Jobs and Business

Debate between Rushanara Ali and Kerry McCarthy

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

The Government have had three years in office, and the Queen’s Speech offers us a timely opportunity to assess their record. As we have heard, what the Government have achieved and not achieved is striking. They have delivered rising unemployment, 1 million young people out of work, prices that are rising faster than wages, and a chronic drop in living standards for British families.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies this week forecast that the Government’s reforms since 2010 will lead to one in four children living in poverty by 2020. That is scandalous in the 21st century. The Child Poverty Act 2010 set a goal to set a target to reduce child poverty to one in 10, which is still not acceptable. It is therefore an absolute scandal that the Government are doing nothing to address that important problem.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend was not in Parliament before 2010, but I am sure she kept a close eye on child poverty in her work at the time. Does she share my frustration? Many of those now on the Government Benches signed up to the child poverty pledge and said that the abolition of child poverty was their No. 1 priority. I was sceptical of that at the time. The moment the Conservatives got into government, they spoke of revising the targets and said they did not want to assess child poverty in this way or that and so on. I am not allowed to say that people were misled, Madam Deputy Speaker, but does my hon. Friend believe that people will feel let down by the fact that Conservatives were vociferous in their support for the pledge and then reneged on it?

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. That episode highlights the fact that the Conservative party was desperate to decontaminate its brand as the nasty party. As soon as it returned to power, all the bad old Tory habits crept in—and they are now flooding in. There is no pretence and no attempt to rebrand the party. The Conservative party stands up for millionaires and not for ordinary people or for children who live in poverty in constituencies such as mine—more than 50% of children in my constituency live in poverty, and that will get worse by 2020.