Westminster Life: A helping hand for children in need
This week I was proud to join volunteers from Peterborough Foodbank Collective for their winter drive at Tesco in Werrington, writes city MP Andrew Pakes.
So much of what is positive about Peterborough comes from its volunteers. And the work of Peterborough Foodbank helping families in crisis would not be possible without the churches, businesses and volunteers that step up each week. This is a busy time for families, preparing for the Christmas break, and it always makes me think of those struggling to get by, especially those with children.
Thank you to everyone who donates and helps. This isn’t just the Christian spirit but the value of all our major religions in the city. Thank you to councillors John Fox and Sarah Hillier for joining me and volunteers at Tesco as well.
One of the top issues the foodbank always raises with me is child poverty. Nearly half of children living in the Peterborough constituency are growing up in poverty. More than half of those children in poverty are in working households with parents in low-paid, insecure jobs. As someone who relied on school meals, I will always champion free school meals and am proud of the work this government is doing to extend them. Nearly 16,000 more pupils will be eligible for free school meals next year when Labour changes the rules.
I was also pleased that the Government announced in the Budget last week that we will be scrapping the two-child limit. This will lift around 9,000 children in our city out of poverty, part of a further 450,000 children who will be lifted out of poverty across the whole country. Cutting child poverty is the right thing to do because growing up in poverty scars children’s life chances. This isn’t a simple divide between working people and people claiming benefits; more than half of children affected by the two-child limit have at least one parent in work.
A child growing up in poverty is less likely to work as an adult and on average will earn 25 per cent less by age 30. The goal of any government should be to ensure that opportunities are there for the next generation, and this goes to my other passion, apprenticeships. The number of people starting an apprenticeship in Peterborough plummeted under the last Government. I am determined to reverse that. If we want to attract better jobs in the city, we need better skills.
The cost of this decision is fully funded through a number of reforms: tackling fraud and error in the welfare system, reforming gambling taxes and cracking down on tax avoidance. Furthermore, we are changing the Motability scheme to remove luxury cars, saving the taxpayer more than £1bn over five years, and will cut down on fraud by reinstating face-to-face assessments at the Job Centre.
There is no ducking the challenges facing the country after a decade of mismanagement, a failed Brexit deal, COVID and Liz Truss’ chaotic Budget, but whatever the answers, children should not be paying the price.