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Ministers have announced a £500mn scheme to help disadvantaged children that apes one of the most popular policies of the Tony Blair government.
Sir Keir Starmer’s government is seeking to get back on the front foot after a damaging fortnight — while a new poll on Sunday showed the Labour party is on track to be trounced by Reform UK at the next election.
The government said it would roll out hundreds of “Best Start” family hubs offering parenting support and youth services across every local authority in England.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the programme would “give a lifeline” to half a million children in some of the most disadvantaged areas in the country.
The government plans to expand the network of centres to more than 1,000 by 2028, offering services ranging from birth registration and midwifery support to youth clubs and debt advice.
The idea of a family hub was at the core of New Labour’s “Sure Start” centres that were set up in the early 2000s. Many of those were closed after 2010 when the Conservative-led coalition failed to ringfence them as it sought widespread cuts to public spending.
But last year Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government introduced 400 “family hubs” offering similar services across 75 local authorities.
On Sunday, Laura Trott, shadow education secretary, said Labour’s “Best Start” announcement “brings little clarity on what’s genuinely new and what simply rebrands existing services”.
Dan Paskins, executive director of policy at Save The Children, said the charity was “pleased to see the UK government making it easier for families to get the help they need”.
The past fortnight has seen Starmer forced to gut his £5bn welfare reforms, face down aborted backbench rebellion, and re-back chancellor Rachel Reeves after concerns about her future sparked a wobble in the bond markets.
Kemi Badenoch, Conservative leader, will seek to take advantage of Labour’s turmoil this week by setting out her own approach to the UK’s rising welfare bill. Badenoch will announce that foreigners should be restricted from claiming key disability benefits, including personal independence payments.
Separately, shadow chancellor Mel Stride has written to the Office for Budget Responsibility demanding an update to fiscal forecasts in the wake of the welfare U-turn, which will cost the government an estimate £5bn in lost revenue. Starmer had already watered down plans to strip winter fuel payments from most pensioners, which will cost another £1.25bn.
“The public, Parliament and markets deserve clarity and transparency about the impact of recent events on the nation’s finances and the government’s fiscal strategy,” he wrote.
However, both Labour and the Conservatives are floundering in the opinion polls behind Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party. A new poll of more than 10,000 people on Sunday by More In Common showed that Reform would win 290 seats if there was an election immediately, making it the largest party in a hung parliament.
According to the “MRP” mass poll Labour would crash from 411 seats in last year’s general election to just 126 MPs. The Conservatives would sink further from 121 to 81 MPs.
At present Reform only has four MPs, after James McCormack on Saturday asked for the whip to be suspended following allegations around state loans he took out during the Covid pandemic.
Another poll at the weekend found that 72 per cent of voters believed the Labour government is at least as chaotic as previous Conservative administrations, despite Starmer’s promise to “end the chaos”.
Starmer is expected to sign a deal on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France at an Anglo-French summit in London that will see France will accept the return of Channel migrants, in return for Britain accepting “legitimate” asylum seekers from that country.