The news that all of the County Councils in the UK are preparing to cut a further £1bn from their combined budgets and that most of this will come out from youth and early years services is clearly a deep and terrible threat and needs to be addressed before they set their budgets, a course that will be happening in the next few weeks. The impact of such cuts will have a knock on effect in many other areas of public service and will impact extensively on vulnerable families in our society. There needs to be a response from the Government to address this budgetary gap. The Government regulary criticises public services for holding onto sums of money in their budgets for the future. We know the Government does this too. The reality is that investing in children and young people means the future state of the nation will be in a better place than if we ignore these needs. Nadhim Zahawi is the Minister responsible for young children and for him to find an additional £1bn is not going to be hard work, given the amount the Government is currently promising to spend on our departure from the EU through the employment of customs officers etc. Indeed it was him who took nearly £5,000 of public money in 2012 to pay for the heating of his horses stables so he is well capable of finding ways of securing funds. He just needs to turn these techniques onto young people across our nation!