Poverty (London)
Sir Sydney Chapman : The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I would not presume to say categorically that she is right but I suspect that she is.
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Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington): I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on securing this debate.
On the monitors that are scattered about the House of Commons, the debate is entitled, "Poverty (London)". However, that notion would seem tautologous to many hon. Members. Fourteen years after becoming a Member of Parliament, colleagues from other parts of the country are still under the illusion that London has all the jobs and prosperity, and could not know of the poverty of other regions. If this debate places on record that London has as much absolute poverty as anywhere else, and more than some areas, it will have been worth while.
I am not as lost in admiration for the Government's anti-poverty strategies as some of my colleagues. That may be because I am from the more disreputable end of the London Labour party. Hon. Members have spoken about rich areas being next to poor ones in their constituencies; in Hackney, we have poor areas next to poor areas. We have been the recipients of every variety of anti-poverty scheme and regeneration programme: neighbourhood renewal, sure start, the new deal, the new deal for communities—an alphabet soup of initiatives. In my office, I have files in which I put the Government press release each time a new allocation of money for a new initiative in Hackney is announced.
I agree that each initiative is wonderful, both in its aims and how it is fashioned. However, we have reached a point where it is time to assess this blizzard of initiatives. In Hackney, I have found that those who obtain funding for such initiatives are often those who are good at obtaining funding, rather than good at delivering programmes on the ground.
When I get a press release about a new initiative that has been given money by the Government, I make a point of going to see what is being done. When the staff in my office phone those involved to say, "Diane Abbott wants to see what you are doing with your new deal for communities money," there is a great deal of nervousness at the other end. When I visit, I may find a brand new computer, a new office and consultants who have been taken on using Government money but there is often a paucity of clients.
Without wanting to take anything away from the voluntary sector or from those running the schemes, there is a paucity of human capital for schemes in areas such as Hackney. We need fewer schemes, more co-ordination between them and more attention to be paid to the basic infrastructure that will deliver clients. In Hackney, we have witnessed the almost total collapse of our youth service. We can spend as much money as we like on schemes to deal with issues relating to young people, education and social exclusion, but if there is no youth service to deliver the clientele, such heavily funded schemes will deal with relatively small groups of young people.
My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North spoke at length about tax credits. As the Member of Parliament for the constituency with the highest number of single parents in the country, I want to emphasise what she said about the working families tax credit and its low take-up in London. The Government are justly proud of that tax credit's effect nationally but, as an inner-London MP, I have found that it has not had the impact on my constituents that I would have liked it to have. I draw attention to my hon. Friend's comment that the take-up rate for single parents in London is half that for single parents nationally.
During the general election, I had cause to contemplate the disparity between what the Government correctly said about the new schemes and the experience of my poorest constituents. There was a mismatch between the bulging files of press releases announcing new Government initiatives in my office and people's perception of what was being delivered. The failure of the tax credit scheme to engage fully with poverty in London accounts for that mismatch.
I would like to raise the impact of asylum seekers, economic migrants and illegal immigrants on the London economy and poverty. Economic migrants have helped to make London a great world city. I use the term advisedly; it is regarded as a dirty word in political debate. My parents were economic migrants. Generations of Irish, Jewish and West Indian economic migrants helped to make London the city that it is. Sadly, the number of asylum seekers has increased because of the closing of avenues to legitimate economic migration. The Government are now examining that.
London boroughs are partially compensated for the services that they have to provide for asylum seekers. However, Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark and other London boroughs with a large number of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are not properly compensated for the effects on delivery of service and on poverty. In the medium and long term, those people have a great deal to contribute to London's economy.
My son goes to school just across the border between Hackney and Islington. He is in year five, in a class of about 30. Only a dozen children in that class were there when he started reception. The turnover is such in many inner-London schools that teachers are teaching a different class by the end of the year. Boroughs and education authorities are not compensated for the strain that that causes the education department. Asylum seekers cannot be considered separately in the fight against poverty in London.
The Government pursued a policy of social inclusion for the population as a whole during their first term, but they pursued a policy of social exclusion for asylum seekers through the vouchers scheme. I am glad that they have abolished that.
There is a link between poverty and education and between poverty and crime. The long-term answer to poverty in London lies partly in raising educational achievement. If one examines educational achievement in London, a disturbing pattern emerges. Every year, certain ethnic minority groups fail to raise their achievement. Many ethnic minority groups in London are narrowing the gap between themselves and white Londoners. Some groups do better than white Londoners, but Afro-Caribbean children figure at the bottom of the league table every year, particularly boys. That is not a new problem; there have been Government reports about Afro-Caribbean educational underachievement since the 1980s.
Andrew Selous : Does the hon. Lady agree that more male role models, particularly in primary schools, would be useful for young boys if there is no such role model in their family?
Ms Abbott : I agree. I do not want to expand on that point because the debate is about poverty reduction. Whenever a picture of a failing school is shown on television or in a newspaper, it will feature a group of black or multi-ethnic children. Strategies for raising educational achievement have not focused sufficiently on black underachievement, particularly that of black boys. I urge the Minister to tell her colleagues that educational achievement in the inner cities cannot be raised without focusing on the underachievement of black boys.
J. K. Galbraith, the American economist, referred to private affluence and public squalor. Nowhere is that paradigm more obvious than in London. Where private affluence and public squalor exist, so does crime. Poverty is not an excuse for crime but some estates in London—a terrible nexus of poverty, deprivation and low aspiration—are a breeding ground for crime. If we want to avoid a proliferation of street crime and an increase in gun-related crime on the streets of London, we must deal with the issues that have been raised this morning.
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