We have just posted this article on Substack. It was co-authored with James Murphy:
A government that treats the protection of vulnerable children as a financial inconvenience has lost sight of what government is for, but that is what the dispute between Hartlepool Council and Steve Reed, who is Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, suggests has happened. It is a window into a system that is failing by design, which is turning blame on those forced to operate within it.
Firstly, let's be clear about cause and effect. Hartlepool has one of the highest numbers of children in care in the country because it is one of the most deprived places in England. Poverty creates demand for care. Instability creates demand for care. Lack of opportunity creates demand for care. None of this is accidental in the case of Hartlepool. It is what we would expect.
So, when a minister suggests that councils should not be “rewarded” for having more children in care, what is really being said is that need itself is a problem to be discouraged. That is not just wrong. It is a profound misunderstanding of the role of the state. Children are not entries on a balance sheet. They are people to whom the state owes a duty of care. That duty does not diminish because the bill is inconvenient.
Secondly, the financial reality needs to be stated plainly. Local authorities cannot create the money they spend. They are dependent on central government for the resources required to meet their obligations.
When those resources fall short, councils are left attempting the impossible task of balancing budgets whilst responding to rising and unavoidable demand. In Hartlepool, that demand includes care placements costing up to £20,000 per week, driven by a national failure to provide sufficient public provision. This is a systemic failure.
And when central government responds by saying funding has increased, or that councils must manage better, it is missing the point. The question is not whether funding has risen in cash terms. The question is whether it is sufficient. Clearly, it is not.
Thirdly, we need to address the fiction that underpins all of this: that there is a fixed pot of money which constrains what government can do. There is not. The UK government has the capacity to ensure that the resources required for social care are made available. The limits it faces are real, but financial affordability is not the binding constraint it is so often claimed to be. What we are seeing, instead, is a political choice to restrict funding and then pass the consequences downwards.
That choice has consequences.
It means councils in deprived areas are left carrying disproportionate burdens.
It means vulnerable children are placed in expensive and often unsuitable provision because the system has not invested in alternatives.
And it means that when failure occurs, blame is redirected onto those with the least power to change outcomes.
That is what is happening here.
So, when Hartlepool's leaders talk about “moral bankruptcy,” they are not engaging in rhetoric. They are identifying something real.
A system that allocates fewer resources to areas with greater need is not neutral. It is unjust. And when ministers dismiss the consequences, whether explicitly or by implication, they reinforce that injustice.
What follows from this is not complicated.
If the state accepts responsibility for protecting children, then it must also accept responsibility for funding that protection. Not partially. Not conditionally. But fully.
That requires central government to do what only it can do: ensure that funding matches need.
It also requires an end to the pretence that local authorities can solve structural problems without structural support. They cannot. And continuing to suggest otherwise is not just misleading. It is a way of avoiding responsibility.
There is, in the end, a simple test of any government.
Does it ensure that the most vulnerable are protected?
If the answer is no, then no amount of rhetoric about efficiency, fairness, or redistribution can disguise the failure. Because the real moral bankruptcy here is not in local government. It is in a political system that knows what is required, has the capacity to deliver it, and chooses not to.
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Arguably, governments have only ever been interested in the population for what they can provide to the monied classes and their interest in the welfare of their less well-off citizens has only extended to staving off revolt or maintaining the flow of money upward or providing cannon-fodder for wars they choose to engage in. The post-war government was a notable exception but it remains one. The difference between governments of old and more recent ones is that the veneer of care has become see-through.
Disruption is clearly on the way and the valuable work you are doing is helping to lay the foundations of a society that could supersede this bankrupt tradition off Western governing.
To be fair, for a few decades in the middle of the 20th Century we did have governments that provided for the care of those in need. Over the last half century, though, we have unfortunately but deliberately reverted to the plutocratic approach to government and economics that has been the norm for most of history.
History sort of repeating itself.
Poplar in post First World War London was a poor borough and revenues from the rates didn’t match those of rich boroughs who had fewer poor. Each Borough had to contribute to the London County Council. The Labour councillors withheld the contribution and spent the money on better pay for its employees and the workhouse ( which often took in people from other parts of London )
They were sent to prison for it but got to change the system. It is a story little remembered now but a good example of the politics of care.
story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poplar_Rates_Rebellion
Thanks
My dream is for all the Councils one day to go down to Westminster armed with Funding the Future narratives and sticking it to the Treasury and whatever excuse we have government at the time and calling bullshit. Hell, even campaigning against central Government is on the cards for me.
‘Kick out the debt’ or something like that.
Dusting off my PhD in the Bleeding Obvious
If we were to spend money that reduced the need to take children into care AND provide the best possible care for those where it was appropriate, firstly might we save money in the long term and secondly save no end of human suffering.
Moral bankruptcy comes nowhere close to this Government
Moral Defective perhaps?
And if you don’t spend the money, these are the children who are likely to fall out of school and likely end up in and out of prison. It is much cheaper as Sure Start proved to spend more in the early years to avoid such situations. And that’s just the economic argument, not the social justice one.
So much to agree with.
Let’s not forget that a lot of the money spent on care goes to the private sector. Children in care have been commodified, and no doubt are at further risk of exploitation beyond that of private sector greed. This is almost Victorian levels of neglect and indifference, and we as a country will be paying for the damage done to these children for the rest of their lives, in one way or another.
Much to agree with.
Steve Reed is a prime example of Labour’s current economic illiteracy, political incompetence and moral bankruptcy.
This is a man who runs around in his own version of a MAGA hat.
He represents everything that is despicable about this heartless, cruel, stupid government.
They will fall, I hope, peacefully.
Reed is dire.
And he hates everything to do with the environment, I hear.
Hartlepool has some of the lowest house prices in the UK. As a result it receives many homeless families relocated from Councils elsewhere in the Country, not just the South. Families can arrive at night, by taxi with few positions, often leaving behind local support structures provided by friends and other family members. Need increases and as far as I’m aware the Council receives no additional funding.
The Poplar problem of a Century back that, Ian Stevenson identifies, repeated.
It really makes no financial sense (even if we regard gilt sales as the funding source) to outsource housing, and childcare among so many other things when the cost of funding needed to build houses and facilities for children in need is so much lower for the state, than for the private sector. Plus there’s no dividends to meet. A high price to pay in both human and financial terms to expense the cost of providing such services as an income item rather than recognising it on the national balance sheet.
But, of course, gilts do not need to fund this investment. That would be a choice. That makes your case even more apparent.