it costs more to live in poverty because people cannot access cheaper supermarkets and might not have the data to order online—