Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2017-02-22
Topic: Social Welfare
Gareth Thomas (Labour, Centre-left): I admire the hon. Gentleman’s chutzpah, if nothing else. On the subject of mates’ rates, I shall deal with Surrey County Council in a moment Just last month, the Secretary of State once again told the House: "In the last spending review, the Government allocated an additional £3.5 billion a year by 2020 to adult social care."—[Official Report, 16 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 664.] That was based on £1.5 billion from the back-loaded better care fund and £2 billion from the social care precept, but when we look at those figures closely, we see that the £2 billion was simply rounded up from the Department’s estimate that £1.8 billion would be raised from the precept. The Government had casually added an extra £200 million. That assumption was based on every council’s raising the precept by the full amount, but we already know that not all councils will do so When we look even more closely at the detail, we see that it also builds in the assumption that an additional 1.45 million households will be paying council tax. Ministers seem to have disowned the ambition of the previous Housing Minister—the current Minister for Policing and the Fire Service—to build a million new homes by 2020, so I have no idea where the Government plucked that 1.45 million figure from. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) would be tempted to call this another case of "spinning the numbers". The truth is that the additional funding that the Government claim to be putting into social care is far from guaranteed, and, in any event, unless they find genuinely new money, there will still be a very significant funding gap by 2020 Now let us come to Surrey County Council and the sorry saga of the abandoned 15% council tax referendum. Shortly after the announcement, David Hodge, the council’s leader, revealed that he had already made cuts worth £450 million and explained that he would have to take an axe to services if the extra £60 million that the 15% council tax hike would have raised was not agreed One reason why Surrey’s announcement was so striking is that it has been able to increase spending on adult social care by over 34% since 2010-11, whereas some councils have had to decrease it by up to 32% in the same period. In fact, only two of the 152 social care-providing local authorities have been able to increase their spending on social care more than Surrey. If Surrey says that it cannot cope with demand for social care, which council can In the most deprived areas of the country, social care spending fell by £65 per person as councils were hit particularly hard by Government funding cuts, but rose by £28 per person in the least deprived areas. The social care precept will only further entrench that inequality. Blackpool, the most deprived unitary authority area in the country, faces a 31% reduction in spending power between 2011 and 2019, whereas Wokingham, the least deprived area, faces only a 4% fall in the same period Perhaps Ministers will finally take the opportunity today to enlighten us on what discussions took place between their Department and Surrey County Council, but from the outside it looks like policy making on the hoof: Ministers, embarrassed by one of their own, exposing the fallacy of their argument. They seem to have settled on opening up the business rates retention pilot scheme, but why was Surrey given special access, whereas other local authorities have not been told how they can apply until now?