Summer Adjournment — House of Commons, 2015-07-16
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Phillips (Conservative, Centre-right): As ever, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The trouble is that corruption permeates in many of these countries from the top to the bottom. The view that previously held sway in much of the developed world was that there was nothing that could be done about it, and that it was, if not a desirable thing, something that we had to put up with because there was no way of getting people to enter public service—given the rates of pay on offer to them—unless they could subsidise their income through corruption. I hope that that view has largely disappeared, but it is something that must be stamped on. We in the developed world need to take action and tackle this scourge of corruption throughout the developing world—and in the developed world where we see it as well—not just because it is our moral responsibility, but because it affects our own security. I hope that I will hear something on that matter from the Deputy Leader of the House I want to touch on a very far-flung corner of this land—perhaps not as far-flung as the constituencies of some of those on the Scottish National party Benches, although having talked to civil servants in Whitehall, I could be forgiven for holding the belief that they seem to think that the part of the country that I am about to come on to is even further away than Orkney and Shetland. I speak, of course, of God’s great county, Lincolnshire, in which my constituency lies, as well as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who I see is in her place Contrary to popular belief in Whitehall and, dare I say it, among some Ministers not only in this Government but in Governments of the past, Lincolnshire does not lie somewhere in the North sea. It is only an hour and 20 minutes or so from King’s Cross station or perhaps two hours’ drive up the A1. It would be rather nice if we could see Ministers and, perhaps more importantly, civil servants occasionally taking the trip to Lincolnshire so that they could see for themselves not only what a wonderful county it is, but quite how much we are affected by some of the spending decisions made here in London. I have in mind two particular areas that I want to focus on The first of those is Lincolnshire police service, which is now the poorest funded police service in the country per capita. That is notwithstanding the fact that our population is as sparse in many ways as the population in some other areas of the United Kingdom, such as those in Scotland. The result of the underfunding of Lincolnshire police, which has been going on for decades, is that the police service in Lincolnshire is now stretched so thin that no further cuts can be made other than on the front line, and if that happens, the service received by people in Lincolnshire will be even worse than it is now The permanent secretary in the Home Department came to the Public Accounts Committee this week and I tackled him—quite feistily, it has to be said—on the past settlements which have been made in relation to police funding in Lincolnshire. He effectively admitted what we who live in the county have all known for far too long—that we have been on the receiving end of a very unfair funding formula which, thankfully, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice is now looking at. I hope we will get a new funding formula by the end of the year That discrimination, which is what it is, against the rural folk of Lincolnshire has been going on for far too long. What I would like to hear from the Deputy Leader of the House is something about the timetable for the introduction of the new funding formula, even if she has to write to me about it, so that I can go back to the police commissioner and the chief constable in Lincolnshire in due course and tell them precisely when we can expect the police service in Lincolnshire to be properly funded It is not, of course, just the police. My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) raised as recently as this morning in Transport questions the gross underfunding of our road network, about which the House has heard from Members on all sides during this debate. That, too, needs to be tackled. The other area on which I want to focus is local authority funding and, in particular, the funding of Lincolnshire County Council. As matters stand, Lincolnshire County Council is facing a 55% reduction in its grant funding over the next four years. That is, in effect, a £68 million reduction for one of the largest counties in the country with one of the most difficult areas to serve because of the sparsity of its population and the fact that we have ribbon development along many of our arterial and other roads. At the same time as that reduction, budget pressures will fall on the county council, which mean that in 2015-16 alone approximately £31 million will have to be found just to cover inflation and an increase in adult social costs The funding formula for local government, not just for Lincolnshire but for many rural counties, has been unfair for far too long. Many of us argue in this House year after year that rural English counties need more money, yet very little ever seems to change. I hope that as a result of this debate the Deputy Leader of the House will go back to colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government and make it clear that this inequity, which results in public services—which cost just as much to run in rural Lincolnshire as they do in rural Scotland—being underfunded, has to be brought to an end. Staffing numbers are already reducing, and many programmes that the county council has been running, including, for example, in relation to public health, which we all trumpet in this House, have already had to be cut. Our libraries budget has had to fall, to the great detriment of those who use them, and the same is true of children’s centres. The number of firemen on each fire engine has fallen from five to four, which I understand is the absolute minimum allowed by statute All these matters indicate that counties such as Lincolnshire—it is Lincolnshire that I am concentrating on, of course—have been at the thin end of the wedge for far too long. Far too much funding has gone into urban areas and perhaps, dare I say it, to the devolved regions. That has to be remedied. It has to be a task of this Government. It has to be something we tackle, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle would agree. Unless we tackle it, there will be a real problem with rural England continuing to feel that it is discriminated against at a time when more money is being ploughed into our towns and cities and to the devolved regions, and at a time when every single public service in Lincolnshire for which local authorities are responsible has been cut to the bone.