Spending Review 2025

Lord Bishop of Chichester Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I know that he is a passionate and long-standing campaigner for the cultural sector. As outlined in the spending review yesterday, the DCMS will invest more than £2.9 billion across its entire capital programme to safeguard and modernise cultural and heritage institutions in towns and cities. I hear very much what he says about the wider cultural sector and I ask him to wait for the creative industries industrial strategy sector plan, which will be coming out shortly and which I hope will address many of the issues that he is talking about. As he says, we absolutely recognise the enormous value, both cultural and economic, that the creative industries offer. We will be setting that out in the sector plan for the industrial strategy in the coming weeks and I hope that we can discuss it at that point.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, there are things to welcome in the spending review: I would point in particular to His Majesty’s Government’s steps to support the most vulnerable, tackle regional inequality, increase investment in schools, social housing and healthcare and maintain some level of support for the arts and culture, recognising their importance. More support for libraries, which act as community hubs, is welcome. I hope that the benefit of churches, which are also public buildings that contribute to community life, especially in rural areas, will also be recognised and that DCMS will do this by resolving the long-term uncertainty about the future of the listed places of worship grant scheme beyond 2026 and the capping of grants, effectively, by VAT liability.

May I press, however, the Minister on two other matters that I think are important? The first is children—our nation’s future—and investment in them. While on the surface, the increased access to free school meals is welcome, could the Minister reassure the House that the Government have not uncoupled free school meal eligibility from the pupil premium? Secondly, given the impact of the cost of living on families and the growth in child and rural poverty, which I do see even in the diocese of Chichester, especially in our coastal towns, can the Minister give assurances that the much-delayed child poverty strategy will now be published as a matter of urgency, with further consideration being given to ending the two-child limit and reviewing other policies which so adversely impact the well-being and flourishing of our nation’s young people and their families?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate set out a number of issues that he agreed with, and obviously I am grateful for his agreement with those. He talked about child poverty and he knows that—as the Prime Minister described it—our free school meals policy is a down payment on the work that we want to do to tackle and end child poverty. I was lucky enough to be part of a previous Government—I worked for a previous Chancellor—who reduced child poverty by 1 million children, so there should be no doubt about my personal commitment to reducing child poverty. I had to sit by, as did many of my noble friends, and watch the previous Government increase child poverty by 700,000. That is not something that any of us wanted to see; so he should be reassured that we absolutely prioritise this issue.

The right reverend Prelate asked about free school meals. The children of every family on universal credit will be eligible for those free school meals. He described the child poverty strategy as much delayed. I am not sure I would accept that. I think we have set out when it will come—alongside the Budget this autumn—and it will consider all the issues and representations that are put to it. There is quite a lot in this spending review to tackle child poverty. As I say, that is a down payment and I very much hope we will be able to do more.