Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2016-02-08
Topic: Government Operations
Jon Hedley Trickett (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for his courtesy in providing me with an advance copy of his statement. We welcome some of the announcements made this afternoon. It is clearly a good thing that more money is being provided to rural communities that are particularly hard hit, but will he explain exactly where the additional funding is coming from? It sounded like a sum of just over £200 million, but that obviously represents a massive shortfall in relation to the billions required to meet all the spending pressures. Nevertheless, where is this additional funding coming from? Has he had to cut other areas of local government expenditure to deliver the additional money? Above all, will he confirm that all this is purely transitional? It reminds me of someone speeding along the road into a disaster who then says he will take his foot off the accelerator without changing the destination. Local government is facing a disaster The Secretary of State’s provisional announcement the other week seems to have added some unusual recruits to Labour’s Anti Austerity Alliance. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman knows the identity of the anonymous Tory MP who told "ConservativeHome", which is essential reading—[Interruption.] It certainly is true. This anonymous MP said: "Councillors have done the right thing, and done it well, in saving vast amounts of money in the last few years. But now all the fat is gone, all the meat is gone and government wants to gnaw on the bone. I’m not having my local swimming pools and libraries closed down"— and I say hear, hear to that! Is the Secretary of State really gnawing on the bone of local government, as many people feel—in his party and elsewhere? Does he acknowledge that, according to the Tory-controlled Local Government Association, even if every council in England increased council tax by the maximum allowed by the Government for the next four years and even if every penny of that increase went only on supporting the elderly, that would still leave a funding gap of over £1 billion on social care alone Only last March, the then Minister responsible for social care promised that the Government would end the infamous 15-minute flying visits. Is that still the Secretary of State’s policy, and if so, how will it be funded, given the £1 billion shortfall? When does the right hon. Gentleman envisage the Government achieving this target On how the Government distribute funding between councils, how does the right hon. Gentleman explain the manifest injustice that the most deprived areas have been cut the most? As things stand, the 10 most deprived areas in England will be 18 times worse off than the 10 least deprived areas. How will he explain to hard-pressed families that their services will be cut at the same time as he is engineering council tax increases—up to about 20%, we estimate, by the end of this Parliament It is clear from the Secretary of State’s statement that he has studied carefully the representations made by the Rural Services Network, as well as by some anonymous Tory MPs. Perhaps some of them were not anonymous. The Rural Services Network is also Conservative-led, and it said that his provisional statement would "make life for hundreds of thousands of people across all areas of rural England totally insufferable." That is what the Tory rural network said. Can the right hon. Gentleman guarantee that the relatively small increase in the rural services delivery grant announced today will mean that no county councils will have to cut home helps or children’s homes or public transport? Is he really recommending to rural districts that they increase council tax by a precept of at least 2% or by £5—not by whichever is the lower, but by whichever is the higher? Does he acknowledge that more than £20 billion has been cut from local government since 2010? Is not the truth that during the Government’s first term, the impact of these cuts was felt primarily in the more urban northern and London boroughs, and is now spreading far and wide throughout the English countryside I represent 20 rural villages. There is no doubt that the provisional settlement was devastating for rural England—how could the Secretary of State make such an announcement? —and that the settlement he has announced today is far from adequate. Will he confirm, as it is transitional, that he intends all the cuts that he announced at the time of the provisional settlement to be imposed on rural areas in due course, during the present Parliament? When will he give the House details of any equalisation measures that he intends to introduce in relation to business rates Does the Secretary of State accept that all these cuts are, in essence, a political choice rather than an economic necessity? Should the Government not learn lessons from other members of the European Union that are raising hundreds of millions of pounds more than we are in tax from Google and other multinationals—money that could be used to support public services? Is it not time that the Chancellor showed some guts and stood up to the multinationals, rather than attacking the purses, and the services, of the poorest?