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Chris Grayling MP: We must end the extreme deprivation of Britain's cities

Chris Grayling MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions.

The contrasts in British city life have seldom been so stark.

Cities today have social divisions as wide as has been seen in Britain for generations – in many respects since Victorian times. Areas of the same City where almost every child lives in poverty, while nearby virtually none do. A life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor that is as wide as it has been since the nineteenth century.

Within our Cities we have local areas of extreme deprivation and social alienation from which few people escape. It’s as if there are glass walls around them – a parallel culture existing alongside all of us in our daily lives.  Where the violent and controversial world of the films Adulthood and Kidulthood come to life.

It’s a world where generations do not work.  Where children are falling behind before they even start school, and struggle through their education underachieving and falling further behind still.   Where often the gang culture on the streets offers a kind of stability and support that family life could never offer.  And where educational failure is followed by worklessness and all too often crime, antisocial behaviour, welfare dependency and often mental health problems.

Chris Grayling MP: A new kind of welfare state

Chris Grayling MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and 'Shadow Minister' for Liverpool, explains what a Conservative government would do in order to tackle welfare dependency.

A few weeks ago I was walking through Toxteth with a local youth worker. As we walked down one street I asked her how many people in the street had a job. She paused for a moment and did a brief mental count. Three, she said.

That street is less than a mile from Liverpool City Centre, site of the development of one of Britain’s biggest new shopping centres, the new Echo Arena, a planned cruise ship terminal, new hotels and plans by Peel Holdings to turn part of the old docks area into a Canary Wharf style development.

It just makes no sense at all. People trapped on benefits – a dependency culture – such a short distance from an abundance of new opportunity. It has to change.

Britain has nearly five million people on out of work benefits. We have proportionately more children being brought up in poverty than any other country in Europe. We have a cycle of dependency and underachievement that is spreading from generation to generation. We are paying a huge human and financial cost.

It’s against that background that we set out, in January, the outline of our plans for the most radical reform to our welfare state for half a century and more.