Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Despite some claims to the contrary, this policy has been researched and worked on for many years, including two two-year pilots. The evidence shows not only that children get a health benefit from eating more healthy meals and a social benefit as they sit together to share those meals but that the policy is having dramatic effects on closing the attainment gap, which is still too wide in far too many of our schools across the country.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T4. Last week, I met a disabled Sheffield grandmother who helped her two daughters to stay in work by looking after her grandchildren a few times a week, but two of her three bedrooms were deemed surplus by the Government. In tears, she told me that she could not make ends meet because of the bedroom tax. The Deputy Prime Minister is trying to distance himself from the Conservatives, but why not on the bedroom tax, which was only voted through with his support?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman and I have debated in the past, the fact that many families, including in Sheffield, live in overcrowded properties where there is no space for young children to do their homework, and not enough space for people to live in decent conditions, is a fundamental problem. Overcrowding is a real issue, yet we have many other places where people live in social rented accommodation with rooms that they do not need. In some way—I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to put his head in the sand like the rest of his party and does not want to deal with any of these difficult issues—we need to make sense of that, and that is what we are trying to do.