Local Government Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-23
Topic: Government Operations
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Centre-right): As several hon. Members have kindly mentioned during the debate, today is my 45th birthday. It is not a cause for celebration on my part, but what better way to numb the pain than to attend a debate on local government finance? For nearly 24 of my 45 years, I have been interested in housing and local government policy. In all that time, there has been a very strong call for local government to move away from its dependence on central Government grants The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for whom I have very great respect, asked whether the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), was justified in saying that this is a revolutionary measure. I think it is: it is a big step change in reducing the reliance of local government in this country on central Government. Will it solve all the problems? No, of course it will not. There will still be arguments about the overall level of resourcing and the distribution among local authorities. However, I remind all Members of the House to read the briefing we have received from the Local Government Association, which says that the central measure in the Bill has long been called for by local councils The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who spoke on behalf of the Opposition, suffered a bit of amnesia on the Labour Government’s record in office on devolution. None the less, it was very good to hear that the Opposition Front Bench support the measures in the Bill in principle. He was right to say that the Bill is part of a wider package that is very important in terms of what will be devolved to achieve the fiscal neutrality of its measures, on which the Government are consulting at the moment, as well as the distribution of the funding that will ensure a fair settlement for all local authorities and the issue of providing a safety net in case any authority faces a sudden decline in its income I will just make a few points in that regard. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith)—he is not in the same place as he was earlier—asked us to forgive him his scepticism. I certainly do forgive him. I think scepticism of all Governments over the years on these matters has probably been justified. However, we cannot legislate for fair funding. The relative needs of various parts of the country are going to change over time—the Chairman of the Select Committee made that point very powerfully—and we cannot legislate for that, but we are absolutely determined to get this right. At the moment, we have two approaches to taking forward the detail and making sure that we address the concerns that Members on both sides of the House have expressed. We will pilot the arrangements, and two hon. Members —my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth)—represent areas that are piloting reforms. We also have a very important steering group with the Local Government Association, and it is working with local government to try to get the details right.