Local Government Finance — House of Commons, 2015-02-10
Topic: Housing
Gisela Stuart (Labour, Centre-left): It a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). Not only do we have adjoining constituencies, but when I became a Member of Parliament in 1997 I took over part of his constituency, so our work has always overlapped I want to talk about cities, and the future of cities. Cities do not reflect the national economy; they are the national economy, and that has never been more true than it is today. Whether we are talking about Birmingham, greater Birmingham or a combination of authorities, those big conurbations and their populations are a driving force In the 19th century, Birmingham exploded in size. Formerly an insignificant village, it became the fourth largest urban centre in the United Kingdom, and few of the 175,000 men and women who lived there had been born locally. Birmingham was also the most divided city in the country in the context of religion: no one Church was predominant, and the tone was set by various Protestant nonconformist denominations. It was also an aspirational community, which was proud of its innovation and enterprise, its skills and its people The late Joe Chamberlain made Birmingham the best-governed city in the empire, and he did so in important ways. He wanted clean water, because it was a public health good. He wanted a gas supply to modernise the city’s infrastructure and raise revenue to support business rates. He wanted better housing for the people, and he wanted free primary school education, because skills were the foundation for future prosperity and well-being. This is not just some pointless history lesson; it is about the "civic gospel" that was Chamberlain’s vision of cities. Every generation must rediscover its own civic gospel according to its circumstances These are the questions that I really want to ask Ministers. What is their vision of cities? What is their civic gospel? How do they see the future? I can tell them what my vision is. The city of Birmingham contains 1.1 million people, of whom 238,000 were not born in the United Kingdom, of whom 53% are white British—compared with a national average of 80%—150,000 are Pakistani, 65,000 are Indian, and 50,000 are black Caribbean. Of those people, 46% say that they are Christian, 22% say that they are Muslim, and 20% say that they have no religion at all. Regardless of where those people come from and regardless of where they were born, however, 86% say that they are British. It is a very young city, too, with 40% of the population under the age of 25 and 30% under 15. It also has pockets of the most persistent unemployment, and they are very often in the very areas where we have the increase in the birth rates The city also trains 40,000 graduates every year, but we do not as yet hold on to the graduates we are creating. So I say: let us define the responsibilities of the city. They include education, linking schools with employers, providing public health, looking after the vulnerable, whether young or old, and providing decent infrastructure That takes me to the settlement, because this settlement will not allow us to do that. If the Secretary of State’s vision of the town hall is that it is no more than a call centre, let us talk about that. Let us use that as the basis of saying that the Conservative Government vision of local government is so minimalist that it has statutory duties and beyond that very little extra. Let us have a debate about that. I do not think the Secretary of State is making that case, however. He is saying he has a much greater vision, including to do with wealth creation, but the funding structure simply will not allow us to do that I am also going to be frank now. Not all is well in Birmingham. We must acknowledge that. There have been some deep systemic structural failures in that city going back over several administrations. We have had three major reviews—Kerslake, Warner and Tomlinson. They have shown us a way forward. The city must grasp that and say, "This is our chance to come to terms with some of the problems of the past and put them right." While I do not want to be party political, I do want to make one point. Lord Whitby built a magnificent library which will cost £1 million every month for the next 40 years before we even put in the first book or the first people of Birmingham go through the door. Interest payments on that library are costing us £1 million a month, which is more than the city of Birmingham spends in the entire year on traffic wardens outside our schools. In respect of his £188 million project, he said he was "saddened" that the city council was cutting the services and the hours. I am not just saddened; I am very disappointed. He says he is sad and he tells us through the newspapers that he could find solutions to this by involving local business. As he does not seem to be overtaxed by making speeches in the other place, perhaps he would like to broker such agreements and talk to local businesses and bring them in The problems of Birmingham are the responsibility of all of us, not just of that city. It is a city that is more dependent on Government grants and therefore requires high levels of expenditure, yet it has had reductions in funding year on year, the last one being 18.6%. It is growing consistently, too, which creates its own specific responsibilities We are not just facing cuts; as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield said, we are also having to increase spending on child protection services—an extra £21.5 million—and on older people and younger adults by £6.5 million. As I said in an intervention, on the current trajectory by 2018 we will have lost two thirds of our discretionary spending. Where is the long-term structural solution coming from I want to make a further point. The ethnic diversity of Birmingham is also one of its strengths. Ethnic cohesion in that city is far stronger than people realise or acknowledge. I was in Manchester when the Moss Side riots flared up. I never want to see anything like that happening in our cities again. When Haroon Jahan died in Birmingham in 2011, his father called for calm and asked the community to stand together I am proud of the fact that our only Jewish primary school in Birmingham has got more Muslim than Jewish children. It is a very Jewish school, but the Muslim population sends its children there. Our Catholic schools also have large numbers from the Muslim communities. We need to foster that diversity and ambition, because part of what I see as our civic future is for Birmingham to succeed in life sciences, manufacturing and technology. Our population, our young population, our location and institutions could help us to achieve that. If we do not, and if our cities fall back to the difficulties that we had in the 1980s—frankly, the kind of funding structures being offered to us are on the road to such difficulties—it will not be only a Labour city council’s problem, or even a Conservative city council’s problem, it will be a problem for all of us. Our cities are the lifeblood that provides everything Where do we go with this? Whitehall is not minded to give more money to our cities, so I do not think there is any other way but to look at independent funding streams, which give reliability and certainty that the areas generating the wealth will keep it. I am agnostic as to whether we go for land tax, stamp duty, business rates or whatever the streams are, but all the talk of devolution and returning responsibility to our cities and city leaders will go nowhere unless we make our cities our opportunities. Our cities are our strength I heard all that discussion about rural areas, and as a Bavarian farmer’s daughter, no one needs to tell me what the countryside is like, I remember it well, thank you very much—