June 17, 2010
MP REVEALS CUTS TO SERVICES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE
JOHN Healey, Labour MP for Wentworth and Dearne, has revealed details of cuts to be made to local services for children and young people in Rotherham and Barnsley by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government.
In response to a letter from Labour’s shadow children and education secretary Ed Balls, the coalition government admitted that £311m will be cut this year from education and children’s services provided locally but funded by the government.
Mr Healey has calculated that £1.7m of the cuts will be imposed on Barnsley Council and £2m on Rotherham – almost a third of the budgets for these services for the rest of the year.
He said: “It’s now clear that the Conservatives and Lib Dems believe that the first candidate for cuts should be services for children and young people in areas like ours.
“Hundreds of thousands from school transport, young activities and local youth clubs, programmes to cut teenage pregnancy and funding to help improve standards im under-performing schools.
“But these are short-sighted cuts. It will save nothing in the long run if teenage pregnancy rises, young people who have fewer things to do after school get drawn into crime or anti-social behaviour, and more vulnerable young people are left without the intensive support that could turn their life around.”
Ed Balls MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Children and Education, said:
“The Tories and Lib Dems said there would be no cuts to frontline services, but already that promise has been broken. And while they’re cutting funding for important services in areas like Rotherham and Barnsley they’re planning to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a free market education experiment which saw school standards fall when it was tried elsewhere.
“The new government hopes they can pass the buck by cutting the budgets for local councils without specifying where these cuts will fall on support for schools, for vulnerable young people and children – letting councils take the rap.
“The public understands the need to reduce the deficit – but they want it done fairly, and openly and without risking economic recovery. What the Tories and Liberals are doing is none of those things.”
NOTES
1. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition have confirmed that £311m in cuts will be made to grants given by the Department for Education to local councils to fund support for children, families and schools. This represents a cut of 24% in those grants.
2. The full list of grants to local authorities by department can be found here; http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/xls/1536588.xls