My hon. Friend is quite right and that is true in many urban conurbations, such as Manchester and London, for example.
Let us also consider the need for children’s services. Levels of child poverty, and thus the demand for services, vary hugely between authorities. In Hartlepool, 29% of children are in poverty. In Newcastle, the figure is 27%, as it is in Liverpool. That is 91,000 children. I could not resist looking at that often mentioned authority, Wokingham, where the level of child poverty is 7%. Which area has the most need for services, yet which is benefiting most and is likely to benefit more from this Government’s plans?
Such high levels of child poverty mean a higher demand for children’s services. In Liverpool, for example, 77% of the children in poverty are in single-parent families, meaning there is an even greater need for child care and support for families to help parents go to work, as well as for other support. Children in those areas need better service, not worse, and they need more help. There is no point in the Deputy Prime Minister’s banging on about the need to address inequalities in education unless the Government recognise that to make a real difference those inequalities must be tackled before children get to school.
So, we have places such as Middlesbrough—the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) is shaking his head, but anyone in education knows that to make a real difference to educational attainment we need to tackle the inequalities before the children reach the age of five. By the time they get to school, those inequalities are entrenched and, if he does not think that that is true, I suggest he asks some teachers.
Middlesbrough is the ninth most deprived local authority in England and has seven times as many children receiving free school meals as Wokingham does. It clearly needs greater investment in children’s services. Poverty also drives the number of children being taken into care. We spoke earlier in the passage of the Bill about the huge increase in the number of referrals and children taken into care following the case of baby Peter, but the differences between authorities are stark. There was a 10% increase nationally in safeguarding referrals in the period around 2009-10, but in Liverpool the increase was 60%. Those are the differences that we are dealing with. The same applies to the numbers of looked-after children—children for whom the authority has a legal obligation to be the corporate parent and to provide. It cannot cut those services, it cannot trim them and it cannot decide how great the demand is.