This Budget 'we will see if this Government cares about Liverpool or not'
4 min read
Liverpool is the fourth most deprived local authority areas in the UK, writes Luciana Berger MP, and it is time to give it the investment it needs in next week's budget.
Liverpool is a vibrant, creative, resilient city. Stroll around the Museum of Liverpool and you can see the city’s dynamic past. Meet some of Liverpool’s young entrepreneurs, designers, writers, actors, poets, chefs and musicians, and you get a feel for our future. Look at the new and re-imagined buildings around the docks and city centre, and you know you are in a globally important city.
Liverpool’s journey from global trading port and industrial powerhouse, to city of cutting-edge culture, digital start-ups and creative industries, has not been without pain. The rapid de-industrialisation of the 1980s and 1990s created a legacy of mass unemployment. Despite important landmarks such as becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2008, and the ongoing work of the city council to build homes, keep children’s centres open, and to attract investment and jobs, there is widespread poverty.
Poverty in the city and in my constituency of Wavertree saps the ambitions of the young and mars the autumn days of the elderly. It holds communities down, like a yoke on their shoulders. It creates a thousand-and-one human tragedies. A local couple wrote to me recently to share a ‘horrible’ scene they had witnessed. Two boys, no more than 10 years old, out at 11pm, were going through bins in the neighbourhood looking for anything of value. They’d found an old hoody, and some half-used shower gel and shampoo. The couple wrote ‘this is not the Liverpool we know and has left us angry, outraged and upset.’
Those constituents have the right to be angry. We all should be. Poverty blights the life chances of thousands. In 2014, the mortality rate for babies under one was six in every thousand births. But in Liverpool, the figure was nine in every thousand – 50% higher. In the Chilterns, the death rate from diseases like cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease and diabetes is 138 per 100,000. In Liverpool it is 326 per 100,000. Even within the city itself, there is a huge disparity between the most and the least deprived neighbourhoods. In the least deprived parts of Liverpool male life expectancy is 10.1 years higher than in the most deprived areas.
Liverpool is the fourth most deprived local authority areas in the UK. Since 2012, over 108,000 people have been given emergency food aid by the city’s foodbanks, including over 6,700 children. This year, the council has had to make 13,000 crisis payments to help with emergency food, fuel and clothing, up 6% since last year. But the council has limited resources, and some slip from poverty into destitution, sleeping rough, not eating properly, unable to afford heat and light, and without the means to buy clothes, toiletries or other essentials.
The situation has been made worse by cuts to local services and social security. 3,400 households with long-term sick or disabled residents were hammered by the bedroom tax. Families with children were hit by the freeze in child benefit. Single private tenants are losing a chunk of their housing benefit. Between 2010 and 2020 Liverpool City Council, allowing for inflation, will have lost 64% of its budget. As need has increased, the council’s ability to meet those needs has been reduced. Liverpool council has been disproportionately hit by Government cuts. And the formula to allocate Liverpool budget, which used to take into account its circumstances, has been changed. These cuts represent a huge and significant reduction in the council’s capability to provide decent services and help the poorest people. And to rub salt into the wounds, universal credit is coming this autumn, promising all of the chaos and unfairness that it has brought to other parts of the country.
Liverpool doesn’t want charity. We want jobs, homes, investment in new skills, decent services, and opportunities. We’ve shown time and time again we can bounce back from adversity. But we can’t do it without investment in our brilliant communities and people. Next week, the Chancellor will deliver a budget, and we will see if this government cares about Liverpool or not.
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