Rebecca Long Bailey

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge) for her impassioned speech, which I very much associate myself with. Salford is the 18th most deprived authority in England, and that deprivation is juxtaposed against immense growth: gleaming tower blocks, the highest productivity in Greater Manchester and 11,000 businesses—an 85% increase since 2010. So why is the growth that we have created not benefiting everyone? The Government should ask themselves that question. Although many of the strategies the Government have outlined so far—from housing through to our employment rights programme and the neighbourhood plan—are all very welcome, the Government can take immediate measures now, while they are waiting to develop their anti-poverty strategy, to help to alleviate the suffering that many families in my constituency face. First, it is welcome that the Government have suggested they will look again at the cut to the winter fuel allowance, but the detail must be fleshed out urgently to avoid the anxiety that many pensioners face in my constituency. On child poverty, only this week a report by Loughborough University showed that at least a quarter of children are in poverty in two thirds of areas across the UK. Experts found an extremely high correlation between child poverty and the two-child benefit limit. It is clear that the Government’s priority must be to scrap the two-child benefit cap and, ultimately, lift 470,000 children out of poverty overnight. Thirdly, on disability poverty, although it is welcome to have programmes to assist people into work where it is possible, cutting people’s support is not the way to incentivise that. It will push 250,000 people into poverty, and I urge the Government to rethink their proposals.