Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2018-02-07
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alexander James Jorden Norris (Labour, Centre-left): I came to this place having represented my community on Nottingham City Council for six years—something that I enjoyed greatly and that was a real privilege. However, being a councillor between 2011 and 2017 was quite a difficult proposition. We saw massive real-terms decreases in our funding every year as the Government downscaled their commitment to our city. That meant service cuts, council tax increases, and business rates being increasingly vital. It meant local people paying more so that the national Government could pay less. All this in pursuit of an austerity agenda that decimated demand in our local economy, leading to a historically slow economic recovery, and is now to pay for tax cuts of little social value I am afraid that is the picture we see again this year: spending cuts. I used to think—I do not know if it was a naive or an optimistic view of the world—that Ministers did not understand local government and that that was why there were cuts of such a scale. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who is not in his place, said that local government has been targeted as much as anywhere else in the public sector. I thought that it was because Ministers did not understand it, and thought that the services were unimportant and wasteful. Actually, it is quite the reverse. Ministers target local government because they know exactly how it works. They know that hard-pressed councils like mine in Nottingham have to set balanced budgets, so if they pull a lever and say what the reduction is, they will get that reduction, to the penny, from local government, and they can go to their Treasury colleagues having done their job. They will have had none of the responsibility and will get all the benefit. What an easy cut to make!" That would be bad enough, but these spending cuts have been incredibly unevenly distributed. Between 2014 and 2016—around the transition grant period—Nottingham households lost 250 quid each in spending power, while those in Windsor, to pick one area out of dozens that would fit into this category, lost just £34. But it was those very communities such as Windsor that benefited from the £300 million transition grant to help them to deal with the cuts. In Nottingham? Not a bean Inevitably—what else could it do?—that has led to council tax rises in my community. One of the poorest communities in the country, with the lowest discretionary spend, we will now again receive a near 6% increase in our council tax. We have a small council tax base, as others have mentioned, so that will be less helpful for us than it will be for other communities. Our gap in Nottingham starts at £33 million. The Secretary of State talks about increased spending, but the reality of the situation—I suspect it is the same for all hon. Members here today—is that my council will have to make reductions. If I tell my council leader that he has more money, he will tell me that he has to make a £33 million reduction in services. If he gets £6 million in council tax, that is still £27 million that has to come from elsewhere as we deal with the toxic combination of losing grant and having significant increases in demand We have heard a lot about demands in adult social care, which are important, but we should not forget children’s social care and the extraordinary pressures it creates. So for my community there will be service cuts. Lest people think that this is an efficiency issue, I want to share with the House the proposals in Nottingham—[Interruption.] I am glad the Chancellor has joined us: I will be able to make a personal plea. The proposals in Nottingham include job cuts in adult social care; reducing funding for weight management, smoking cessation and drug and alcohol services; reductions in youth services; reducing funding for the careers service; reviewing transport services for vulnerable adults; reviewing fees and charges for leisure centres and bereavement services; and increasing fares and reducing frequency on the Link bus services. We have our political differences, but I doubt that anyone would say that those are "nice to haves" More importantly, as well as being vital services in my community, those are all stitches in time that save nine. Every single one of those reductions will lead to an increase in spending in public services elsewhere, and that is why this settlement is an act of vandalism. It is short-sighted and ill-judged. But as we all know—and I suggest this is why the Secretary of State is so attached to the idea—my council will receive all the blame. It should not; it is doing an excellent job in impossible circumstances. The fault lies at the door of the Secretary of State As for the fair funding review, I have no problem with systems that are a generation old being looked at, but we should be clear when we talk about fairness. I know there is an enthusiasm for capitation, but we should be clear what that would mean for communities such as mine. I am happy to accept, and I almost hoped I would get, an intervention on that point.