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Social Exclusion Unit

: Thank you, Mr. Bercow, for presiding over this debate. This is the first occasion on which I have had the privilege and honour of serving under your chairmanship, and I wish you good luck in your role. I am delighted to have secured this debate on social exclusion and the social exclusion unit. I was fortunate to see in the Box one night a letter from the Government Chief Whip asking Ministers whether they would like to put forward subjects for debate. I thought that no subject was more important than the work of the SEU. For the benefit of Opposition parties and the whole House, I want to set out on the record the work of the SEU and our goals. The obvious place to start is to define social exclusion and why we are involved in that. Social exclusion and its abolition are at the heart of the Government's philosophy and programme. Delivering social justice through sustainable communities throughout the United Kingdom is one of the Government's central goals. What is social exclusion? We all know what it means, but we have gone further and have defined it. Social exclusion is life below the minimum acceptable level in a decent society. It is when people do not have the things that most of us take for granted—for example, a decent home, a job and the ability to read and write. These are simple things perhaps, but hugely important. Social inclusion means that opportunity is open to all and that no one lives below an acceptable level. We intend to maintain and increase our current successful policies for tackling poverty and social exclusion. We have set ourselves a hard task, but we have good reasons for making it more difficult. The number of people who are defined as being socially excluded—I could go into measurements if hon. Members want to tease them out—is based on a multi-deprivation index. The figures are interesting and show that in 1991, 8.9 per cent. of the adult population was defined as being socially excluded. By 1996, that had fallen to 5.7 per cent., which was good steady progress in the early 1990s. I acknowledge that and we all welcome it. By 2003, the percentage had fallen to 3.7 per cent. We have made steady progress, but the statistics show that the problem becomes more difficult the lower the percentage is. That is the point that we are at, which is why I want to address the future priorities of the SEU. I have three messages today. First, the abolition of social exclusion is of fundamental importance to this Government. The cost of failure to individuals, families, neighbours, the community, the economy as a whole and, indeed, our status as a civilised society demand that we attack social exclusion. Secondly, as my figures illustrate, real progress has been made as a result of our actions. We have changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, some of them being the most vulnerable in our society. Thirdly, there is a much more to do. Despite the progress to which I referred, many, many people still suffer severe and enduring problems, and I shall repeat some of them: poor housing, low basic skills, mental health and discrimination based on where they live. They are people who are not in a job or training but have been living for three, four, five or more years on incomes and in circumstances that most of us would find difficult for four or five weeks. Some of them live on what are called run-down estates—unfortunately, we all know what I mean by that. Some live in deprived inner-city areas. However, it is by no means the case that socially excluded people live exclusively in those areas. Exclusion can also exist in more prosperous neighbourhoods. It can and does exist in rural areas, where isolation can be extremely punishing. It affects our cities, our rural areas and all our regions. Addressing the needs of these people is an even greater challenge than making the progress that we have made so far. We need to up the ante. We need to re-examine and refocus as we move forward. The SEU has made the first steps with important work in looking at how to improve service delivery to the most disadvantaged. Part of our goal is to say that just because somebody lives in a state of social exclusion does not mean that they are not entitled to high-quality public service delivery. Indeed, the report that I launched last week, ““Improving Services, Improving Lives””, links the issue of public service reform and delivery to the issue of social exclusion. We must find ways, such as those contained in the report, to come up with sustainable answers to eliminate persistent poverty once and for all. Let me emphasise more why this issue matters. I hope that what I am going to say does not sound too philosophical. In Westminster Hall on 30 June, I instigated a debate on the neighbourhood renewal strategy. There were some thoughtful speeches and I was grateful to Opposition spokespersons and to Back Benchers for taking the debate in the spirit in which it was intended. I wanted it to be an honest exchange in which I admitted some of the Government's failures and in which the Opposition and other Members could propose solutions and challenge some ideas. I want to do the same today. However, what I will not do—I am not implying that hon. Members would want me to do this; I know that you would not, Mr. Bercow, and neither would the hon. Members who are present—is say that the issue does not matter. It does matter and it is a huge priority. Our goal is to build a society that is based on social justice and opportunity for all. The very first speech that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made as Prime Minister in 1997 was during a visit to one of our deprived estates, when he said that he wanted to tackle"““the dead weight of low expectations, the crushing belief that things cannot get better.””" Social exclusion matters now as much as it did then. It matters, for example, to the one in 10 children who grow up experiencing poverty. Without help, they are likely to stay poor and disadvantaged. Social exclusion matters to the taxpayer. It is estimated that £100 million a year would be saved if just one in 10 young offenders received effective help early enough. It matters to economic prosperity. Our estimate is that £31 billion a year is lost due to early withdrawal from the labour market—much of it as a result of inactivity and age discrimination. Social exclusion matters to the whole of society. It matters to the 7 per cent. of pensioners who still live in severe isolation. About 12,000 a year will die alone and, unfortunately, unnoticed. That is 32 people every day. It matters to all of us who experience a lack of social cohesion, increased crime, fear and a lack of respect. We will benefit from success in this area. I will review the progress that has been made. I have tried to paint a picture that shows that things are getting better, to coin a phrase, but there is much more to do. When the Government came to power, the situation looked dire. The sick, the jobless and the uneducated looked to be on a one-way road to poverty and destitution. It was a vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation. Public services were worn down and often impotent in some of those areas, and it seemed that things would become worse. However, there have been some huge achievements. There are now 2 million more people in work, 700,000 fewer children in poverty—as defined by independent measurements, not by us—700,000 fewer pensioners in poverty and improvements in educational attainment at all key stages. There are now 1 million fewer non-decent social homes. In ordinary language, that means council houses fit to live in, not damp and awful as many of them were, and as some still are. There have been real achievements and one of the flagships of that agenda is the Sure Start programme, from which 400,000 children and families in the most disadvantaged areas are benefiting. We have changed the lives of millions of people and I am proud of that achievement. There are some really significant battles where we have attacked some of the underpinning problems of our society. There are now 400,000 fewer children living in a workless household. What an achievement! I am sure that hon. Members will agree with the following point, and join me in trying to find policies that address it. If a child grows up in a household where no family member works, the routine of life—getting up in the morning, self-esteem, self-discipline and respect for oneself and others—is often not there because of the damage that can be done. Growing up poor and disadvantaged is extremely damaging for children and their chances in life. We are now well on the way to ensuring that they do not carry the burden of their parents' problems through their own lives for every job that is created. Attacking social exclusion is a win-win activity. Children and families win and the taxpayer wins because it is far cheaper to prevent exclusion as opposed to helping people out of it. As I have acknowledged, the war has not been won yet. Persistent poverty is experienced by 7 per cent. of working age people. More than 3 million children still live in non-decent homes, more than 10 million working-age adults have low skills and qualifications and about 2 million pensioners still live in relative poverty. We are attempting to tackle the final remains of a pernicious legacy that we inherited. I do not want to say that the problems were all the fault of the previous Government—far from it. There were serious structural post-war problems that all Governments inherited, and those problems had taken decades to create; we now have to turn them around. Why is social exclusion in those remaining areas so entrenched, intractable and difficult to tackle? We all know that it does not follow departmental remits. It does not fit into nice organised boxes for politicians and civil servants to put into nice rows and deal with one bit at a time. It affects all areas of life: health, welfare, employment, education, crime and so on. We have to have a cross-cutting approach to it. Social exclusion results from a set of problems that are constantly changing. We are not dealing with a fixed target. No sooner do we tackle one problem, than a new one arises caused by new pressures. We need to stay on top of that situation to understand what we are trying to tackle. Despite that, I do not want to lose sight of the progress that we have made so far. The SEU was established in 1997, in large part by the Minister of Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Miliband). It was originally part of a unit at No. 10. It was then moved to the Cabinet Office, and arrived at its rightful home when it came to what was then the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department dealing with communities and the agencies on the ground where this problem can be tackled. It was set up in response to some of the most ingrained and intractable social issues that faced us. I have described what some of them are. They are issues such as teenage pregnancy and people sleeping rough. That is what led to the creation of the SEU. That goal—that focus—still underpins the unit's objectives. Its task was set out in the 2004 spending review, when the Government asked the unit to tackle"““deprivation by working with departments to narrow the gap in outcomes between deprived groups and the national average.””" A beautiful new Labour piece of prose.