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Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
1. What assessment he has made of the level of business investment by banks in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Recent Bank of England data show that the availability of credit to businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises, has increased significantly across the United Kingdom.
Ian Lucas
Businesses in Wrexham tell me that the biggest barrier to growth is the lack of availability of finance. Today Barclays has talked of more redundancies and more bankers’ bonuses. Will the Secretary of State support me by establishing a regional bank for Wales which will be attuned to the local economy, and which will provide the finance for business that will enable the local economy to grow?
Mr Jones
The proposal for a development bank for Wales was floated recently by Professor Dylan Jones-Evans, and I believe that he is now conducting another exercise for Edwina Hart, the business development Minister in Wales. We are certainly prepared to consider the proposal, and, in fact, I have already discussed it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend welcome the fact that it was this Government who passed the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013, which enabled local banks to come into existence and has resulted in the creation of more than 20 new challenger banks, and which the Labour party voted against?
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
Why, instead of coming out with the usual Government flannel, does the Secretary of State not admit that, according to the House of Commons Library, net bank lending—that is, new loans minus repayments—to small and medium-sized enterprises in Wales has been negative over the last two years? Since the third quarter of 2011, small businesses in Wales have paid back to the banks £148 million more than they have been able to borrow, and medium-sized businesses have paid back £186 million more than they have been lent. The truth is that the banking system in Wales is broken, and the Secretary of State is doing nothing about it.
Mr Jones
On the contrary, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) has just pointed out, the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act has put a great deal more power into the hands of customers. It has also done a great deal to repair the damage that was done under the last Labour Administration.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Many of my constituents continue to be affected by the interest rate swap scandal, when banks were deliberately targeting businesses, and wrecking lives and real economic activity. My constituents Mr and Mrs Bartels, for instance, were deliberately bankrupted by Barclays. What can the Secretary of State do to support the excellent work of the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and the all-party parliamentary group on interest rate swap mis-selling to secure justice for Welsh businesses that have been ripped off by exploitative banks?
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Given that banks are still not doing enough to help entrepreneurs in Wales, does the Secretary of State support his right hon. Friend the Chancellor in his legal pursuit of the European Union to prevent it from capping bankers’ bonuses?
Mr Jones
The position on bankers’ bonuses is entirely clear. In respect of the banks in which the Government have a shareholding, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already said that there will be no cash bonuses of more than £2,000 at RBS and Lloyds Banking Group, and that the Government will veto any proposals to increase overall pay—that is, pay and bonus bills—at RBS.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
2. What recent assessment he has made of employment trends in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
Our long-term economic plan is working, and it is working for Wales. The economy is growing, and there have never been more people in work in Wales as unemployment continues to fall. I want to see all parts of Wales share in that positive trend.
John Howell
Can the Minister confirm that, because of the difficult decisions the Government have made, Wales has seen a larger fall in the rate of economic inactivity than any other UK nation?
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend is, as ever, exactly right. Wales has seen a larger fall in economic inactivity than any other part of the United Kingdom. We all welcome the fact that 57,000 fewer people are economically inactive in Wales, but that has come about only because of the responsible decisions made by the Government—decisions that were opposed by the Labour party.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I do not quite recognise that rosy picture of unemployment rates. Since 2011, long-term and youth unemployment in Wales has quadrupled. That is not something to celebrate. What are the Government doing to ensure that young people are able to find good jobs in Wales? Are the Government going to consider applying for part of the €6 billion European youth jobs guarantee fund, and if not, why not?
Stephen Crabb
Nobody is painting a rosy picture. There is still a long way to go and, in Wales in particular, there are still serious challenges to address. But neither are we in denial about the positive picture that is starting to emerge. That is something that we want all parts of Wales and people from all walks of life, including young people, to benefit from. That is one of the reasons that we are making it easier for businesses to hire young workers through the national insurance holiday for businesses.
Mr Llwyd
We have already heard about the importance of the small and medium-sized enterprise sector to Wales. One thing that would assist it is a further cut in business rates. Are the Government going to consider that, given that roughly 90% of employment in Wales is in the SME sector?
Stephen Crabb
The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that small and medium-sized businesses are the engines of job creation in Wales. They are the ones that are driving the fall in unemployment. Decisions on business rates have largely been devolved to the Welsh Government, and we are taking forward proposals to devolve them entirely, so that is really a discussion that he ought to be having with colleagues in Cardiff.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
10. Does my hon. Friend agree with my Welsh relatives that the reduction in the number of people unemployed in the last quarter by 12,000 is entirely due to the fact that the Government’s long-term economic plan is working?
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend and his relatives in Wales are right. That is exactly what is happening. There is a long way to go, however. The recovery is patchy, but a positive picture is emerging for Wales. Nobody should be in denial about the growth that we are seeing across Wales.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Recent improvements in employment rates in Wales are obviously profoundly welcome, but chronic unemployment continues to dog us. Last week, I met a miner in my constituency who had not worked for 30 years, since the pit closure programme. He, like many others in Wales, wants to know the full truth about the political motivations that lay behind that programme, which poured thousands of Welsh people on to the dole. Does the Minister agree that the papers should now be published in full so that we can know the truth?
Stephen Crabb
I am not going to be drawn on that specific issue, but there is a serious problem with long-term unemployment in Wales, with 200,000 people there who have never worked a day in their lives and 92,000 children living in homes where nobody works. That is exactly why the hon. Gentleman should be supporting what we are doing through the Work programme and our welfare reforms, which are going to benefit exactly those people.
Owen Smith
So a Minister for Wales refuses to engage on the issue of the miners’ strike that poured thousands of people on to the dole in Wales. Is he seriously telling those Welsh miners that they do not have the right to know the truth? Will he take the opportunity, when he comes back to the Dispatch Box, to apologise for the actions of his predecessors and for the political motivations that lay behind that strike?
Stephen Crabb
We understand why the shadow Secretary of State is bringing this politically motivated issue to the Dispatch Box today: it is because he has run out of things to say about the economy in Wales, about unemployment and about growth. Over the past three years, he has been proved wrong on all those issues.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
May I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to congratulate the management of Dunbia on the announcement that 200 new jobs are to be created at Felinfach in the Aeron valley, contributing to the food processing sector that is so important to rural Wales? Those new jobs are good news for Wales.
Stephen Crabb
I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the investment from that meat processing company in his constituency. The agri-food sector is incredibly important to west Wales, and not least to Ceredigion. My hon. Friend represents one of the most important farming and agricultural constituencies in the UK, and the investment by that company is a sign of the growing confidence in the UK economy and the Welsh economy.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
3. How many fitness to practise cases regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in Wales are waiting to be resolved.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
While the Government do not hold the information requested, the Nursing and Midwifery Council advises that there are currently 190 fitness to practise cases in Wales that are waiting to be resolved.
Ann Clwyd
The Health Select Committee drew attention last year to the fact that there were 400 unresolved cases going back over a two-year period. Will the Secretary of State tell us how many of those cases are in Wales and how long they have been waiting for resolution? Is it not unfair on patients in Wales that that matter is still hanging over those hospitals?
Mr Jones
I commend the right hon. Lady for her role in chairing the committee that came up with such an important report on the processing of complaints in the health service.
Although the issue of complaints about nurses and midwives must be one for the Nursing and Midwifery Council, we are clearly anxious to ensure that complaints should be properly investigated. That is why we were extremely pleased that the Welsh Minister for Health and Social Services has now instituted his own inquiry into this issue.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that people who have complaints about the NHS in Wales under the Labour Welsh Assembly Government are unable simply to cross the border and access the far better treatments, wider range of drugs and shorter waiting lists on offer to those fortunate enough to be served by the Conservative coalition Government in England?
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
4. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Justice on the Ministry of Justice’s shared services centre in Newport.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The Wales Office is in close contact with the Ministry of Justice, which is still at an early stage in evaluating options for the shared services centre in Newport. The Government are committed to ensuring that services are delivered efficiently, while providing value for money for taxpayers.
Jessica Morden
In December, hundreds of workers at the MOJ’s shared services centre in Newport learned that their jobs could be privatised, and obviously the work force has great concern that jobs could be outsourced or offshored, as we have seen with the Government’s model. Given the bad news that Newport received last week with the potential loss of jobs at Avana Bakeries, will the Minister speak up for public sector workers in Newport and tell the MOJ to abandon its plans?
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. On the point about Avana Bakeries, she should be aware that I spoke to that company on Friday afternoon; the scenario is obviously very difficult for the city of Newport.
On the shared services centre, the evaluation of options is, as I said in my initial answer, at an early stage, but the Government will work with staff, trade unions and other stakeholders to assess any impact on staff. We are very mindful of the jobs impact on the hon. Lady’s constituency.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
5. If he will discuss with the First Minister the standards of education in Wales and of Welsh jobseekers in England; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
I am concerned that Wales risks being left behind in the employment market. All young people deserve an education system that provides them with the qualifications, skills and training needed to compete successfully in the global jobs market.
Michael Fabricant
You will know, Mr Speaker, that I served on the Committee that dealt with the Welsh Language Act 1993, that my mother is a Welsh language speaker and that I very much support bilingualism in Wales. However, does my right hon. Friend share my surprise that when I was debating the low standard of education in Wales with the Labour First Minister, he admitted that his Government took their “eye off the ball”? A whole generation of Welsh children was betrayed by the Labour Welsh Government.
Mr Jones
The First Minister clearly did take his eye off the ball. The recent programme for international student assessment—PISA—ratings show the extent to which the Welsh educational system is failing. That is because the Welsh Government are pursuing a course that does not mirror the improvements we are making in England, and I very much hope that the new Welsh Minister for Education and Skills will learn from the reforms we are implementing.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
12. My two children were educated in Wrexham in their early years. Does the Secretary of State share my concern about the PISA league tables, which he mentioned? What discussions is he having with the Welsh Assembly Government to try to ensure the very best education for all our children in Wales?
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
6. What discussions he has had with Ministers in the Welsh Government on waiting times for mental health support for combat veterans in Wales compared with those in England.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
It is essential that our veterans receive the best support and medical treatment, including mental health care, available to assist them to rebuild their lives.
Simon Hart
A military veteran living in Carmarthenshire has been told by NHS Wales that he has to wait up to eight months for urgent mental health treatment. The Veterans Association tells me that in parts of England the wait would be seven to 10 days. Will the Secretary of State sort out this problem on behalf of Welsh veterans?
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
The generosity of Welsh people in donating to mental health charities for veterans is unsurpassed. However, there have been concerns in recent months about the regulation and oversight of some of those charities and of some of the treatments available. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss those concerns to ensure that every penny piece that is raised by people in Wales goes towards the very best treatment for our veterans?
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
On Friday I met members of Swansea’s Combat Stress group, who told me that the nearest places for in-patient treatment were in Shropshire, Surrey or Scotland. Will the Secretary of State meet me and the Secretary of State for Defence, who is now in his seat, to talk about providing facilities for in-patient care for war veterans in St Athan and the idea of moving units coming out of Germany to St Athan in south Wales to provide much needed employment and economic stimulus?
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
7. What assessment he has made of the effects on Wales of the Government’s policy on superfast broadband roll-out.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
As a result of the £57 million investment by this coalition Government in Westminster, the roll-out of superfast broadband in Wales will transform our broadband network. Last month, it was confirmed that 100,000 Welsh homes and businesses can now get access to superfast broadband.
Guto Bebb
I thank the Minister for his response. I welcome the fact that the roll-out is doing well in Wales. Will he respond to the fact that Llandudno and Llandudno junction, which are key commercial centres in north Wales, are not even scheduled for roll-out as yet? Is that another example of the Welsh Labour Government prioritising south Wales over north Wales?
Stephen Crabb
All Welsh Members of Parliament want their constituencies to be at the front of the queue for superfast broadband. The roll-out implementation plans are agreed between BT Cymru, the Welsh Government and Broadband Delivery UK. If my hon. Friend has specific concerns about that process, will he please raise them with me, and I will ensure that they get an airing?
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
14. I represent a very rural constituency where poor broadband is a particularly important issue. Has my hon. Friend made any assessment of the effect of poor internet connections on property values? That issue applies to the whole of Britain as well.
Stephen Crabb
I am not aware of any specific studies on the value of properties with regard to a lack of access to good-quality broadband, but I recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes. High-quality broadband is vital for revitalising the private sector and many of our rural communities.
Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)
8. What plans the Government have for the future of the Land Registry and jobs in its office in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The Government are currently consulting on the proposal to create a new company, still subject to Government oversight, which would be responsible for delivering land registration services.
Mrs James
The Land Registry has a customer satisfaction rating of 98%. As a trading fund, it does not cost the taxpayer anything; indeed, it makes a significant surplus year on year. It made £98.8 million in the past year alone, yet the Government are now consulting to end its trading fund status. Will the Minister confirm that if, as a result of the consultation, the status of the Land Registry is changed to that of a Government-owned company, the people of Swansea will be protected, jobs will be protected and the services will not be changed?
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I will say again that no decisions on implementation have yet been taken, as all views from the consultation on the right commercial model for Land Registry need to be considered before any decision is taken. None the less, we expect that the majority of staff will be transferred to the new service delivery company, with a small minority remaining in the office of the chief land registrar.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
9. What recent discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the effects of VAT on the tourism and hospitality industry in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Tourism and hospitality play an important role in the economy in Wales, attracting more than 4 million people from across Great Britain between July and September last year. The World Economic Forum has recently ranked the UK fifth in Europe in its travel and tourism competitiveness index.
Albert Owen
Our near neighbours, the Republic of Ireland, and most other European countries have reduced the level of value added tax in the tourism sector, boosting jobs, growth and investment in their countries. The United Kingdom and Wales are among those with the highest rates of VAT in Europe, and, according to an independent inquiry, that has led to the suppression of jobs and investment. Will the Secretary of State lobby the Treasury to ensure that we have a competitive rate of VAT and that we reduce VAT, which is a tax on jobs?
Mr Jones
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is as happy as I am that tourism expenditure in Wales increased by £746 million over the past year. The United Kingdom is highly competitive in the tourism market. As I said in my initial answer, the World Economic Forum has indicated that the UK is the fifth most competitive economy in Europe, ahead of France, Portugal and Italy.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
As in Scotland, VAT on tourism in Wales has a negative effect on the industry. Will he press his Treasury colleagues to ensure a reduction from 20% to 5%, as requested in yesterday’s debate in Westminster Hall, to benefit very scenic constituencies like mine and Carmarthen East and Dinefwr?
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
11. How many people in Wales benefited from the recent reduction in the additional rate of income tax.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Approximately 4,000 people in Wales pay the additional rate of income tax.
Susan Elan Jones
I thank the Secretary of State for that brief response. In his maiden speech as a Member of the Welsh Assembly, the right hon. Gentleman said, “We have no tax-raising powers—long may that state of affairs continue.” As someone who supported the Assembly having tax-levying powers in the 1997 referendum, I find that view extraordinary. Surely the reason he now wants income tax to be devolved to Wales is to cut public services and cut taxes for the rich.
Mr Jones
Rather than concentrating on what I said in 2002, the hon. Lady ought to listen to what her hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) said only last week. The Labour Government in Wales do not want income tax devolved to Wales, but the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government here in Westminster do.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
13. What assessment he has made of changes in real wages in Wales since 2010; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
Wales had seen the biggest increase in average earnings of all the regions and nations of the United Kingdom, with earnings increasing at twice the national average and more than twice the current rate of inflation. Wage levels are still not where we want them to be, but that is still positive news for Wales.
Julie Elliott
Wales has the highest proportion of people earning less than the living wage, which is outrageous. What are the Government doing to tackle that problem?
Stephen Crabb
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already said where he wants to see the national minimum wage going, as conditions allow. We want to see a strong minimum wage that will benefit low-paid workers. One of the most important things we are doing is taking 130,000 of the lowest-paid people in Wales out of income tax altogether by increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, something the hon. Lady and her colleagues should very much support.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that wages in Flintshire have dropped dramatically since the election of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government and that the situation is not helped by cuts to child tax credits, by the bedroom tax or by other measures they are taking? Will he join my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) this afternoon in his plan to introduce a Bill to scrap the bedroom tax?
Stephen Crabb
If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, he will see that the biggest destruction in real wage levels occurred under the last three years of the previous Labour Government, and we are still recovering from the economic trauma of that period. Wage levels are still not where we want them to be, but they are increasing in Wales, which is positive news for people on the lowest incomes.
Mr Speaker
Well, we have got through the lot, the principals are present and the House is expectant, so we can move on to questions to the Prime Minister.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 12 February.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Caroline Lucas
Our hearts go out to everyone whose lives are being devastated by the current floods. I am sure we all welcome the Prime Minister’s promise yesterday that he will do everything he can both with the relief effort and in building a more resilient country into the future. Does he therefore agree that it would be both complacent and ignorant to flout the warnings of the Met Office and his own advisers, who warn that climate change will lead to even more such events in the future? Can he confirm for the House and for everyone in my Brighton constituency that doing everything he can will include not only reversing cuts to the Environment Agency budget and giving proper funding for flood prevention but, crucially, removing anyone from the Cabinet—[Interruption.]
The Prime Minister
Let me reassure the hon. Lady that I listen very carefully to my experts in the Met Office and in the Environment Agency. Every Cobra meeting starts with a briefing from the Met Office. I think it is clear that we are seeing more extreme weather events, and I suspect that we will go on seeing more extreme weather events. We need to do everything we can to improve the resilience of our country. Let me repeat again that, as I said yesterday, when it comes to this relief effort, money is no object. We will spend what is necessary to help families, to help people and to help communities get through this very difficult time. I have to say that things are likely to get worse before they get better, because of the very high levels of rainfall we have seen—and we are seeing very serious high winds as we speak here in the House today—but whatever can be done to help will be done.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Q2. Last year, my constituent Georgia Williams was brutally murdered. At the subsequent trial, it was revealed that her attacker had previously attacked another young girl five years earlier. Yet, unbelievably, that attacker got off the earlier offence with just a police caution—a written warning. Will the Prime Minister join me in calling on West Mercia police to publish all relevant material relating to that earlier case in order that any lessons that can be learned will be learned?
The Prime Minister
First of all, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to take up his constituent’s case in this way. He has written to me about this specific case. My sympathy goes out to the family and friends of Georgia Williams. As he has asked, I understand that the Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently considering its response to a referral from West Mercia police into the handling of this case and what needs to be published. On the issue of cautions, we announced last year that we are banning the use of simple cautions for all of the most serious offences, including manslaughter, rape and robbery, as well as a range of other offences that devastate lives and tear apart communities. Clearly, this is a tragic case and we must get to the bottom of what went wrong.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I join the Prime Minister in expressing all my sympathies with people who have been affected by the floods, who have been driven out of their homes, and who are facing disruption to their lives. I also join him in paying tribute to all those helping with relief efforts and to the extraordinary resilience we have seen in the past few weeks of the people of our country. He will know that people in affected communities are relieved that help from the armed forces and emergency services has now arrived, but many feel they were sent in too late. With further flooding expected in the coming hours and days, can the Prime Minister provide an assurance that people will be getting help in time, not after the event?
The Prime Minister
I can certainly give that assurance. Let me repeat again that it is important, as the right hon. Gentleman said, to praise our emergency services, to praise volunteers, and to praise all those working for the Environment Agency, who have worked night and day, round the clock, to help our communities. They really have done amazing work, and we should thank them.
In terms of the engagement of the military, I think that this is important. It has always been possible for gold commanders in these emergency situations to call on military assets. Indeed, a military liaison officer is supposed to sit with those gold commanders and liaise with them. What we have done in recent days is to say very clearly to all the local authorities concerned, which we have contacted individually, “If you want military assistance, don’t think twice about it: think once, then ask, and they’ll be there.” We have now got thousands of military at a state of readiness to help out. A huge number have already been deployed; and yes, as we see the levels potentially rising on the Thames again coming into this weekend, we should do everything we can now to get extra help into those communities that could be affected and make sure that they are helped. All the military assistance that is required is there; people only have to ask.
Edward Miliband
I welcome that promise of proactive help from the Prime Minister. Given the forecasts of extreme weather and that river levels are rising, one of the key issues that will concern people is not just their homes but continuing gas and electricity supplies. We have learned from experience in 2007 that protecting electricity substations that can be responsible for power for hundreds of thousands of homes is of particular importance. Can he reassure the House about the steps being taken to protect these vital services?
The Prime Minister
I can give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy carried out a review into the resilience of our infrastructure. A lot of extra steps were taken following that, and that has made a difference. Also, in the Cobra system, we are monitoring every day those particular bits of infrastructure that could be under threat. In recent days, it has more been about water-treatment works than electricity works.
I also spoke to the Minister responsible for energy policy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), at this morning’s Cobra to make sure that everything is done to contact the energy companies to stand up the people who will be necessary if there are further supply interruptions over the coming days. Since the experience of the problems in Kent after Christmas, the energy companies and the network companies have done a better job at reconnecting people more quickly.
Edward Miliband
I thank the Prime Minister for that answer. One of the reassurances that he provided yesterday, as he said in an earlier answer, was to say that money was no object, but this morning the Transport Secretary said that it is not a “blank cheque”. Will the Prime Minister tell the House exactly what areas of spending yesterday’s promise covers?
The Prime Minister
I was very clear last night, and let me repeat again that, as I said last night, money is no object in this relief effort. I want communities who are suffering and people who see water lapping at their doors to know that when it comes to the military, sandbags, the emergency services, restoring broken flood defences—all of those things—money is no object. To be fair to the Transport Secretary, this is what he said this morning:
“money is not the issue while we’re in this relief job.”
That is what he said. He is absolutely right.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister is of course absolutely right about the relief effort. He also said yesterday that he will
“spend whatever it takes to recover from this”
and make sure that we have a
“resilient country for the future.”
Let me give him an example in that context. Yesterday, he praised the staff of the Environment Agency, but it is in the process, this year, of making 550 people dealing with flooding redundant. These are staff who help put in place and maintain flood defences, and help deal with clean-up. If money is no object, as he said, is he committing now to reconsidering these redundancies?
The Prime Minister
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman exactly what we are doing with the Environment Agency and with the flood defence budget. We are spending £2.4 billion over the four-year period between 2010 and 2014, which compares with just £2.2 billion in the previous four-year period. What I can say to the House—I think that this is important—is that as the waters recede, it will be important for the Environment Agency and for local authorities all to look again at the flood patterns we have seen and the models that they have, and to work out what fresh flood defences will be necessary.
In addition to that, I can tell the House that we will be introducing a grant for all affected home owners and businesses to build in better flood protection as they repair their properties. That will be up to £5,000 per house and per business. On top of that, we are announcing a £10 million fund to help farmers who have seen their land waterlogged day after day, week after week. I can also announce today that we will be deferring the tax payments that businesses have to pay, and all the businesses that have been affected by floods will get 100% business rate relief.
Edward Miliband
Those steps are welcome and will be welcomed across the House, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister did not answer the specific question I asked, which is about the 550 people who work on flood defences who the Environment Agency is planning to make redundant. They are people who are currently helping with the clean-up, and who put in place the flood defences.
Similarly, on the issue of spending on flood defence, the Committee on Climate Change says that we are spending significantly less on flood defence than we should. My question is a simple one: given yesterday’s promise to make sure that we have a
“resilient country for the future”
and will
“spend whatever it takes”,
is the Prime Minister committing now to reconsidering these redundancies and the amount of money we invest in flood defences?
The Prime Minister
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman what we are doing with the Environment Agency budget into the future. We have set out the figures for the Environment Agency budget in terms of capital spending all the way up to 2020. We have made capital spending pledges only in areas such as transport and flood defences—pledges that no one else is able to match, particularly not if they are committed to a zero-based budget review, but promises we are happy to make so that people can see how much money will be spent on flood defences in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. We are only able to make those pledges because we have managed our economy effectively and managed our Budgets effectively.
Edward Miliband
I say to the Prime Minister that he came along to his press conference yesterday and made what sounded like a very grand promise to
“spend whatever it takes to recover from this and to make sure we have a resilient country for the future”.
The simple point that I am making to him is that there are real doubts about that when it comes to making members of the Environment Agency who deal with flooding redundant and the Committee on Climate Change—the expert body that is charged with this—says that the investment in flood defences is not happening. He needs to reconsider those things.
I urge the Prime Minister to ensure this in the coming days: the Government need to speak with one voice on this issue; the response needs to be speedier than it has been in the past; and everyone affected needs to feel that they are getting the help they need. If the Government do that, they will have our full support.
The Prime Minister
What I said last night is exactly what I have said today: when it comes to this relief effort, money will be no object. I do not want people to worry about penny-pinching as they see the vital work that is needed to help them with their houses and to deal with the floods. This is what this Government are doing: we are deploying the military when we are asked for the military; we deployed extra pumps when we were asked for pumps; we are raising the compensation to local government to 100%, because that is what local communities should have. I am only sorry that the right hon. Gentleman seeks to divide the House, when we should be coming together for the nation.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his recent visit to Plymouth to discuss our broken rail link. Will he commit our Government to finding long-term solutions to providing rail resilience in the far south-west? Will he join me today in sending a very clear signal to the rest of the country that, despite our current problems, Devon and Cornwall are firmly open for business?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That message needs to go out loud and clear. Businesses, including tourism businesses, in Cornwall and Devon want people’s custom and want people to know that the peninsula is very much open for business. On his specific question, yes we are finding £31 million to fund 10 rail-resilience projects in the south-west to improve the resilience against flooding. That will include work at Cowley bridge junction, Chipping Sodbury, Hinksey, Whiteball tunnel and a number of other places including Honiton and Crewkerne. Clearly, the most important thing is that Dawlish rail link. I saw for myself yesterday the intense damage that has been done to that track and the huge destruction that was wrought by the waves. That work will take up to six weeks. I know that Network Rail is working as hard as it can. I have said to it that for any help that it needs, it needs only to ask.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Q3. If he will review the Government’s policy not to disclose the identity of companies that are made to pay penalties in respect of non-payment of the minimum wage. [R]
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
We are the first Government to name and shame employers that fail to pay the minimum wage. The name of the first company was published in 2011. We have revised the scheme to make publication easier, but I am not satisfied that that is going fast enough. The identity of companies that have been found to have broken the law will be made public very soon.
Andy Sawford
I thank the Prime Minister for that response. However, two employment agencies in my constituency have recently been found not to have been paying the minimum wage to their workers and have had to pay penalties, but the Government say that they have to protect the confidentiality of those companies. My constituents think that the Government are standing up for the wrong people—the rip-off agencies—rather than the workers. Will he look at that matter?
The Prime Minister
As I said, we will publish the names of those companies—something that never happened under the Labour party. We are taking action. When it comes to penalties for not paying the minimum wage, last year more than 700 employers received penalties for failing to comply with minimum wage law and the value of those penalties was almost seven times higher than in the final year of the last Labour Government. We hear a lot of talk about enforcing the minimum wage from the Labour party, but there is a lot of action from this Government.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
Q4. Crime is down by 10% and our excellent Home Secretary’s police reforms are allowing good officers to do more with less. Will the Prime Minister implement the Normington reforms of the Police Federation immediately so that police culture can be further improved?
The Prime Minister
We are working with the Police Federation on this issue, and it is clearly an organisation in need of reform. To be fair, the new head of the Police Federation—whom I have met—recognises that and wants to act, and I think we should support him in sorting out that organisation so that it better represents its members.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
Q5. Two weeks ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury refused to rule out any further tax cuts for millionaires, but last week he said that that would be over his dead body. Can the Prime Minister help him out today by ruling out any further tax cuts for top earners, or should his Chief Secretary be looking to up his life insurance?
The Prime Minister
I saw the Chief Secretary this morning at Cobra and he looked alive and well to me, so the hon. Lady does not have any worries on that front. I have said that that is not our priority; our priority is to cut taxes for low and middle earners, and that is what we have done. When it comes to April this year, her constituents will be able to earn £10,000 without paying any income tax at all. That is equivalent to a 10% increase in the minimum wage, and means that their income tax bill will have gone down by two thirds under this Government. Those are the sorts of tax cuts that we are interested in.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
May I thank the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for their personal engagement with our issues on the Somerset levels, and may I ask the Prime Minister a question that I do not think the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government quite grasped on Monday? When the emergency, the crisis phase of this problem, is over, we must have sustainable plans to protect people on the Somerset levels. That will require a revenue stream that will come through local government, and that means changes to the way that is administered. When we have those detailed plans, will the Prime Minister meet me and others from Somerset to ensure that we have a sustainable future?
The Prime Minister
I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and other MPs from Somerset, and I have visited twice to see for myself. The problem at the moment, as we know, is simply the pumping capacity. It is now taking 3 million tonnes—soon 5 million tonnes—of water off the Somerset levels, but because there are 65 million tonnes, or more, of water on the levels, it is going to take time. What we need to do once that water level starts to come down is get the dredging going, and then work out the long-term programme for ensuring that this man-made environment is properly looked after by man, so that it is sustainable for the future. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and discuss that.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Q6. Conditions outside are dreadful; the voluntary sector, emergency services and individuals have been amazing, but people and businesses are angry. In my region, the south-west, people are angry because of what they see as the excessive costs of High Speed 2, when the whole of the west country is without a resilient rail network. The money that was announced—reannounced—today, is welcome but not enough. Will the Prime Minister commit in the medium term to ensuring that he supports growth and recovery in the region, and that Plymouth is put on the strategic road transport network? It is not there at the moment, and it should be.
The Prime Minister
I would make three quick points to the hon. Lady. I totally understand her concern and the concern of her constituents. First, I do not want anyone to be under the misapprehension that HS2 will be built at the expense of the west country—it will not. In the next Parliament, we will spend three times more on other road and rail schemes as we will spend on HS2, and some of those schemes will directly benefit people in the west country. Secondly, while we are working as fast as we can to restore the Dawlish link, we need to look at longer-term alternatives, and I have discussed that with Network Rail and First Great Western to see what more can be done. Thirdly, in the meantime, while Dawlish is as it is, we need to go on boosting the air services to the peninsula. That is why I met Flybe in Newquay. It has doubled the number of flights and we have taken £5 off the cost of each of those flights. We also need to make sure that the replacement bus services are as good as they can be. If we do all those things, that will lessen the impact of this tragedy for the west country.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Q7. With flooding in Frampton for residents and for businesses in Woodchester, and more risks to my constituency associated with warnings for the Severn estuary, does the Prime Minister agree that the action taken so far by various agencies and councils has been helpful? Can he reassure my constituents that the Government will continue to invest in flood defences?
The Prime Minister
I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. He is right to mention the difficulties on the River Severn, because the River Severn, the River Tame and the River Wye are all expected to respond to recent rainfall, and levels are likely to go up. In terms of the Thames, I should tell the House that a second peak in Thames levels is expected on Sunday and Monday, which could potentially put 800 properties at risk. We will go on doing whatever we can to help people—getting people to communities before they are flooded. It is worth making the point, to be fair to the previous Government as well as this one, that all the schemes that have been built since the 2007 floods, when 55,000 homes were flooded, are now protecting well over 1 million properties that would have been flooded this time around, were it not for the important work that has been done.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
Q8. This week Shelter found that house prices have been rising faster than wages in most parts of the country. Does the Prime Minister not agree that the lack of affordable housing is making the cost of living crisis worse for millions of people across our country? Will he confirm that this Government have presided over the fewest new homes built since the 1920s?
The Prime Minister
Housing starts are up from the dreadful situation we were left by the previous Government. We are now investing huge amounts into affordable housing. I make no apology for the fact that it is right to deal with the demand side on housing, as well as the supply side. Programmes such as Help to Buy are helping to get builders building, because builders will not build unless they believe that buyers are able to buy. We are fixing this problem and house building is rising.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
Parts of my constituency are suffering from flooding. I want to put on record my thanks to the council officers from West Berkshire council and Reading borough council, the volunteer flood wardens in places such as Purley and the soldiers of the 7th Battalion the Rifles for the work they are doing to help my constituents. I welcome the schemes the Prime Minister has talked about to help individuals and businesses. Will he ensure that the details of those schemes are made available to everyone affected, so that they can make use of them?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know that he is working very hard to bring people together in his own constituency to make sure that everything that can be done in Reading is done. Obviously, they will be concerned about the rise in the Thames. We will publish details of all the announcements I have made, and we will add into that the fact that the major banks are coming forward with more than £750 million of financial support, which will mean repayment holidays, reduced or waived fees, loan extensions, increased flexibility of terms and specialist support teams deployed on the ground for businesses and farmers who desperately need help. It is a time for our insurance companies and our banks to demonstrate real social responsibility. I believe that they are beginning to do that and we should encourage them to do so.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Q9. Does the Prime agree that, after months of letting energy companies get away with increasing their profits on the back of hard-working people across the country, the Energy Secretary’s letter to the regulator this week was simply too little, too late?
The Prime Minister
The Energy Secretary was right to write to Ofgem, because it is part of the competition review we have announced. It is on this side of the House that we have delivered the £50 off bills by rolling back the cost of the green levies. That is the right approach, rather than promising a freeze that only means prices will go up.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
Does the Prime Minister agree that the success of coalition policies in helping to create more jobs than forecast is very encouraging? Does he also agree that to get sustained growth we need businesses to invest more? Will he do all he can to support my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary in encouraging more business investment?
The Prime Minister
In this next stage of the recovery, an increase in business investment is what we need to see. I think there are positive signs from the last GDP numbers. My hon. Friend talks about there being more jobs than forecast. It is worth remembering that the Leader of the Opposition told the CBI in October 2010:
“They have a programme which will lead to the disappearance of a million…jobs.”
Since he made that statement, we have seen 1.6 million new private sector jobs and 1.3 million more people in work—more forecasts like that please.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Q10. With almost 1 million young people unemployed and the Work programme, in the Chancellor’s own words, underperforming, will the Prime Minister think again and introduce Labour’s youth jobs guarantee?
The Prime Minister
The Work programme has done an excellent job in getting people into work. If we look at the job creation record under this Government, we see, as I have just said, 1.3 million more people in work, a reduction in youth unemployment and a reduction in long-term unemployment. There are more people in our work force than ever before. There is always more to do to get young people into work. The best schemes we have had are those such as the work experience scheme, which seem to be providing real hope and jobs for our young people.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
May I thank my right hon. Friend for coming to Plymouth on Monday to see for himself how hard First Great Western is working to try to get trains back on track? One thing that would be incredibly helpful would be to ensure we have a timetable for those actions so that we can deliver a resilient railway line as well.
The Prime Minister
I completely understand my hon. Friend’s concern. Obviously the gap in rail provision created by the Dawlish disaster will take time to deal with. Above and beyond that, I know that what he and people in Plymouth want is a timetable for achieving a three-hour service to Plymouth and for more trains to arrive early in the morning. As I have said, we have a longer-term programme of looking at rail alternatives at the same time as restoring the Dawlish line.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Q11. With economic growth delayed for three years after the election, we have been left—[Interruption.] We have been left with more young people out of work long term than at any time for 20 years. Surely we must do more so that we do not waste the potential of a generation.
The Prime Minister
I can only think that the right hon. Gentleman is suffering from a form of memory loss. He was a Treasury Minister when we lost 7% of our GDP, when youth unemployment doubled, and when people were being thrown out of work. Under this Government, 1.3 million more people are in work, young people are getting back to work and, while countries elsewhere are struggling, our economy is growing. That is partly because we took tough and difficult decisions to get the budget deficit, which he and his henchmen left us, under control.
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
Unfortunately, some tourist concerns in my constituency have reported lost bookings, partly as a result of over-sensationalising of the crisis. When the crisis is over, will the Prime Minister talk to the Treasury about allocating a sum of money to market the far south-west to potential visitors and businesses, to get the message across that we really are open for business?
The Prime Minister
This was a point made to me by a number of the businesses that I visited in Cornwall and Devon over the last couple of days, all wanting to see much more advertising and publicity about how the area is open for business. I will take every opportunity I have to help with that issue. When the Dawlish line is restored, it will be a big moment to market the benefits of Devon and Cornwall, where I have been on holiday myself.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
Q12. May I invite the Prime Minister to recall the day that he asked the country to imagine a Tory Government who would be the most family-friendly in Europe? When he reflects on that day, will he also consider the recent report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research that shows that the cost of raising a child and getting him or her through university has risen by £5,000 in one year? Does he think that for most families money is no object?
The Prime Minister
Many families have faced a very tough time in this country, not least because of the appalling recession that we had under the Labour party. But this Government have taken steps to encourage flexible working; we are introducing tax-free child care; and we have supported more child care for more families than the last Government did, helping two, three and four-year-olds. We have the new rules on shared parental leave and, above all, many families now have someone in work because the economy is moving and businesses are employing people. Those 1.3 million extra jobs mean 1.3 million more families with the security and peace of mind of a regular pay cheque coming in. That is the best way to help our families.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
May I remind the Prime Minister that in 1998 Northampton suffered serious floods, sadly killing two people and affecting 2,000 houses? Since that time I have noticed that we have not over-bothered not to build on floodplains. After this episode has been dealt with and his time is more readily available, will he ensure that we do not build on floodplains so that people are not inconvenienced in this way?
The Prime Minister
I will look very carefully at what my hon. Friend says. The figures suggest that, in applications to build properties on flood plains, the official advice, which includes the advice from the Environment Agency, is followed on 99% of occasions. It is worth remembering that areas such as London are part of flood plains, so it is not possible simply to say that no house can ever be built on a flood plain, but we need to look at the rules, listen to the experts and ensure we build only where we can protect.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
Q13. Thanks to Labour in the Scottish Parliament, Scots may soon be free of the iniquitous bedroom tax, so will the Prime Minister today give an assurance to the House and the Scottish people that he will work with the Scottish Government to help bring that about, or, better still, scrap that hated tax for everyone in Britain? If he will not, Labour will.
The Prime Minister
Obviously, under our devolved system, different parts of the United Kingdom can make different decisions to spend money as they choose. My view is that it is not fair to tell someone in private rented accommodation that they do not get money for extra bedrooms and tell someone in social accommodation that they do. It is a basic issue of fairness, which is why it has overwhelming public support.
Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Q14. Last week, I undertook a one and a half hour walk organised by Guide Dogs for the Blind to experience at first hand the difficulties that blind and partially sighted people experience as pedestrians—it was very tricky. Will my right hon. Friend look carefully at the recommendations of that organisation on shared surface streets?
The Prime Minister
I will look carefully at what my hon. Friend says. Everyone has noticed the huge amount of improvements that have been made to the way in which streets, traffic lights and pavements are arranged for that purpose. I am happy to look at what he says and see what more needs to be done.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
Q15. If the Prime Minister believes that flood defence is so important, why did he cut the budget when he came into office?
The Prime Minister
As I have explained, we will be spending £2.4 billion in this four-year period, which compares with £2.2 billion under Labour. I think the hon. Gentleman will find that 2.4 is more than 2.2. Also, by setting out the spending figures all the way up to 2020, he must ask the shadow Chancellor, who is back in the gesticulation game, whether, if he has a zero-based budget review, he has to admit to his colleagues that he cannot guarantee to match any of the spending we have announced. Silence.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Prime Minister is aware of a cross-party group of some 80 MPs campaigning for recognition of our nuclear test veterans. Given that the UK compares poorly with other countries on the treatment of veterans and the very high incidence of ill health suffered by their descendants, will the Prime Minister meet us? We have hit a brick wall with the Ministry of Defence and the Government have a good track record of recognising past wrongs.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has consistently campaigned on that. I have discussed it with him before and wrote to him a month ago setting out the Government’s view. The frequently stated position of this Government and previous ones is that there is no published peer-reviewed evidence of excess illness or mortality, but it is right to go on looking at the issue, as I know he will. We will continue to discuss it with him.
Development of Greenbelt Land in South Staffordshire
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to present a petition from 4,281 residents of South Staffordshire and other areas protesting against the proposals to build on green-belt land between Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Great Wyrley and Cheslyn Hay in the South Staffordshire constituency, and others,
Declares that the current proposals to build a car park, health centre and over 140 houses on greenbelt land by Landywood Lane, Great Wyrley will lead to the erosion of the distinct identity of our individual villages and could cause substantial environmental damage; further notes that despite the rejection by South Staffordshire District Council of the current proposals, in line with public opinion, the applicant has appealed to the Planning Inspectorate to ignore the wishes of local residents and overturn the council’s decision.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take all possible steps to ensure that the Planning Inspectorate upholds the decision reached by South Staffordshire District Council and rejects these proposals so that the greenbelt can be conserved for future generations.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001318]
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Since Mr Speaker is an ex officio Church Commissioner, he will be aware that on Monday 10 February a petition was delivered to the General Synod of the Church of England at Church House here in Westminster. May I appeal to you, Sir, to ask him, on behalf of my constituents, to take whatever steps he is able to ensure that that matter in the petition—the continued use of the bishop’s palace in Wells as the home of the bishops of Bath and Wells, as has been the custom and tradition for over 800 years—is discussed fully at the Church Commissioners’ next meeting and that the views of the petitioners are taken into account? I am most grateful, Sir, for your attention to this matter.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of that point of order. Obviously I can give no direct help, but I will ensure that Mr Speaker is aware of what has been said. I know that he is an avid reader of Hansard and will already have picked up on this before I speak to him. It may be helpful to the hon. Lady if I say that Church Commissioners questions is coming up tomorrow and she may be ingenious enough to raise it there as well.
Residence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
The petition relates to the Church Commissioners’ decision to relocate the Bishop of Bath and Wells from the flat in the bishop’s house, which they condemn as unsuitable for temporary living accommodation, citing reasons of sustainability and privacy. The diocese and the palace trust have expressed publicly their opposition, as have thousands of local residents who want to understand how the flat in the bishop’s house can be unsuitable, particularly when considerable sums were spent on repairs and maintenance four years ago; how travelling several miles to work, worship and back can be considered sustainable; and how a property on the A371 can be more private than the secluded flat in the bishop’s house, with its private garden, when the palace is closed to visitors from 4 pm at this time of year and 6 pm in the summer.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Church Commissioners’ decision to move the Bishop of Bath and Wells from the Bishop’s Palace and Gardens is a mistake and further that a local Petition on this subject has received well over 2,000 signatures.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Church Commissioners to wait until the new Bishop of Bath and Wells takes up office and then reconsiders and consults on whether he should reside at Bishop’s Palace and Gardens.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001319]
Hillsborough
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Hillsborough stadium tragedy.
It is over a year now since Parliament last debated Hillsborough and the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. I hope the House will join me again in expressing my thanks and gratitude to the panel’s chairman, Bishop James Jones, and all his colleagues for their remarkable work. The contents of the panel’s report were truly shocking, and on the day it was published, the Prime Minister apologised to the families of the 96 for what he described as a “double injustice”. The first injustice, he said, was the appalling events; the second was the treatment of victims by the press.
I would like to pay tribute to the bereaved families, the survivors and all those who have campaigned on their behalf. As Home Secretary, I have met a number of the bereaved families, and I have always been impressed by the dignified way they and their supporters have continued their search for truth and justice. I would also like to pay tribute to those in the House who have campaigned on behalf of the families, including the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Halton (Derek Twigg) and the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham).
So significant were the conclusions of the panel’s report that its publication on 12 September 2012 set in train a number of important events. By the end of that year, this had resulted in the High Court’s quashing of the original inquest verdicts and the ordering of fresh inquests, and the establishment of two major investigations. In a debate in the House following publication of the panel’s report, I said that
“after the truth must come justice; and after the apology, accountability.”—[Official Report, 22 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 721.]
As lead Minister, it is my responsibility to ensure that the various processes of Government and the criminal justice system are working effectively and are properly resourced to ensure that justice can be done, not only for those who died, but, just as importantly, for their families and all those who have campaigned on their behalf ever since.
Today, I would like to update the House on the progress made in respect of the new inquests and the new investigations. First, I shall deal with the inquests. Last year, and within two months of the decision by the High Court, Lord Justice Goldring was appointed as coroner to conduct the fresh inquests. A number of pre-inquest hearings have already been held. The police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigations are working in support of the coroner to a timetable determined by him, and the Government welcome the fact that Lord Justice Goldring has made it clear that the fresh inquests will start on 31 March.
I have always made it clear that the Government will support the families in their quest for justice and, as part of that commitment, we are funding a comprehensive legal representation scheme. Work began on this immediately after the original inquest verdicts were quashed, and the scheme that is now in place will ensure that the families are properly represented and supported at the inquests.
In addition to the inquests, there is the investigative process, to which there are two elements. The first is led by the IPCC. This is its biggest-ever investigation, and its principal focus is on police involvement in the aftermath of Hillsborough. It is worth reminding the House that this includes not just the role and actions of the South Yorkshire police, the force responsible for policing the match, but the West Midlands police, who played a significant role in the aftermath, providing support to Lord Taylor’s inquiry, producing the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions and assisting the then South Yorkshire West coroner, Dr Stefan Popper. I can therefore confirm that the experience of survivors, again brought to public attention in the last week, is part of the ongoing IPCC investigation.
The second element is a criminal investigation—Operation Resolve—led by Jon Stoddart, the former chief constable of Durham. He was appointed by me in December 2012 and his key role is to investigate the deaths at Hillsborough. Working alongside both investigations is a discrete Crown Prosecution Service team, through which lawyers from the CPS provide ongoing advice.
When he was the Bishop of Liverpool and sitting in another place, Bishop James Jones said that justice was about process as well as outcomes. The unique, complex and wide-ranging circumstances of Hillsborough meant that two major and large-scale investigations had to be created from scratch, and both had to have firm foundations. Suitable premises had to be found, acquired and fitted out. This has been done. Suitably skilled and appropriate staff had to be identified and recruited. This has also been done. It was inevitable that this would take time but the investigations are now located together on one site in Warrington—close to the source of the investigation—and are making good progress.
Like a number of the bereaved families and a number of those in this House, I have been to Warrington to see both investigations for myself. I have met some of the staff from the IPCC and Operation Resolve investigations and I was struck by their dedication and professionalism. I welcome the fact that the IPCC and Operation Resolve want their investigations to be open and transparent and both investigations have welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate to families the work they are doing.
I would like now to set out to the House some of the progress being made; first, in respect of the IPCC. Over 1,600 people have now responded to the IPCC’s witness appeal. This includes over 250 people who have never given accounts before. The IPCC is conducting detailed analysis of every response and is following up the evidence provided. Separately around 400 witnesses have made requests to the IPCC to see their original statements and the IPCC is helping people to access those statements.
In addition, the IPCC has recovered around 2,500 police pocket notebooks. These pocket books had not been made available to previous investigations and are now being analysed by IPCC investigators.
The IPCC has also conducted further analysis of the 242 police accounts now believed to have been amended. In this context, it has completed more than 160 interviews and these interviews continue. Alongside the IPCC investigation, the police investigation—Operation Resolve—has, first, worked to the coroner’s priorities and timetable, meeting all the deadlines set by him; secondly, has worked in parallel on other aspects of the criminal investigation that are complementary to the work being done for the coroner; thirdly, has obtained access to the best quality audio-visual material and carried out extensive analysis and, in doing so, has drawn on advances in digital imagery and forensic technology not available to previous investigative teams; and fourthly, has now completed more than 1,000 interviews of witnesses.
The work being done by Operation Resolve is aimed at providing the fullest possible picture of what happened at Hillsborough, both to ensure that the inquest is able to answer the questions that the bereaved families still have and in support of the criminal investigation.
As Jon Stoddart has said,
“If we find there were health and safety breaches or evidence of wilful neglect, we will seek to ensure the appropriate action is taken against those responsible. If we find that, with the benefit of hindsight, there are lessons to be learned, we will endeavour to ensure that they are addressed. And if we find evidence of criminal behaviour, including manslaughter through neglect, we will seek to lay charges and put people and organisations before the courts.”
As I have said, this new phase of work on Hillsborough began with the publication of the independent panel’s report. One particularly important aspect of the way in which the panel approached its work was its consultation with the bereaved families and I was keen to learn from and build on that dialogue. So I was pleased when Bishop James Jones agreed to act as my adviser on Hillsborough, bringing with him his knowledge and experience from his time as chair of the independent panel.
Operation Resolve and the IPCC have invested significant effort engaging with families, including by offering the opportunity for families to visit their offices in Warrington. “Family forums”, proposed by Bishop James Jones and building on work done by the IPCC, the Crown Prosecution Service and Operation Resolve, are now taking place regularly. The forums provide a regular and structured opportunity for bereaved families to have face-to-face discussions with those conducting and advising the investigations, and they provide an important opportunity for the families to probe and ask questions.
Bishop James Jones, in recent conversations with me, has described the families’ position as being “encouraged” but not “persuaded.” Mr Speaker, this is a sentiment I can understand. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, it is the sentiment that underlies my continuing commitment to do everything I can to ensure that the process of disclosing the truth, started by the panel, is followed by the process of justice.
I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Speaker
Order. Just before I call the shadow Home Secretary and then other colleagues, it might be helpful if I emphasised to the House that the special inquest has not yet formally opened. I think there have been pre-hearings, but the hearing itself has not opened. Therefore, the matter is not sub judice. However, colleagues might think it wise to exercise a degree of restraint and to weigh their words carefully if they seek to express opinions on matters that plainly fall to be determined by the inquest. That is not in any sense intended to chill; it is simply to make the point to colleagues, who will exercise their own judgment as to how to proceed in this matter.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and welcome the points she has made updating the House on the progress made in getting justice for the families of the 96 people who lost their lives at Hillsborough.
This year we approach 25 years since that dreadful day. I pay tribute, alongside the Home Secretary, to the Hillsborough Family Support Group, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and Hope for Hillsborough, which have shown such determination in their campaign for their loved ones. None of us should underestimate the strength they have shown and what they have endured over the last quarter of a century, or how difficult it is still for them as the inquest approaches—something that no family would ever want to go through. We should show them our respect and our support in their pursuit of justice.
In October 2012, when the Home Secretary last addressed the House on the disaster, we all welcomed the independent panel report and paid tribute to the panel, led by Bishop James Jones. I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and the work he did to establish it, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who I know spoke to her about giving today’s statement, my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Halton (Derek Twigg), and colleagues in all parts of the House who continue to support their constituents in the pursuit of justice.
The list of failures exposed by the panel at that time was extensive, shocking and deeply distressing—the failure to improve the safety of the ground in the years before Hillsborough; the holding of the game at a ground without a safety certificate just four years after the Bradford fire; the failure to organise crowd safety; the failure to close the tunnel; the failure to help fans speedily; and also the failure to be honest about what happened and to investigate, and the falsehoods that were perpetuated afterwards. This House came together to make clear our view that it was a betrayal of victims and their families.
Since the panel’s report, I welcome the overturning of the original coroner’s verdict, at the instigation of the Attorney-General, and the plans to reopen the inquest next month. I welcome the Home Secretary’s agreement to our proposal for more powers for the IPCC and her decision to provide more resources for such a substantial investigation. I welcome the work by the Stoddart and IPCC inquiries and the substantial investigations that are under way. She is right to highlight the importance of support, including information and legal support for the families, but let me ask her some further questions about developments.
The Home Secretary will obviously know the importance of the inquest to everyone and the concern at how long everything takes. Can she assure the House, first, that the inquest will start on 31 March and that every effort is being made to ensure that all evidence and papers are in place, and that there are no further delays? Secondly, will she tell the House what more she is doing to ensure that every police force organisation and agency provides full disclosure to the Stoddart investigation and the IPCC, and does not simply wait to be asked for information? She will know the distress it has already caused to find that important and shocking information was never revealed to the independent panel—the pocket books she referred to—but also that far more police and witness statements were altered.
We have heard, for example, the disturbing testimony of one witness, who was a teenage student at the time. He told the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme that he was threatened with prosecution for complaining about failings by South Yorkshire police, saying:
“I’m a 19-year-old boy, three weeks out of Hillsborough, traumatised, and he’s threatening me that he’s going to put together a case for wasting police time because he didn’t like my evidence”.
I know that the Home Secretary would agree with me that it is a matter of deep concern that full information was not given to the panel at the time and would welcome the work done by the investigations to get more evidence since, but will she give a direction to all forces to provide all information related to the Hillsborough disaster to the two investigations?
The Home Secretary will also be aware of concern among the families about surveillance operations against families in the aftermath of the tragedy. I understand that the IPCC is not currently investigating those claims or concerns. Will the Home Secretary commit today to ordering the release of any material on surveillance, including intercept surveillance, of Hillsborough families in the aftermath of the disaster to the IPCC?
Thirdly, will she update us on the progress that has been made on the wider investigations that go beyond the inquest and on decisions on prosecutions? Clearly, the main focus of the investigations has been preparing information for the inquest, but what progress has been made in investigating criminal wrongdoing? According to what timetable does she believe files will be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service from the IPCC and the Stoddart investigation?
Finally, will the Home Secretary reassure us that the IPCC will have the resources it needs and that she will ensure that the inquiries work effectively alongside each other? She will know that concerns have previously been raised about co-ordination between the inquiries. Will she keep that under review to ensure that the investigations are fully co-ordinated?
The last quarter century has been immensely difficult for the families of the 96, and they know that the coming months will be very hard, too. The House should pay tribute to them and to their faith and determination over a quarter of a century, as well as to those who have stood by them, particularly the people of Liverpool. We should strain every sinew to ensure that they get justice now.
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments and echo her point about how difficult it will be for the families when the inquest starts to have to relive the tragedy yet again. None of us can fully appreciate how difficult and traumatic that will be for the families and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.
As for the date of the inquest, as I said in my statement, Lord Justice Goldring has said that the fresh inquest will start on 31 March. That is obviously a matter for him and not for me as Home Secretary, but I am sure from the way he has conducted matters so far that he will recognise the significance of the inquest over which he will preside and the importance of ensuring that it goes ahead according to an appropriate timetable.
The right hon. Lady asked about disclosure, what information is available to the two investigations and what information was not made available to the panel. The panel saw some 450,000 documents from more than 80 organisations, so it did an extremely good job and, having seen all that evidence, it was able to come up with its shocking results about what had happened at Hillsborough. However, everybody has been perhaps not surprised but disappointed that further documents have emerged as a result of the two investigations, particularly the police pocket notebooks and other such documents. I have written to both Dame Anne Owers, as chairman of the IPCC, and Jon Stoddart—they are in charge of the investigations and it is up to them to amass the information they need—to ask whether they were having any problems getting material and whether it would be helpful for me to write to the chief constables of all police forces to ask them to look for any material that they might have.
The right hon. Lady asked about possible undercover operations and although no formal complaint or allegation has been made to the IPCC, it is aware of the concerns and is considering how best to address them. It is reviewing the material on Hillsborough so if it discovers any evidence in its investigation that suggests that surveillance such as that which has been suggested took place it will pursue that evidence.
I recognise, particularly given what has happened over the past 25 years, that everybody is keen to ensure that there should be no sense that the timetable is not be followed appropriately. I discussed the matter with Operation Resolve and the IPCC when I was in Warrington. They are keen to ensure that at every stage they do everything properly so that there can be no opportunity to challenge their results. We would all agree that that is appropriate, but it takes time to do that. I can assure the right hon. Lady that I am making resources available to the IPCC and we talk to it and Operation Resolve regularly about what is necessary.
I was pleased to see—I am going to use the term appropriate again—the appropriate level of co-ordination between the two investigations. They are considering separate issues, although of course the IPCC is managing part of the Operation Resolve investigation, and they are working together in a manner that is fit and proper, ensuring that everything that is being done is being done in a way that will ensure that people have confidence in the results when they come out, whether they result in criminal charges or other findings.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Will the Home Secretary assure us that any questions that the relatives have can be asked and answered? What level of co-operation is she receiving from retired police officers?
Mrs May
There is indeed a level of co-operation from retired police officers. Not everybody whom the IPCC has wished to interview has been willing to come forward for interview, but we are talking about people who are being interviewed as witnesses. The fact that an officer is retired would have no relevance if somebody were to be found to be suspected of criminal activity. The investigation would of course proceed as appropriate.
As for the families and their access to information, there are two ways in which families can ask questions. First, they can go to Warrington and meet members of the investigation teams and talk to them. When I was in Warrington, I was taken through the sort of information that the investigators could provide to the family of a particular individual. Families rightly have questions. One benefit for those involved in the investigations when families go in to talk to them is that they can identify any questions that the families might ask that might not be the first to come to mind for the investigators. The forums are also important, as they provide families with the opportunity to raise questions face to face. As I have said, they are ably chaired and managed by Bishop James Jones.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and express my continued admiration for how she is leading this process. People might think of the families’ battle as being won, but in truth only now are they entering the most difficult period of all. Parents such as my constituent, Delia Brown, are only now finding out basic details about what happened to their sons and daughters between 3.15 and 4 o’clock. With that in mind, does the Home Secretary share my disgust and disbelief that South Yorkshire police have today, using public money, rerun slurs about alcohol that were dismissed by Lord Justice Taylor in 1989 and by the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012?
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman’s comments about the families are well made. This is a very difficult time and, as he says, it is only now that some families are in any sense able to fill in the picture of what happened to their loved ones. I am concerned by his reference to South Yorkshire police and would be grateful if he and I could have a further discussion about that matter. I am certainly prepared to look into it.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I join the tributes to the Opposition MPs who have led the persistent campaigns for the families. Sadly, in the 1980s I was involved in two sets of crushings. The first was at an archbishop’s funeral, when 14 people died around me. The other was at the Heysel stadium, where, within 200 feet of me, 39 people died. As well as finding out what went wrong at Hillsborough and after Hillsborough, which I hope the inquest will achieve, we ought to pay tribute to the Police Federation for being the first to call for the safety of grounds from the 1930s through to the 1970s. May I say to my right hon. Friend that perimeter safety and crowd safety could be another tribute to those who sadly lost their lives?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We should all be constantly aware of the need to ensure safety at stadiums when large numbers of people are at football matches and other events. It is extremely important that we learn the lessons from the tragedies from the past to ensure the safety of those who attend such events in the future.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for agreeing to update the House today. In her statement, she said that in 2012 the Prime Minister apologised for a double injustice, yet now we learn that Hillsborough may have been a treble injustice. Ever since the disaster, the families of the 96 have expressed concerns that their phones may have been hacked and electronic communications monitored. First, families lost loved ones, then they were criminalised, and now it seems that they may even have been shadowed by terrorists. I have one simple question, so that the right hon. Lady can put the families’ minds at rest. Will she confirm unequivocally that at no stage since the disaster were the families subjected to surveillance by the police or security services of this country?
Mrs May
I fully appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the families’ concerns, but he will recognise, as I am sure his right hon. and hon. Friends will too, that we do not identify those who may or may not have been subject to interception in any form. I know that this is difficult and I know that some would prefer a somewhat different answer, but it has always been the case that the police do not confirm or deny whether an individual has been subject to interception. There are two avenues that I would refer to in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s question. The first is that, as I said in response to the shadow Home Secretary, the IPCC is aware of these concerns and is considering how best to address them. If it does find any evidence during its investigation that suggests that surveillance has taken place, it will pursue it. It is also available to those who feel that they have been subject to unlawful interception by the authorities, to refer that to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which provides an independent forum for investigating complaints.
Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
As a special constable, I can vouch for the fact that most police officers are hard-working and honest, but will my right hon. Friend confirm that if there is evidence of any wrongdoing by any individual police officers, they will face the full force of the law?
Mrs May
I can assure my hon. Friend that the purpose of the work that is being undertaken is to ensure that we can provide justice for the families. Jon Stoddart has made it absolutely clear that at whatever level they find that errors have been made, be they in relation to health and safety or criminal activity, appropriate action will be taken. If it is criminal activity, people will be charged and prosecutions will be brought.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
The tenacity of the bereaved families has led to the exposure of organised deceit following the Hillsborough disaster and to where we are today with a new inquest and a major inquiry. How will the Home Secretary ensure that she maintains the trust of those bereaved families, and will she denounce the outrageous slur that Bishop Jones’ independent panel might have had its own agenda?
Mrs May
I am very happy to reject completely the suggestion that Bishop James Jones’ panel had its own agenda. It did an extremely good job. It identified a significant number of documents, and some are still coming forward. It did the first important task, which was to reveal to all of us the validity of the comments and claims made by the families over the years, who had not been believed and had not been listened to. The panel showed that the families were right and that errors and potential criminal activity needed to be investigated. The work of the independent panel was crucial. It was essential in enabling what is now happening in terms of trying to ensure that we get justice for the families. Had it not been for the independent panel’s inquiry and the results that it had, we would not be in the position that we are in today with two investigations.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the update to the House today. Many people will be surprised to learn about the number of police notebooks that have suddenly become available. I am sure that the Police (Complaints and Conduct) Act 2012 has facilitated some of the investigation, but does she agree that there is a moral imperative for the Police Federation to ensure that all serving and former police officers co-operate fully with the investigation?
Mrs May
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Most people will be surprised to know that police officers retain their police notebooks in the first place, and secondly that in this instance they kept them and did not reveal them to the panel. It is good that around 2,500 notebooks have now been made available to the investigators. I encourage anybody who has any information relating to Hillsborough—any documents, any files, anything—to come forward with that. I also support my hon. Friend’s suggestion that the Police Federation encourages all police officers and former police officers, who may have information relevant to these investigations, to make that information available.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I think that I speak on behalf of all my colleagues from Sheffield and the people of Sheffield when I commend the Home Secretary for both her statement and its delivery, and the work that she has been doing. I endorse the tribute paid by the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary to the families and the concern that they expressed for them as we approach the 25th anniversary.
Finding the information in the form of the handbooks that have just been discovered will have shocked all of us once again, as will the information that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) mentioned. Those of us who are concerned to ensure that successor bodies are both open and transparent, and to ensure that we get to the truth and hold to account those who were responsible 25 years ago, should co-operate in any way possible. I would be prepared to join my right hon. Friend and the Home Secretary in dealing with any allegations that are made about South Yorkshire police or any other local body that may at this point in time be acting inappropriately.
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for his offer. As he says, it is extremely important that all those who can encourage others to act appropriately, do so, and are willing to challenge those who are not acting appropriately.
If I may, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) asked another question, which I did not answer, about how I could maintain the trust of the families. I see the families from time to time, and as I have explained, Bishop James Jones is my adviser on the matter and he is seeing the families through the forums. I have made it clear both to Bishop Jones and to the families that if they have any concerns at all they should feel free to raise them directly with me and I will look into them.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for her update today and the work that she is doing on this issue. I pay tribute to the strength of the families who have been pursuing justice through this dreadful almost 25 years. Will the Home Secretary clarify whether she believes that criminal prosecutions will take place and whether she believes that criminal prosecutions must take place to provide justice for those families?
Mrs May
I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern around this issue. It is not my place to say whether a criminal prosecution will take place. The investigation takes place and the Crown Prosecution Service will independently determine whether prosecutions are appropriate. What I can say is that all those involved in the investigation are absolutely clear that where they find criminal activity, they will do their best to ensure that that is pursued, because everybody wants justice for the families.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I also welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and thank her for updating the House in the way that she has. May I take her back to the questions of the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey)? The right hon. Lady is right that we should encourage people to co-operate, but I understand that 13 police officers have refused to be interviewed by the IPCC and two have declined to respond to its letters. She may have better figures. We do not just need encouragement; we need compulsion. They need to be made to co-operate so that we get to the truth.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman is right: for the purposes of the IPCC investigation, 13 of the 242 officers whose statements have been amended have declined to be interviewed. Those who are being regarded as witnesses are not required to be interviewed at this stage, and there are those who have said that they do not believe that they have anything to add to the information that has been available in the past. I would therefore suggest a degree of caution in respect of how those who are not taking up the request for an interview are portrayed. As I have said, if the IPCC identifies someone who is potentially suspected of a criminal offence, that will not be an impediment, and the IPCC will act accordingly.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I was on the Lepping lane terraces at the FA cup semi-final of 1981. Around me, several spectators were crushed, and had to be treated by the medics. That was eight years before the Hillsborough tragedy. Can my right hon. Friend update the House on what lessons were learnt from previous FA cup semi-finals at Hillsborough, and will she arrange for that information to be published so that we can see what planning took place before the tragedy?
Mrs May
One of the things that emerged from the independent panel’s inquiry was that, sadly, there were apparently indications of problems relating to the ground, but not all the necessary lessons had been learnt from previous experience. That is why it is so important—as one of my hon. Friends said earlier—that in the event of an incident of any scale, but particularly an incident of the scale of the Hillsborough tragedy, lessons are learnt and people look at what went wrong. Part of the current process involves consideration of whether there was any neglect in relation to the ground and the operations that took place there. Sadly, as I have said, it appears that there were indications of problems, but lessons were not learnt before this particular football game.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Let me first record my appreciation of the work that the Home Secretary has been doing, and also my admiration for the families’ continuing and amazing drive to seek justice.
I understand that up to nine police forces are currently being contacted, but I want to concentrate on the Cheshire force and its former chief constable, Mervyn Jones. In a letter that I received from the IPCC, I was told:
“Records were found that indicated that 22 boxes of documents were recovered by South Yorkshire police on the 22nd of January 1998. These records indicated they were copy documents taken by Mervyn Jones.”
The documents had been kept in the armoury of Cheshire constabulary.
As the Home Secretary is aware, a number of those documents were policy files, and were rather important, because Mervyn Jones led the west midlands inquiry. He took them away with him after leaving the force. I found out today that they contain references to files that have since been deleted from the HOLMES computer system, which stores information about major incidents. May I ask the Home Secretary what lessons can be learnt from that? How can it can be ensured that in the event of any future major incident—or, God forbid, any future disaster—it will not be possible for a chief constable, or an assistant chief constable, to take files away rather than storing them at a central point?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman has raised a very important point. As he presumably knows—because it has been in touch with him about this particular individual—the IPCC is aware of the issue, has identified Mervyn Jones as a person who is of interest to it, and is planning to interview him.
This issue has raised questions in my mind about the ability of police officers to retain documents that have been relevant to them in a particular role, and to take those documents away with them as if they were personal possessions. That has been highlighted not just in relation to the question of the pocket notebooks, but, on a slightly larger scale, in relation to the case of one person, Mervyn Jones, and I think that we need to look into it further.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I genuinely congratulate the Home Secretary on the thoroughness of her approach, but may I ask how many police notebooks that may prove relevant later were not recovered?
Mrs May
About 2,500 police notebooks have now been supplied to those conducting the investigations. I would encourage any officer out there who may have a notebook that is relevant and who has still not provided it to do so, because I think it important for all the notebooks to be made available.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the courage and bravery shown by all those affected by the Hillsborough disaster over the past 25 years, and especially in recent months.
May I ask the Home Secretary again about the police pocket notebooks? She has said that about 2,500 of them were not made available to those conducting earlier investigations. Does she know, or has she asked, why they were not made available?
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, and for her work on this most sensitive and troubling of issues. I also pay tribute to the Hillsborough families for their steadfast campaigning. They are about to enter a very difficult phase in the process.
I make no apology for returning to the issue—the shocking issue—of the disclosure of 2,500 police notebooks. May I ask two questions? First, the IPCC now has those notebooks, but will those involved in Operation Resolve have copies of them? Secondly, will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is a thorough review of the storage of police notebooks, given that the issue has implications for all historical investigations, criminal and civil?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for reiterating the point of concern about the police pocket notebooks. Although the two investigations are concerned with slightly different aspects of the Hillsborough tragedy, it has been made clear that information that is relevant to both should be available to both.
As for my hon. Friend’s wider question, as I said earlier to the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), it is important for us to look at the issue of documents that are acquired by police officers in relation to investigations or to incidents that they attend and are required in the course of their duty, but which, in the cases that we are discussing, were treated as if they were personal possessions that officers could take home and deal with as they wished. That is an issue to which I shall want to return.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I, too, thank the Home Secretary both for her statement and for the way in which she continues to handle this most important issue. Does she agree that one of the truly alarming things that we have discovered in the recent past is the extent to which there was what could almost be described as an organised stereotyping distortion of what had taken place, and the extent of the prejudice against those who attended the game at Hillsborough—both those who lost their lives and those who survived? Does she agree that one legacy that we should really want is the knowledge that, in any future situations of this kind, such prejudices will be continually challenged and rooted out? The only guarantee that we can have that something like this will not happen again is a guarantee that those attitudes will be utterly condemned, and will become a thing of the past.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman has made a very important point. As I said earlier, when the Prime Minister made his own statement in 2012, he said that the second injustice that had taken place was the treatment that the families had received at the hands of the press. However, the injustice was wider than that: it did not just involve the press.
The press set out their particular portrait of what had happened, and of the families involved, but a collective view was then taken by society as a whole. With very few—but notable and honourable—exceptions, people had that collective belief, and felt that it was not necessary to take the matter further. Like others, I pay tribute not just to the families who continued the fight, but to the Members of Parliament and others who consistently challenged that view and said that it was not right to let the issue lie. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: while I hope that we never see an incident of this sort again, it is important for those who try to set a public perception on such issues to be challenged.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
On the question of the police notebooks, will the Home Secretary find out—it will be difficult, but not impossible in this computer age—how many police notebooks relating to the Hillsborough inquiry were used by the same police officers who in the 1984 miners strike compiled notebooks and statements all saying the same thing in the first few sentences?
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
May I add my praise for the families, whose tenacity and courage are an example to us all? I know from speaking to many of my constituents how difficult this is for them. What plans does the Home Secretary have to offer counselling and additional support to the friends and families of the victims, who are going to relive the trauma of 1989 during the impending inquests?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady makes an important point; this is going to be a very difficult time for the families. Additional consultation space will be provided for them so that they can have meetings with their legal teams, and every effort is being made to ensure that, in every practical sense, attendance at the inquests is made as easy as possible for them. We recognise that support of the kind she describes needs to be provided to those involved, and the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice and the coroner are working together to ensure that that is made available.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I should like to echo other Members in thanking the Home Secretary for her statement and for paying tribute to the families, campaigners and Members of the House for their work on this matter over the past 25 years. May I take the Home Secretary back to the issue of Lord Justice Goldring’s deadline of 31 March for fresh inquests? Understandably, she has said that that is a matter for him, but does she understand that it is important for the families that everything that can possibly be done is being done to ensure that that deadline is met?
Mrs May
I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. I know that the investigatory teams are aware of the importance of meeting Lord Justice Goldring’s timetable in relation to the support they are giving him as coroner. Indeed, up to now they have met all his deadlines. They are clear that, in order for him to do his job, any requests put to them should be dealt with in the timetable that he has set.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
The Home Secretary has made a welcome commitment to look again at the issue of the police withholding evidence. Does she not agree, however, that the fact that the notebooks, and other alarming acts, have only just been uncovered, despite all the previous investigations over many years, shows that the current system of police accountability and scrutiny is not fit for purpose, despite having been strengthened? She must know that she would get support from right across the House if she were to announce a radical overhaul of the system.
Mrs May
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s concern about this matter, but the Government have already acted in a number of ways in relation to this question. We have enhanced the powers of the IPCC to deal with these issues, and we will be giving it more resources to enable it to investigate all serious and sensitive complaints against the police itself, rather than passing them back to police forces. That is an important change. Also, I have already announced to the House a number of steps that are being taken in relation to the wider question of police integrity. The findings of the Hillsborough panel have raised a very real question in people’s minds about police integrity, and I welcome the steps by the College of Policing to introduce a code of ethics. A number of steps are being taken to improve that issue, so that people will feel that they can have full confidence in the police. The vast majority of police officers work day in, day out for our protection and to cut crime, and they work honestly and with integrity. However, when there are those who do not, it taints the picture that people have of the others. It is our duty to encourage and enhance people’s confidence in their police.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has referred in previous answers to the police notebooks being kept by individual officers. Will she clarify whether all the 2,500 notebooks were recovered from individual officers, or whether some of them were collectively stored by the police and deliberately withheld from previous investigations?
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
A number of police forces, including South Yorkshire, have failed to provide evidence about Hillsborough. Does the Home Secretary think that that is due to a lack of resources or does she think that there is a worrying, ongoing reluctance to get to the truth?
Mrs May
It is extremely unfortunate that, at various stages, South Yorkshire police did not provide all the evidence, but I was pleased that they were willing to respond to and provide information to the independent panel. It is in everyone’s interests that we should be able to get to the full truth and to see justice done.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Perhaps the biggest risk to safety in football stadiums today is that posed by a panic mass evacuation, following a bomb scare, for example, or a terrorist incident. Will the Home Secretary confirm that there is no requirement on any stadium to have a test mass evacuation using real people, that no such tests have been carried out and that every football stadium in the country relies on computer simulations to determine whether its mass evacuation plans will actually work?
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure the Home Secretary will recall that when we debated these issues in the House some time ago, the overwhelming sentiment on both sides of the House was that there was a need for full transparency and disclosure, not just as a prerequisite for justice but as a first step towards resolution. In the light of that, may I return to the question of the 13 retired police officers who have refused to comply with the IPCC’s requests for interviews? Does she agree that, rather than it being a matter for those officers to decide, before any interviews take place, that they have nothing to add, the IPCC should be allowed to discover whether that is the case during the process of such interviews?
Mrs May
As I said in response to earlier questions, those who have refused to be interviewed so far have been regarded as witnesses, which means that there is no requirement for them to take part in an interview at this stage. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about who should be the judge of whether they have anything to add to the investigation, but as I have said, they are being regarded as witnesses and are therefore not required to be interviewed.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I hope that this question will not be regarded as trivial, but at a meeting I attended recently with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), it was suggested that the facilities for the families at the inquests—toilets, tea and coffee-making facilities, catering and comfortable seating, for example—were not quite as good as they should be. Will the Home Secretary check that they are in fact up to scratch, because it is essential that those families should be made to feel as welcome and as comfortable as possible at the inquests?
Mrs May
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. As I said earlier, it is my understanding that every effort is being made to ensure that the facilities are appropriate for the families, and that it will be as easy as possible for them to attend. She will have noted that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), is in his place. He will have heard her comments, and I am sure that he will take them away to the Ministry of Justice.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I am sure the Home Secretary is aware that the families have asked for one person to be put in charge of the entire investigation so that they can co-ordinate all the various investigations that are going on. Will she consider doing that?
Mrs May
I have had a number of discussions with representatives of the families about this matter and what the most appropriate structure is to have in place. I believe that we do have the right structure at the moment, because the two investigations are looking at different aspects of this tragedy. It is of course important that there is co-ordination between them, and as I said earlier, the IPCC is managing part of the Operation Resolve investigation. What I have seen from visiting Warrington is that both investigations are conscious of not only those areas where it is necessary for them to co-ordinate, but those areas where it is necessary for them to recognise the difference in their investigation.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I acknowledge the worthy statement of the Home Secretary on the double injustice, but why should the ethic of apology and accountability not extend to the third possible level of injustice—the hostile surveillance of victims’ families? What standing policy says that evidence in that regard can continue to be withheld? Surely that is what would tell us how far and how high this syndicate of deceit and vilification actually reached. Before the Home Secretary tells me, as she told my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), that families can go to the IPT, will she tell us what the IPT’s record is of upholding complaints or ever giving a reason?
Mrs May
I will disappoint the hon. Gentleman, in that I will not be giving a different answer to the one I gave earlier. As I indicated, the IPCC is aware of this issue and is considering how best to address it. If it finds evidence of surveillance that has taken place, it will deal with that as appropriate.
Points of Order
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Home Secretary, in answer to my earlier question, said that it would not be the practice of the police to confirm whether or not surveillance had taken place. Chief Constable Mick Creedon did provide such information to the Select Committee on Home Affairs when allegations were raised about surveillance of the Lawrence family. May I therefore ask her, given the helpful way in which she has responded to all the comments on the statement today, to look further at the points that were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram)?
Mr Speaker
It is open to the Home Secretary to respond to that point of order if she wishes to do so.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
If I may, Mr Speaker, I will provide clarification. I apologise if my language was loosely used earlier, as it should not have been. It is the accepted policy that we do not deny or confirm whether somebody has been subject to interception, which I understood was potentially part of the issue raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), but I have noted the concern that has been raised in this House and I will take that matter away.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You were very helpful at the start of this statement in explaining the need not to prejudice the investigation or the inquest next month, when the legal proceedings start properly. Could you expand on that and provide further information? My concern is that the information I am being given and that some of my colleagues are being given suggests that this situation can only get worse: people thought it was bad enough with the report, but it will only worsen as information comes out. We do not want to prejudice those legal proceedings, but at the same time there may be a need for parliamentary scrutiny of or debate on issues that appear in and come out of the investigations and proceedings. Would it be possible for you to issue some clearer guidance—it could be written if you think that is appropriate—on what MPs can and cannot raise in the House?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his indication to me a few moments ago of his intention to raise it. The straightforward position is that once the inquest has formally opened, the matters of which it treats are then sub judice. In those circumstances, the Chair does have discretion to waive the sub judice rule, though it has to be said that no such judgment would be made lightly, for I have to be conscious of and respectful towards the resolution relating to sub judice that the House has itself passed. I am sorry if my reply today is not as informative as the hon. Gentleman would wish. However, I will keep abreast of events and I am well aware of the sensitive balance of considerations here as between the proper concern of Members with freedom of speech, on the one hand, and the crucial imperative of not prejudicing the conduct of the inquest, on the other. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and others will feel that I am very conscious of those balancing considerations and will attend to them keenly. If, at any stage, an hon. Member wishes to approach me for guidance as to the appropriateness or otherwise of what he or she might be minded to say, I would certainly always, guided by the Clerks, attempt to be helpful to Members.
Perhaps we can leave it there for today. It is always nice to be smiled at by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who seems to be in a relatively cheery mood, whether with me, with the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) or with the House I do not know.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
You had better not ask me what I was saying!
Mr Speaker
I am not sure how grateful I am to the hon. Gentleman for what he has just said, but I will take his advice. If there are no further points of order, we come now to the ten-minute rule motion, for which the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) has been patiently waiting.
Housing Benefit and Universal Credit in the Social Housing Sector (Regular Payments)
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
13:46 - The House divided: - Ayes: 226 / Noes: 1 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish the right of persons in receipt of housing benefit and universal credit in the social housing sector to receive said benefits at regular intervals; to provide that such persons should not be financially penalised in relation to the number of bedrooms in a residence; and for connected purposes.
I would hope that my Bill would receive support from Members in all parties. It is an olive branch for those who, perhaps wrongly, underestimated the real consequences of walking through the Government Lobby to support the introduction of the bedroom tax. Perhaps I am being too generous in saying that, but the alternative—that those who supported the introduction of the bedroom tax knew fully of the dire consequences it would have on those affected—quite frankly beggars belief. Make no mistake about it, the full and sole intention of this Bill is to sweep away the dreaded bedroom tax. It seeks to restore justice for up to 660,000 people—some of our country’s most vulnerable citizens, two thirds of whom are disabled. They have been inhumanely let down by the Government's reforms to housing benefit in the social sector. The tax has caused heartache and devastation to thousands of residents up and down this country. It is a tax whose forced implementation has put extreme pressure on councils, housing associations and social landlords. It is a tax that has put extreme pressure on the ordinary working people who are forced to deal with those unable to move and those unable to pay.
On the introduction of the tax, Ministers argued that the changes would encourage people to downsize to smaller properties and, in doing so, help to cut the £23 billion annual bill for housing benefit; would free up living space for overcrowded families; and would encourage people to get jobs. Significantly, it has achieved none of those objectives. At the same time, the Department for Work and Pensions has trumpeted the measure as, “returning fairness to housing benefit.” The words “fairness” and “bedroom tax” should not be uttered in the same sentence.
This tax is a problem in each and every constituency up and down the country; this is not simply a problem in Labour-dominated authorities. I was contacted only last week by a distraught resident from the Tory shires who is hoping that my Bill will be successful, because he, a disabled man, is living in a three-bedroom property and has just received an eviction notice for bedroom tax arrears. He is not alone. The bedroom tax sufferers in Liberal Democrat and Tory constituencies number around 250,000. Perhaps we should ask them whether they think this abominable tax has restored fairness to housing benefit.
My Bill seeks to restore fairness and to end the misery that the bedroom tax has caused. There are hundreds if not thousands of appalling examples of suffering. There was the mother of two who suffered a crippling illness. She committed suicide after realising that she could not pay the bedroom tax. Her family received correspondence later saying that she should have been exempt from paying the tax.
A widow, aged 59, pleaded with the Prime Minister not to force her to move. Her husband’s ashes had been buried in the garden under the rose bushes that she had been given by her friends at the funeral. She did not have a disability or health problems, but this was a family home for goodness’ sake, and that means something. A home is where people bring up their children and cry tears of joy. In this case, there were many tears of sadness when the husband unfortunately passed away.
This next case is hard to comprehend; it really is difficult to try to get to grips with. The family of the 1999 child of courage who spent years battling multiple cancers is suffering at the hands of this horrible reform. These people are not living a life of luxury in palatial properties; they are living in a place in which they feel safe and which they call home. It is time to listen. I am sure that most fair-minded individuals would agree that a bedroom is not spare when carers sleep in it, when couples use it because one of them has health problems and they cannot share a bed, or when it houses vital medical equipment, yet this indiscriminate tax deems it so.
The reality is that yet another measure introduced by this Government is in total and utter chaos. It lies in tatters, with the victims left to pick up the pieces. As thousands suffer, there is a real risk that the bedroom tax will end up costing more than it saves. The National Housing Federation has said that the savings claimed by the Government are “highly questionable”, partly because those who are forced to move to the private rented sector will end up costing more in housing benefit.
Surely, as politicians and members of the general public, we are entitled to question the motives behind the introduction of the bedroom tax. The tax does not deal with the problem of under-occupation. In fact, the Government’s costings on the yield raised from the bedroom tax explicitly assume that people will not move into smaller properties. There are simply not enough smaller properties for people to move into.
Some 180,000 households were deemed to be under-occupying two-bedroom homes, yet only 85,000 one-bedroom homes became available during the whole of 2012. The savings projections of the Department for Work and Pensions assume that not one of the 660,000 households affected would respond to the policy by moving to a smaller home. Put simply, this is yet another example of the Government balancing the books on the backs of the disabled and the vulnerable. The tax must be scrapped now.
Housing associations say that tens of millions of pounds are likely to be lost through the build-up of arrears. Reports this morning estimate that 144,000 people have fallen behind with their rents since the introduction of the bedroom tax and that 14% have received eviction notices. Was that really meant to happen? Was this eviction of the poor really the plan of the Government?
In October, research by the University of York, which was based on data by the housing associations that have tenants affected by the bedroom tax, suggested that the policy could save up to 39% less than the DWP had predicted. In the past week, it has emerged that more than half of the £500 million that the Government claim will be saved by the hated tax will be spent on re-housing disabled people. These are vulnerable people who already live in properties that have been adapted for their needs and who have built up local support networks with their friends, family and neighbours. The future for them lies in communities that are unknown and foreign to them. They have been cast out like the proverbial dog in the night.
In the past months, it has emerged that a loophole in policy exempts thousands of people. Instead of looking at that loophole—[Interruption.] It is suggested that that loophole has been closed. As Ministers scramble to mop up the mistakes, another challenge to the hated tax has arisen. A judge has overturned the tax in the case of a Rochdale man who argued that one of his bedrooms was used as a dining room. The appeal was upheld on the basis that the dictionary definition of a bedroom is a room that contains a bed that is used for sleeping in. An avalanche of appeals is on its way.
I am proud to see that, only last week, the Scottish Labour party shamed the Scottish National party into abolishing the bedroom tax. I must put it on the record that I am also proud that one of the first acts of a future Labour Government will be to end this full frontal attack on the vulnerable. However, we cannot afford to wait until the general election of 2015. I urge the supporters of this tax to think again. The question is this: are they happy to see the misery and social disruption of the vulnerable and disabled?
I began this speech by expressing the view that those who voted in favour of introducing this dreaded bedroom tax may have underestimated the human suffering that it would cause. That is no longer in any doubt, so I urge them all to do the honourable thing and support my Bill.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23).
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not know whether you noticed, because you are blind in some of these matters—deliberately so—but the Tory Whips were standing outside the Chamber during the Division and persuading Conservative Members not to vote, so we on the Opposition side of the House hope that that means that they have changed their minds and will get rid of the bedroom tax as soon as possible. If they will not, we will.
My point of order relates to the bedroom tax. Mr Speaker, you will recall that earlier this year, when asked how many people had been affected by the loophole in the bedroom tax legislation, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, a Member of this House, said that the number was between 3,000 and 5,000. In a written answer, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), also a Member of this House, said that she did not know how many had been affected. Lord Freud, a Minister in another place, said that it was an insignificant number. Today, however, he told the Work and Pensions Committee of this House that the number was 5,000. We have been doing their work for them, and from freedom of information requests to local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland, we already know, from just the third that replied, of 16,000 cases. I know that there is a means whereby a Minister in this House can correct the record, but how can a Minister in the other House correct the record in this House?
Mr Speaker
As I understand it, at this stage the matter is essentially the property of the Committee. I readily accept that it is a Committee of this House, as the hon. Gentleman has just advised me. The matter is with the Committee. If the Minister has made a mistake—I make no comment on that, because I do not know—he will have the opportunity to correct it. If the Committee believes that he has made a mistake and wishes to pursue it with him, it is open to the Committee to do so. At this stage, therefore, there is nothing further to add. To the extent that I have already advised, it is a legitimate matter for the Chair because of the involvement of a Committee of this House. I hope that that is helpful to the hon. Gentleman and to all colleagues.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I can confirm that that was exactly what the Minister told us this morning, and we will be pursuing the matter further.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady has put the matter on the record. Ever anxious to be helpful in the provision of information, she will feel that she has done her duty. We are deeply obliged to her.
Police
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:03 - The House divided: - Ayes: 286 / Noes: 202 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)
I beg to move,
That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales) for 2014-15 (HC 1043), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.
In addition to seeking approval of the police grant report, I also intend to outline the ways in which we are reforming policing. We are fundamentally rethinking how policing is configured so that it is efficient and effective for years to come. This settlement reflects the need for responsibility in public spending, but it is part of a successful reform programme that is making our streets safer and our policing more modern.
On 18 December, I laid before the House the provisional police grant report for 2014-15, along with a written ministerial statement that set out the Government’s proposed allocations to local policing bodies in England and Wales. After careful consideration of the consultation responses, we have decided that force level allocations will remain as announced in December.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way so early on in his speech. He said that the grant has to be seen in the context of the new landscape of policing. Is he telling the House that that landscape is now settled—for example, that all the functions of the National Policing Improvement Agency have been transferred to other bodies such as the College of Policing or the National Crime Agency—and that that is the end of the matter and we can now move on to the next stage?
Damian Green
I can certainly tell the right hon. Gentleman that this is not the end of police reform. I will set out the reasons for and some of the effects of the reforms that we have made so far. It is a very radical programme of reform and there is more to do.
Before I go further in, I hope, enlightening the House about that wider point, it is important to recognise the achievements of our police officers. The unacceptable actions of a very small minority of officers have recently challenged the reputation of the police, but I hope the House will agree that this is not representative of the outstanding day-to-day work that the vast majority of our officers carry out in fighting crime and protecting the public. Indeed, we need look no further than the incredible job that police officers and other emergency responders are currently undertaking to support the families and businesses that have been so badly affected by the flooding.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
May I take the Minister back to his point about allocations? Also in December, a protest started against exploration for shale gas in my constituency, which is now tying down 150 Greater Manchester police officers, with the cost being met out of Greater Manchester police budgets. That amounts to £40,000 a day for the 150 officers who are being deployed, and the cost could mount to £4 million, as it did in Balcombe when there was a protest there. Does the Minister agree that there should be some support for that? Why should Greater Manchester’s population suffer a much greater thinning out of our police force, especially given that we have already lost 1,000 officers? There is no consideration of this when a controversial issue like shale gas is dumped down somewhere—the Government are keen on shale gas exploration; I am not—and the local police force and taxpayers have to support the whole deployment.
Damian Green
If there are special individual circumstances that affect a particular force, that force has the opportunity to apply for a special grant.
Damian Green
Before the hon. Lady rises to her feet again, let me deal specifically with fracking. She and I clearly disagree about the benefits of shale gas, but that is a debate for another time. The first anti-shale gas protests in Balcombe obviously affected the Sussex police, and they have applied for a special grant. I have to take evidence from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary before I decide whether the full grant or part of it should be given—that is the correct way to deal with taxpayers’ money—but that procedure is there for precisely this sort of event.
Barbara Keeley
I raised this issue in the very first week and I have also raised it with the Home Secretary. This deployment is an enormous distraction from policing in Greater Manchester, and at great cost, and there is no help in the short term. I have been told by the gold commander responsible for the force that only if the costs go over 10% of the police budget, which would be £5 million in the case of Greater Manchester, would we get any support at all, and the Minister is saying that it would come at the end of the process. The local police force in Balcombe took the whole hit of the £4 million costs. This is of great concern to us in Salford, as I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who is here, would agree. The force’s deployment is detracting from our day-to-day policing.
Damian Green
This is precisely why successive Governments have had the special grant arrangement to deal with unexpected events that may have a particular effect on a particular force. Since the hon. Lady clearly supports the protesters and I clearly do not, I gently suggest to her that the reason there has to be all this police activity is that if people are demonstrating in a way that requires a huge police presence, as peaceful protests need not—
Damian Green
May I finish my sentence before I give way to the hon. Lady for the third time? I urge her to urge those of her friends who are so against shale gas in the area to make sure that they are conducting their protest in a way that does not put unnecessary pressure on police resources.
Barbara Keeley
I have to say that I feel the Minister goes too far in what he says. He has no idea what my views are. I am supporting the local population, our local police force and our police and crime commissioner. This is a very unsatisfactory situation. The Minister’s comments about me are incorrect. I am supporting my constituents, who want our police force to be used for policing in our community.
Damian Green
The hon. Lady did say that she supported the views of protesters, but if she is saying that she does not support how they are protesting, then good, we are on the same side of that debate. That is sensible, because people obviously have the right to protest peacefully, but they should do so peacefully, not in a way that puts unnecessary pressure on both police resources and local communities. I have every sympathy for local communities in those conditions and, as I have said, the special grant procedure has been there for a long time for precisely such types of event.
To return to the subject of the wider grant, the achievements of police forces in this time of austerity and funding cuts are evident. Overall crime has fallen by more than 10% since this Government came into office. England and Wales are now safer than they have been for decades, with crime now at its lowest level since the independent crime survey began in 1981.
It is important to set the funding debate in the wider context. When this Government came into office in May 2010, we inherited the largest peacetime deficit in history. Borrowing increased to unprecedented levels under the previous Government, without due consideration for the long-term economic health of the nation. We are proud of the progress that we have made in addressing this most fundamental of issues. Borrowing as a percentage of GDP is down by a third, and our economy is growing. On 22 January, it was announced that unemployment had fallen by 167,000, representing the largest ever quarterly increase in the number of people in work in our country. However, we cannot rest there. Although the Government have made strong inroads into addressing the deficit, more needs to be done. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced last month that further cuts will be required into the next Parliament. That means that difficult decisions need to be made, which we must not and will not shy away from.
Despite that overall context, we have pushed to secure the best possible deal for the police, and have again protected them in 2014-15, this time from the further cuts announced to departmental budgets in December’s autumn statement.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The Minister is setting out a fairly gloomy scenario for support for our police service in the years to come. I am at loss to know why, if the Government are really intent on trying to do more for less, there has not been more integration, joint budgets and collaboration at national Government level. I am amazed that we are having two separate debates today, on the police settlement and then on the local government settlement. Surely this is a time for creative thinking, when we could come together, maximise our resources and make the real reforms that the Government are refusing to make.
Damian Green
I rather agree with the right hon. Lady’s underlying point. Indeed, I will speak later about precisely such ideas for collaboration not only between police forces—I will shortly come on to the many good examples of that—but between the police and other blue light services and between the police and local government.
I assure the right hon. Lady, who used to stand at this Dispatch Box doing my very job, that one of the more enjoyable parts of the role is visiting. For example, I recently went to Thrapston in Northamptonshire to visit a joint police and fire station: one building provides two emergency blue light services, which means not only that a better service is provided to the people in and around Thrapston, but that the two emergency services, as they have told me, work better together than they did before. She is absolutely right to say that this is a time for creative thinking, and I hope to reveal during my speech some of the creative activity that is happening in police forces in this country.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The Minister has just said that the police service has been protected by this settlement. It is certainly true that the service has been protected from the additional budget reductions scheduled for 2014-15. Is it not also true, however, that the Home Office has indicated that money will be taken from forces to fund a range of new initiatives—we strongly support some of them, such as the College of Policing—with the consequence that forces will face a 4.8% cut, rather than the 3.3% grant reduction originally anticipated? Those top-slices will therefore reduce the amount of grant funds available to individual forces to use at their discretion.
Damian Green
One of the top-slices was, for example, for the police innovation fund, which is available to all forces. I am happy to say that all forces applied in the first round—off the top of my head, I think that there were 115 applications altogether—and every force will get some benefit from that.
Furthermore, the point of the innovation fund is precisely to encourage the kind of collaboration mentioned by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). That is precisely the sort of creative use of the inevitably constrained pot of taxpayers’ money for spending on the police—let us not forget that it is still £8.5 billion—in the most effective way possible, aiding collaboration and enabling the police to carry on with the successful policies they have pursued during the past few years, which have continued to cut crime.
Central Government funding for the police will be reduced by 3.3% in cash terms in 2014-15, while overall funding will be reduced by even less, when the future police precept is factored in. We have also protected funding for counter-terrorism policing, due to the continuing threat posed to the UK by terrorism. To give the House a comparison, the remaining Home Office budget will be cut by 7% in cash terms in 2014-15.
This funding settlement is therefore challenging, but it is manageable. HMIC, the inspectorate, has made it clear that the proportion of officers working on the front line is increasing, and we are supporting the police through a range of activities to help them respond to the challenge and ultimately to emerge stronger. As I said at the outset, we are also changing the policing landscape in a way that represents the biggest set of reforms for a generation.
Jack Dromey
The Minister has just referred to front-line police officers. Will he confirm that in excess of 10,000 police officers have gone from the front line since 2010?
Damian Green
There are certainly fewer front-line officers, but that is because of the situation. However, one of the very good responses made by the police—in conjunction with the Government policy of reducing the amount of time-wasting form-filling that they had to do under the previous Government—has been to put a higher proportion of their officers on the front line. Indeed, the projections for the police officer work force suggest that front-line roles will increase from 89% in March 2010 to 93% by March 2015. That seems to me to be a very good use of front-line policing.
I gently point out to the shadow police Minister that the shadow Chancellor, in a burst of honesty last June, said:
“The next Labour government will have to plan on the basis of falling departmental spending.”
I hope, this afternoon, we will not hear a series of Labour Members or even Front Benchers claiming that they would shower more money on the police or that more money would be available for more police officers, because the shadow Chancellor has already said that that will not happen.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
On the number of front-line police officers, will the Minister join me in congratulating Cambridgeshire constabulary and particularly its chief constable, who has managed to maintain the number of police constables in the force throughout this period and is now recruiting more? Does that not show what can be done if budgets are used carefully?
Damian Green
I happily join my hon. Friend in congratulating not only Cambridgeshire police and the chief constable, but the PCC, Sir Graham Bright. Between them, they have done an excellent job, as is borne out by the fact that crime in Cambridgeshire is down 24% since June 2010, so its streets are safer than ever before.
I have already mentioned the police innovation fund, which will be worth up to £50 million a year from next year. It represents a new step to incentivise innovation, collaboration and digitisation, to drive efficiencies and improve policing for not just one year, but the longer term. We have established a £20 million precursor fund in this financial year and it has received a good response. As I said, there have been 115 bids, totalling £50 million. The bids cover a wide range of activities, including the development of mobile technology and greater collaboration across the emergency services.
A key area in which we are providing innovation funding and encouraging greater collaboration is the use of body-worn video equipment. Investment in camera technology will enhance police protection and support officers in discharging their duties.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I say kindly to the Minister that the collaboration between the police and local government, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) referred, is becoming increasingly difficult because of the financial constraints on local government. To give an example from my constituency, in 2004, Greater Manchester police and Tameside metropolitan borough council came together and rehoused Denton police station in Denton town hall, creating a one-stop shop for those services. Greater Manchester police has withdrawn from that because of the funding constraints on it, which means that nobody in Tameside’s second largest town has direct, face-to-face access to the police. That police station was their front line.
Damian Green
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s underlying point. I am surprised to hear anyone say that financial pressures make it more difficult to collaborate. The reaction that I have observed around the country, both in police forces and local government, is that financial pressures make better collaboration essential.
Damian Green
I will just answer this intervention before I take another one from my hon. Friend.
I have mentioned the joint police and fire station that I visited recently in Northamptonshire. Fairly recently, I also visited a joint police station and local government office in Chippenham in Wiltshire. Again, that is very creative. Each of those public bodies has to have buildings and each faces the same pressures that are faced by the whole public sector, for the reasons that I have rehearsed. They are using that as an opportunity. Instead of the police being based in the old Victorian police station on the edge of town, they are now in a more modern building that is in the centre of town. That makes the police more accessible. There are opportunities for the police and local authorities to collaborate. In this case, their physical collaboration has brought the police closer to the public.
Andrew Gwynne
I do not think that the Minister truly understands the scale of the local government reductions in areas such as Tameside. Since 2010, including inflation, Tameside metropolitan borough council has lost the equivalent of 50% of its budget. The council is therefore in retrenchment mode, as are the police. Communities such as Denton are losing out as both those public services retrench back to their own silos.
Damian Green
I know Greater Manchester police better than I know the local council, but it would seem logical for them not to retrench into their silos, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, but to seek out collaboration.
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who has been very patient.
Andrew Percy
I apologise for my eagerness to row in behind my right hon. Friend on this point. May I give an example of what is happening in my area? North Lincolnshire council, which already had much lower funding than other authorities, has lost about 20% of its funding. It has entered into collaborative arrangements with the police, which have seen it paying for police community support officers itself and having a sharing arrangement on fuel. It is about to go into a sharing arrangement on buildings. It can do all that at a time of reducing budgets, as well as reversing many other things, such as cuts to youth services. Services must work together. In my area, doing that is having a positive impact on policing on the front line.
Damian Green
My hon. Friend gives an example from another part of the country, which is similar to the examples I have seen in the past few months. He illustrates my point that collaboration is necessary at a time when public finances are under stringent control and that it can lead to better services than we had when the public spending tap was turned on more fully. That led to inefficiencies and a lack of collaboration.
Damian Green
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman just one more time, because he will have his own turn to speak in a minute.
Jack Dromey
To speak in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), I sat in on a meeting of the Tameside community safety partnership before Christmas. On the one hand, I saw inspiring innovation and effective collaboration. On the other hand, I heard an unmistakable message from the police service, the local authority and the other agencies that such was the scale of the cuts hitting Greater Manchester councils that not only was the thin blue line being stretched ever thinner, but the fabric of partnership working was being stretched ever further, putting at risk their ability to fight crime effectively in the area.
Damian Green
I can only repeat what I said earlier to the shadow policing Minister. Given that the shadow Chancellor has said,
“The next Labour government will have to plan on the basis of falling departmental spending”,
the shadow Minister is facing the very problem that he seeks to point out. I therefore hope that he will not give false messages to the people of Tameside and elsewhere that, in the unlikely event that the British people hand the car keys back to those who crashed the car in the first place, he will have a new pot of taxpayers’ money. According to the shadow Chancellor, he will not.
Hazel Blears
The Minister is being tremendously generous in giving way. I think that it improves the debate if we ask these questions. He is right that hard decisions will have to be taken on all public services, including the police. Greater Manchester has just seen a £6.4 million cut in policing. Apparently, £100,000 of the money that is being taken off us is going directly to the City of London police, who are said to need
“more money to deal with events of ‘major national interest’ in the capital’s financial district”.
I think that the people of Salford and Eccles would far rather that money was spent on tackling antisocial behaviour and burglary than on protecting the financial district and the banks. Does he think that that is the right priority?
Damian Green
Given that the right hon. Lady has presided over this budget in her time, she knows perfectly well that money is not taken from one budget and given to another. One of the big things that the City of London police do is to fight cybercrime and fraud. People in Salford, like those in my constituency and in every other constituency, want the police to be as effective as possible in fighting fraud and cybercrime. That is why that money needs to be spent.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will have looked at the Opposition’s commitments on funding, so will he help me? Will they match our spending totals for policing and the police grant settlement or will they do something different? I am completely in the dark.
Damian Green
My hon. Friend, as ever, puts his finger on the right point. The shadow Chancellor is saying that an incoming Labour Government would cut departmental spending, but all the mood music from those on the Opposition Front Bench is that they would increase public spending. That is a central incoherence at the heart of Labour policy. I hope that in his response, the shadow policing Minister will clear that up and answer my hon. Friend’s very good question.
Despite having been in post for just over a year, police and crime commissioners have contributed to the transformation of policing. The recent National Audit Office report confirmed that PCCs are driving improvements and value for money in a way that unelected police authorities could not. Their engagement with the public is much greater than that of the old police authorities. For example, one PCC has seen an 800% increase in the volume of correspondence compared with what the police authority received. PCCs have also been at the heart of reform and have embraced new technology. For example, my local force in Kent is using predictive policing, which combines historical data with predictive algorithms to identify the areas that are most likely to be affected by crime, thereby helping it better to allocate resources and target the deployment of officers.
As the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out, we have set up the College of Policing to increase the professionalism of the police. I am grateful for the support of the Home Affairs Committee for the College of Policing. I want policing to be regarded as one of the great professions, alongside the law and medicine. The college will produce an evidence base on what works and lead a transformation in how police officers and staff do their jobs. The college will soon publish the first ever code of ethics in the history of British policing. Given that we have just been discussing the ongoing Hillsborough process, I am sure that the House will recognise the importance of that code of ethics. It will be a clear declaration of the principles and values that are expected of all police officers. It will ensure that officers act with high ethical standards in all their conduct.
Keith Vaz
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way a second time, and I fully endorse the vision he has set out. I am a little concerned, however, about an issue that has been raised by a number of Members across the House, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), which is that the cost of the certificate of policing is put at £1,000. Does the Minister have any information that will help reassure those new recruits that either the Government are prepared to consider reducing the cost, or that it is money well spent for their future?
Damian Green
I am sure that it is money well spent because getting the best people into the police for the future is one of the principal points of our reforms. As I said, I hope that policing will become one of the great professions that people look to, and that therefore—even more importantly—it will provide a better service to the public. I know that the Metropolitan police commissioner is looking at providing soft loans or some other form of bursary, and it is for individual forces to decide whether or not to ask for the certificate and how best to attract people. I know that at the moment the Metropolitan police is looking at that.
Apart from the College of Policing, we are also expanding the Independent Police Complaints Commission to ensure that a greater number of cases involving the police will be considered independently. Given the current atmosphere surrounding various complaints about the police, I am sure that will be welcomed by the whole House.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way because it gives me the chance for a small plug. Has he had the chance to look through a copy of the report that I wrote for the Council of Europe on eradicating racism in police forces across Europe? If not, would he welcome a copy?
Damian Green
I confess that I have not yet read my hon. Friend’s report, and I would, of course, very much welcome a copy. I am glad that he got his plug on the record.
We have also launched the National Crime Agency, which is leading the UK’s fight to cut serious and organised crime. The priority for the NCA is to identify and disrupt serious and organised crime, and I am glad to report to the House that it is already achieving successes. In a recent operation in the Philippines, the NCA worked alongside US and Australian authorities to dismantle an international child abuse ring, leading to 17 arrests in this country. That is an excellent example of the partnership approach that the NCA was set up to develop.
While mentioning partnership, let me move on to collaboration. Police and crime commissioners and chief constables are working to drive efficiency and improve policing through greater collaboration. We know—we have already had an exchange on this—that collaboration initiatives can be challenging to set up, but there is no reason why forces should be planning to deliver less than 10% of their savings from collaboration. If they are doing that, opportunities are being missed.
Let me give some examples. Recently, the independent inspectorate praised the Warwickshire and West Mercia strategic alliance as one of the most ambitious and extensive collaborations in the country. In 2014-15, West Mercia expects 70% of its total expenditure to be spent collaboratively, generating 94% of the force’s savings requirement. Similarly, Warwickshire expects 75% of its total expenditure to be spent on collaboration, generating 75% of the force’s whole savings requirement. That shows what can be achieved.
It is important to recognise that collaboration is not just about sharing with other forces. Mental health, for example, has a big impact on crime and policing, and nine forces are now participating in street triage pilots that involve mental health professionals and paramedics working closely with police officers. They aim to improve the experience of, and access to, the health service for individuals at the point of mental health crisis. The initial feedback from those pilots is very positive, with good partnership working and a reduction in the number of police detentions under the Mental Health Act 2007. That is better for the police and, even more importantly, better for patients.
A further area where reform can both save money and deliver a better service is greater collaboration between the blue-light emergency services. Innovative work is already taking place between PCCs, fire authorities and ambulance trusts, and the Government are already supporting proposals for emergency services sharing properties, services, training and communications, through £3.8 million of funding from the police innovation fund.
Andrew Percy
I am interested in what the Minister has to say. I agree that there has been a lot of collaboration, but there still seems to be a bit of silo mentality in some of the services. Have the Government considered combining the PCC role to become also a fire commissioner and replace fire authorities, and to try to bring the two services together? There is a lot of synergy between them.
Damian Green
Obviously there are a number of such proposals, and the most sensible thing I can say at this point is that the Government will soon publish their response to the Knight review on fire services. That will, I hope, put all this in perspective.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am fascinated to hear the Minister mention the Knight review because we thought it had been quietly shelved. Given that it has taken months and that the Minister seems to know more about it than we do, will he enlighten the House on when the Government might consider thinking about publishing their response to the Knight review?
Damian Green
I assure the hon. Lady that the response will be published shortly and I hope that that satisfies her.
Our vision is for policing to be digital by 2016 because technology has the potential to transform policing the way it has transformed many other areas of life. Hampshire police already use mobile data on a variety of devices to give officers a full digital experience through their work, and it found that it could demonstrate a 26% reduction in the time spent by officers in stations, and a 20% reduction in mileage covered by patrol vehicles. Again, we are using the police innovation fund to support mobile working and invest in mobile devices, data storage and transmission. Indeed, we found that digital working can increase efficiency, even in forces that are not geographically next to each other. For example, Northamptonshire and Cheshire have united to create a joint shared service, providing 24-hour human resources advice, uniform ordering, and admin functions. I am delighted that 32 forces have now agreed to become digital pathfinders, because the thought that we can transform policing through the use of technology is spreading throughout the police service.
At a time when public spending has been under severe pressure, this adds up to the most significant reform of the police in a generation. It has already led to more effective and efficient policing, which delivers value for money for the taxpayer and ensures that significant falls in overall crime continue year on year.
Of course the challenge does not end there. We need to make further cuts to public spending and the police must play their part, despite the protections that we have been able to provide. Importantly, we are taking a long-term view on police funding. Last year, we announced that the Government would undertake a fundamental review of the formula used to allocate funding between police force areas. That complex process will take time, but the first phase of the work—an internal analytical review—is already under way, and we will consult a full range of partners, both inside the police and the PCCs, at the appropriate point as the work develops.
I recognise that the funding settlement will create further challenges for PCCs and forces, but it will also bring opportunities, particularly for those prepared to innovate, collaborate and transform, drive efficiencies and deliver even better policing across England and Wales. I commend the motion to the House.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Let me make two preliminary points. First, hon. Members were here earlier for a powerful debate on the Floor of the House about Hillsborough, and it is absolutely right that where there is wrongdoing, those who are guilty of such wrongdoing are held fully and properly to account. Secondly, I agree with the Minister when he says that a progressive reform agenda—progressive is my word, not his—is a good thing and should be embraced. That is precisely why we commissioned the Stevens report and I will say more on that later. I agree with the Minister on the proposal to professionalise the police service progressively, with chartered police officers accountable to the College of Policing, a lifelong career and personal development.
Let me turn to the issue of Hillsborough and how our police service is sometimes painted. I agree with both the Home Secretary and the Police Minister when they say that it would be absolutely wrong to paint the entire police service with the brush of a very small minority guilty of wrongdoing. I want to start by paying tribute to the brave policemen and women up and down the country who put their lives on the line day in, day out to keep our communities safe; police officers like Ian Dibell who have given their lives for their community and this country. In my constituency I have seen the outstanding bravery of police officers—for example, tackling armed robbers—and the very best of neighbourhood policing. The Stockland Green neighbourhood police team is an award-winning team. Five years ago, the North Birmingham academy in Kingstanding was riven with gang violence. The school has been utterly transformed by the excellent co-operation between the new leadership of the school and the local police service.
The first duty of any Government is the safety and security of the communities we serve. In government, Labour listened to what people wanted and to what the police said. We invested in neighbourhood policing: 17,000 additional police officers who know their communities and 16,000 additional police community support officers. Neighbourhood policing worked: it proved to be deeply popular and crime fell by 43%. Today, however, as a direct result of the actions of this Government, there is a real fear that we risk a generation of progress being reversed.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I was a local councillor, one of the biggest issues on the doorstep was the remoteness of the police. One of the biggest advantages of the introduction of neighbourhood policing was that people finally started to feel an affinity with their local bobby and their police community support officers. Is he aware that we are seeing neighbourhood policing teams covering larger geographical areas with fewer police officers and PCSOs? Those complaints about the remoteness of the police are starting to come back.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the heart of neighbourhood policing is the notion of local policing: roots in the local community, the community knowing who their police officers are and being able to identify with them and develop relationships with them, both in terms of providing evidence of wrongdoing and diverting people from crime—preventing crime in the first place. The intimacy of those local relationships is of the highest importance. At our peril do we go down the path of moving away from the notion of neighbourhood policing and towards remote police officers touring areas in their cars when what the neighbourhood wants to see is that presence on their streets.
Hazel Blears
I was the Minister responsible for bringing in neighbourhood policing, which, in its day, was very controversial. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the ways forward ought to be even more radical? We should integrate response policing and neighbourhood policing, so that instead of having two strands in our policing framework we can ensure that the underlying principles of neighbourhood policing are what drives the whole of our police service.
Jack Dromey
My right hon. Friend, with her formidable experience and the remarkable achievement of building modern policing, is right to make a strong argument in favour of that kind of integration. I pay tribute to her work in government. The lasting legacy is neighbourhood policing that this country so rightly prizes, albeit that the thin blue line is now being stretched ever thinner.
Andrew Percy
I am little surprised at what I am hearing, given that it was during the previous Government and under the chairmanship of a local Labour councillor that Humberside police got rid of its neighbourhood policing teams, got rid of local instant response teams in neighbourhood areas and created much bigger local policing teams that were not on a ward basis. I do not recall any opposition from anybody in the Labour party, locally or nationally, when that happened, so I am surprised at what I am hearing today. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm whether the position of the Labour party is to support what it did when it was in power, or is this a new policy?
Jack Dromey
The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that I do not know the details of the issue he raises. What I do know is that, as I go up and down the country—on 50 occasions, arising out of the Stevens report—the message I get from police officers, communities and partnership agencies is that they value what the Labour Government built. That is coming under increasing pressure as a consequence of what this Government are doing.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
However we term policing on the beat—as neighbourhood policing, or anything else—as a former soldier I know that being on the ground is the most effective form of gathering intelligence. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is what people want: police officers on the ground 24 hours a day where they can be seen?
Jack Dromey
I totally agree. It is the most effective form of local policing in terms of detection of crime and diverting people from crime. It is also key to the detection of very serious wrongdoing. For example, in the city I am proud to represent, Birmingham, there has been a large number of terrorist crime convictions. Some involved hi-tech monitoring, but in most cases the detection of wrongdoers came about through good neighbourhood policing and the development of local relationships; in this case, predominantly with the Muslim community. As a consequence of that co-operation, those guilty of the threat or actual commission of terrorist crime were brought to book. Whether it is a local burglary or a terrorist crime that threatens our community, there is no substitute for the local policing that the hon. Gentleman rightly identifies.
David T. C. Davies
I agree with a lot of what the shadow Minister is saying. That community presence is clearly very important, but surely there is also a role for police officers in vehicles being able to respond quickly to emergencies? That is something that the public also feel very strongly about.
Jack Dromey
Of course that is right. I made reference in passing to an example in my constituency. An armed robber on the run hijacked a car, pushing aside a terrified mother of two young children, who were still in the backseat, and drove off. The speed with which the armed response unit responded and apprehended that thug was outstanding. The thug is now where he richly deserves to be: behind bars serving a very long sentence. Hon. Members will excuse me if I try to move on from the paragraph of my speech that I have been on for the past five to 10 minutes, but I will be glad to take further interventions as appropriate.
Our central concern is that, as the thin blue line gets ever thinner, the Government’s 11th hour police grant report does nothing to stop the remorseless hollowing out of our police service, with more than 10,000 police officers already gone from the front line. The delay and infighting within the Government over the threshold by which a referendum would be required for an increase to the police element of council tax bills, has put police and crime commissioners and local authorities in an impossible position with only a month left to set their budget.
Damian Green
Before the hon. Gentleman skates over what is the heart of his argument and when he talks about the thinning out of the thin blue line and so on, is he committing a future Labour Government to spending more on the police?
Jack Dromey
Let me answer that straight up front. The Minister referred earlier to “Labour’s legacy”. If we look at what we achieved between 1997 and 2007, we reduced the debt to GDP ratio from 40.9%, which we inherited from the previous Government, to 36.4% and, in addition to all the other achievements that I see in my constituency—the health centres, the schools and the children centres—we put 17,000 police officers on the beat and 16,000 PCSOs with them. Then, after the 2007 crash, we faced up to the difficult circumstances confronting the country, and that is why the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), when he was Police Minister, said that economies were necessary. He embraced the proposal that a 12% cut could be achieved without affecting the frontline. Instead, the Government went too far, too fast, driving through a 20% cut with all the consequences that have flowed for the front line.
It is precisely because of the concern that has been widely expressed about the consequences for the police service generally, and for neighbourhood policing in particular, that we commissioned the Stevens report, which has proposed a progressive agenda and the rebuilding of neighbourhood policing. In the next Parliament, that will be one of our priorities.
Jack Dromey
In a moment. What we will not do is make a pledge in opposition for 3,000 additional police officers—the manifesto on which the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) fought the election—and then come into government and cut 10,000 officers from the front line.
Dr Huppert
I missed the bit where the hon. Gentleman congratulated my force on recruiting constables, as it is currently doing. I also missed the bit where he answered the Minister’s question. Does he have any sort of commitment for the future or does he just have a magical wish list? I wish we had had the money for those 3,000 officers: unfortunately—as I am sure he knows—when we came into office the Government were having to borrow £1 for every £4 that they spent and we could not continue like that. I wish we had had a better inheritance.
Jack Dromey
The Liberal Democrats are part of a Government who inherited a growing economy. With the greatest of respect, we will take no lessons from a party that pledges the abolition of tuition fees and 3,000 additional police officers, and then props up a Government who impose unprecedented cuts on our police service.
Looking to the next Parliament, I have been very clear about what we did in the last Parliament and what we would do now. Now, as I will argue later, we would follow the 12% proposed—including by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—because that can be achieved without harming the front line, and we will go into the next general election as the party of neighbourhood policing. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait for our proposals on how we intend to achieve that.
Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is tying himself in knots, so perhaps I can help him out. Can I take it from his evasions that the answer to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Minister is no?
Jack Dromey
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can help me. Has his party declared its manifesto on the police for the next Parliament? No, it has not. We will say to the country, “Judge us on our record.” Labour is the party of neighbourhood policing. Labour built neighbourhood policing and will defend it. The Government are undermining neighbourhood policing, and we will take no lessons from the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives.
Andrew Gwynne
I am glad that my hon. Friend has laid out Labour’s commitment to neighbourhood policing. The blunt truth for my constituents is that the difference between the HMIC proposals for a 12% cut in waste and the Government proposals for a 20% cut to policing is the loss of Denton police station, the loss of Reddish police station, fewer bobbies, fewer PCSOs and a more remote police service.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend is right. After the 2007 crash, all parties faced the question of how to make reasonable economies. The 12% proposal, which was carefully thought through and which we embraced, would not have put the front line at risk. A 20% cut has put the front line at risk. In addition, the fabric of partnership working is being stretched ever further and our communities are increasingly feeling the consequences.
The Government’s delay in announcing the threshold was unacceptable and has meant that police and crime commissioners were left in the ludicrous situation of having to propose their police precepts, under a statutory duty created by this Government, without knowing whether they would have the power to implement them. We have heard a lot about localism from the Government, but calls from police and crime commissioners for clarity about funding were repeatedly ignored in Whitehall.
Now that we have seen the settlement, I cannot say that it makes up for the hold-up by the Government. The Conservative party and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, are cutting police funding by 20%. In the last three years, that has already resulted in the loss of more than 15,000 police officers. I have seen firsthand in Birmingham and the west midlands some of the finest police officers one would ever want to meet or work with forced out under the A19 rule.
The loss of 15,000 officers was more than the experts predicted and a higher number than HMIC said would be safe. But the Government plough on regardless with this settlement. It is not only wrong in itself: it is increasingly damaging police morale. The pressure being put on our police by these unsafe cuts is starting to take its toll. Just last weekend, we learned that 800 police officers are off work on full pay as a result of stress-related sickness, costing the taxpayer millions of pounds every year. Just last year, police officers took 250,000 days off because of stress-related illnesses, a 15% increase over the three years up to 2013. Chief constables are blaming staff cuts for the staggering rise in sick days for depression and other mental issues.
In government and in opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, the distinguished former police Minister, said that some reductions in expenditure were necessary, given the economic circumstances, but as hon. Members have said today, we agreed with HMIC that a cut of 12% could be achieved without harming front-line policing. As we said at the time—it is important to remember this—a reduction of 12% over a Parliament, and of around £1 billion a year by the end of the Parliament, would have involved making tough choices if we were to succeed in protecting police numbers. Such tough choices included cuts in overtime, reform of procurement, collaboration, and altering shift patterns, but we believed then and believe now that that was the right approach, and that those savings were and are possible.
Conversely, the Government’s approach—they have ignored the HMIC advice and cut police funding by 20%—resulted in the loss overall of 15,383 police officers in the first three years of this Parliament, which is more than even the most apocalyptic predictions and proof that going beyond 12% meant cutting police officers, not waste, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said. The Home Secretary has said:
“Crucially, all the savings that I have set out can be made while protecting the quality of front-line services.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 714.]
She has repeatedly said that, but 10,460 bobbies have gone from our streets since the general election.
Mr Ruffley
Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the concept that falls in crime are determined not only by the number of police officers on the beat, but by how they are organised? It is not just a numbers game.
Jack Dromey
I totally agree. Numbers are crucial, but how officers are best deployed is too. I have seen at first hand inspiring examples—I am sure the hon. Gentleman has seen the same in his constituency—of developing relationships with parts of the community in an intelligent way and doing things in a smart way with other partnership agencies, and of sharing buildings and back-office resources. That was at the heart of the 12% HMIC proposal—it said that we should be better and smarter, but cutting 20% is going too far, too fast, with unacceptable consequences for the front line.
Mr Simon Burns
If everything is as terrible and devastating as the hon. Gentleman says, why is crime falling?
Jack Dromey
I will come straight to that point. Precisely as a consequence of what has happened, there are worrying signs that crime, and especially violent crime, is starting to rise for the first time in nearly two decades. The latest crime figures show disturbing signs that a generation of progress in some areas is being reversed. For example, there is a worrying increase in muggings. Violence against the person has increased in 16 police force areas and violence without injury has increased in 19 police force areas. According to the British Retail Consortium, shoplifting, which is often associated with assaults on shop staff, is at a nine-year high.
Increasingly, the victims of crime are being let down as criminals get off scot-free—7,000 fewer crimes of violence have been solved under this Government. Despite a sharp increase in sexual crime, there has been a significant fall in the referral of cases to the Crown Prosecution Service for prosecution. Victims of the most heinous crimes are being let down.
On top of that, police forces are stretched to breaking point. They are taking up to 30% longer to respond to 999 calls and there was a reduction in overall crimes solved in 22 forces—nearly 14,000 more crimes were unsolved last year than when the Government came to power. In addition, crime is changing. Fraud has increased by 34%, but we know that that is just the tip of the iceberg, because much online crime goes unreported.
Despite those worrying indications that a generation of progress is being reversed, all we have heard from the Government is the constant assertion that crime is falling. However, the Government’s independent statistics watchdog has said that the statistics can no longer be relied on, and has downgraded its precious gold standard. The UK Statistics Authority chair, the eminent Sir Andrew Dilnot, has said that the more accurate the statistics become, the more likely it is that they will show that crime is rising. That is the result of three years of cutting too far and too fast, and yet here we are again. The Government refuse to see the damage being done by their reckless cuts to police and local authority budgets.
Not only Her Majesty’s Opposition are raising concerns. The Association of Chief Police Officers president, Sir Hugh Orde, has warned that we may now be at the tipping point—he has used those words. Tony Lloyd, the chair of the police and crime commissioners national body, and the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner—he is highly respected across the spectrum as a former Member of the House—has said:
“I have warned since before I was elected that the government’s reckless programme of cuts is endangering community safety…We are now standing at the edge of a cliff . The chief constable”—
the eminent Sir Peter Fahy—
“has told me that he cannot provide the levels of policing that Greater Manchester people expect and deserve”
in future. He adds that, if the cuts continue:
“There simply will not be enough money in the pot”
for the police to discharge their duties.
The independent commission on the future of policing, led by Lord Stevens—it is a royal commission in all but name—and on which some of the most eminent figures in police and crime sit, has sounded a warning bell about the future of neighbourhood policing, which has been hit hard by Government cuts.
Jack Dromey
Lord Stevens has said that we are in danger of returning to a
“discredited model of reactive policing”.
The hon. Member for Cambridge may choose to ignore those voices, but if the head of ACPO, the head of the PCCs and the former head of the Metropolitan police speak with one voice, they send an unmistakable message that there is cause for concern.
Dr Huppert
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way finally. He talks of an independent commission. Is it appropriate and honest to do so when the website says clearly that the report is published on behalf of the Labour party? It says that the Labour party will place cookies on the computers of those who read it. Can he sustain the idea that the commission is independent?
Jack Dromey
Is the hon. Gentleman accusing Lord Stevens or any member of that commission of having a bias?
Dr Huppert
If the commission publishes a report that states clearly that it is published on behalf of the Labour party, it cannot be independent. The Labour party is not an independent body.
Jack Dromey
The hon. Gentleman reins back from impugning the integrity of the commission members. The shadow Home Secretary and the leader of the Labour party were absolutely right to listen to the widespread calls for what the Stevens commission became—a royal commission in all but name. It was 50 years since the last royal commission, and the police service required serious examination for the future in the 21st century. We were right to commission those eminent and responsible individuals, who produced a report independent of the Labour party. It challenges all political parties, but focuses on the growing concern in the crime and policing world at the Government’s direction of travel—the hon. Gentleman, having pledged 3,000 additional police officers, is propping them up.
It is not only police chiefs and the various people I have referred to who are raising concerns about the future of British policing. If the Minister stopped and listened to communities up and down the country, as I have been doing as part of our consultation arising from the Stevens report, he would hear their concerns loud and clear. He should talk to those in Coventry, Greater Manchester, Worcester or indeed Kent about neighbourhood policing, and they will say how crucial it is. He should talk to them about what is happening to neighbourhood policing, and they will rightly express their growing concern about that which they value and know from experience works.
Andrew Gwynne
I do not think my hon. Friend has been to see the Poets Corner residents association in Reddish, in the Stockport part of my constituency, but he might as well have been there, because the concerns he has just outlined are very much those it raised with me. In particular, its neighbourhood policing team is now far more remote; it is based in Stockport town centre, instead of at Reddish police station. Does my hon. Friend understand why those residents feel so isolated, on the edge of the borough, without an adequate local neighbourhood policing team?
Jack Dromey
Again, my hon. Friend speaks up admirably for his constituency, reflecting the concern I have seen on my visits for the Stevens consultation. Communities such as his have helped to build community policing, they value it and they want it to continue, but they are seeing it come apart at the seams, with the police becoming increasingly remote, often as a result of the cuts impacting on relationships with the police officers who serve their communities.
The first priority of policing is to fight crime, but it is not the only priority. If the Police Minister was to visit the Somerset levels and tell people there that the police are only crime fighters, they would be utterly uncomprehending. Yet the Home Secretary could not have been clearer when she said:
“cutting crime is the only test of a police force”.
Over the last few weeks, however, we have seen how important their wider role is. Their function, above all, is to build relationships, prevent crime, divert people from crime, detect crime and wrongdoing and bring those responsible to account, but, at times of disaster and crisis, they are also there to rebuild lives and communities. Their wider function, therefore, is of the highest importance.
The warning bells are sounding, and for that reason we are calling on the Government urgently to rethink the scale of their cuts and instead to set out a proper plan for police reform. We are now in the fourth year of this Parliament, and we are again debating a settlement that will damage the ability of police officers across the country to serve their communities. I want to stand up for the best of British policing and for our communities and their determination to fight crime. For that reason, we will vote against this settlement. It is the duty of us all in the House to fight for what our communities want and deserve—to be safe and secure in their homes and their streets and to see a continuation of the neighbourhood policing we built in government. For that reason, I urge all Members to vote with us in rejecting the Government’s plans.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) says “cuts”, which he has not promised to reverse; we say “reform”. We have the most reforming Home Secretary in the last 50 years when it comes to running and managing the police. When she entered office, she cleared away hundreds upon hundreds of Labour targets—key performance indicators, public service agreements; targets were coming out of constabularies’ ears—and she said, “We’re going to have one target—to cut crime”. And she is delivering on that target. Crime is down 10% since this coalition came into effect.
As the shadow police reform Minister in the last Parliament, I had occasion to study the history of police reform. What strikes me about the current plans is how coherent and effective Ministers have made their proposals. First, we have introduced locally elected police and crime commissioners, the idea of which was criticised even before it had begun. There was sniping about the low turnout at elections, but let us remember that 5 million people voted in those elections—5 million more than ever voted for local police authorities—and a single focal point of accountability for local people is now a reality.
My own PCC, Tim Passmore, in Suffolk, has frozen the police precept two years running, is driving collaboration with Norfolk constabulary and believes that we should, as other Members have said, look at forcing new savings from police service budgets by amalgamating and collaborating with other blue-light services. We have heard that fire services should be part of the PCC’s remit, and Mr Passmore is arguing hard for that. Also, we need to think much more imaginatively about the sharing of overheads, not just with the fire service, but with county councils. In my own area, it is shocking that the East of England ambulance service trust has four control rooms and mini-headquarters. Those should be sold off and joined up with the other blue-light headquarters of the police constabulary in Suffolk and the fire service.
The police reform agenda that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has begun contains some very coherent national themes. The new National Crime Agency brings coherence to level 2 crime, protective services and fighting organised crime, while under the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, we have a new focus on increasing productivity among police officers. The numbers game that the Labour party wants to play simply will not wash. It talks about the loss of up to 15,000 uniformed officers since 2010, but it has not pledged to find the money to reinstate those officers, and there is a reason it probably should not bother: it is not just the number of officers that will lead to reductions in crime and better crime prevention; it is how those officers are deployed.
Hazel Blears
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the reforms relating to serious and organised crime and the NCA depend on the success of neighbourhood policing, because the golden thread of intelligence, which every force relies on, starts at the community level? Unless we have that intelligence feeding all the way through to serious and organised crime and into counter-terrorism, we will lose that connection, and that requires numbers. We cannot build relationships unless we have people on the ground doing that job.
Mr Ruffley
The right hon. Lady misunderstands me. I am obviously in agreement that the bedrock of British policing, whether it is level 1, 2 or 3 policing, is neighbourhood policing and safer neighbourhood teams. That is a given. I am suggesting that with better productivity among existing uniformed officers we can deliver the falls in crime further into the future that we have seen in the last three years. How might we do that? The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims has talked about the new generation of productivity tools: electronic tablets, computerised forms and body-worn video cameras that will reduce the amount of form-filling back at the station. My right hon. Friend came to Ipswich a few months ago to see a pilot that Suffolk constabulary is running on body-worn video cameras so that police officers can spend less time behind a desk back at the station computing and filling in forms and can instead get on with visible policing on the front line.
In addition, Ministers have created something that was long overdue and which the Labour party had 13 years to create; a police ICT company that has offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy police technology in a joined-up way, so that we do not have 42 forces doing their own thing and wasting money, with interoperability being limited and the power of bulk purchasing completely ignored.
My right hon. Friend touched on the fact that we need to look not just at higher productivity, but at standards in policing. In that, the Home Secretary has been no slouch either. She has instituted the new College of Policing, which has taken a fresh look at how we professionalise the police service at all levels, with better training and an insistence on higher ethical standards. She is talking about direct entry so that very able men and women from other disciplines—whether the armed forces or business—do not have to do the compulsory two years’ probationary constable time before they can ever run a police force.
The Normington proposals, announced a few days ago, will radically reform the Police Federation and will also engender a higher sense of ethical responsibility among the 125,000 police officers that the federation currently represents. We also have the Winsor review, parts one and two of which are controversial as they make changes to overtime, salary levels and entitlements. But Winsor modernises the work force of the police service so that it conforms to the norms of every other part of the British economy, all other public services and the private sector. Winsor says simply that we should not just pay police officers according to time served, pretty much regardless of their performance. Instead, we should reward specialisms and capabilities so that younger officers who are going out and improving their skills, getting better training and producing higher performance, have that reflected in their remuneration. We are doing that in the teaching profession; it would be inexcusable to make the police an exception. Police exceptionalism in this regard is not sustainable in the public services today.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I would be interested in my hon. Friend’s views on the future of police community support officers who, in my county of Leicestershire, offer a good presence on the ground and are very good at gaining intelligence that they can pass on to police officers.
Mr Ruffley
In response to the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), I said that there is general consensus across the House that neighbourhood policing teams and beat officers are the bedrock of British policing, not just in providing reassurance to the local populace but in being a vital source of intelligence, whether on organised gangs, drug dealing or whatever.
I hope that my hon. Friend will have seen a fall in crime in his constituency. The dramatic 10% fall in the last three years suggests that the claims made by Jeremiahs from the Labour party, and some sections of the police service, that the Conservative spending plans would lead inevitably to a spike up in crime have proved absolutely groundless.
I wish to refer to the numbers and to provide some perspective for the benefit of Members, who might be surprised to learn that in the last year of the previous Conservative government, 1996-97, the gross revenue expenditure on policing services was £6.907 billion. Last year it was £12.887 billion. Those are cash figures that do not take account of inflation. But there has been a doubling in the gross revenue expenditure on police services since 1997. I am glad to see the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) in his place; he is an immensely distinguished and wise Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, which has drawn attention to the statistic that I have just produced.
The very idea that a very tight, and necessarily tight, spending settlement will result in the ceiling falling in, in neighbourhood policing collapsing and in crime going up is fatuous. We have seen in cash terms a doubling in fewer than 20 years. Although policing has got more sophisticated and there are no doubt many greater demands on some parts of our police constabulary, it is still beyond belief to think that these are “savage Tory cuts”. That is the stuff of caricature and we should have no more of it.
If one looks at the Home Office core grant—not the overall spend—one will see that in the last year of the Labour government, 2009-10, the core grant was £4.606 billion. This year it is £4.583 billion. I would not think that that is the kind of reduction in core grant that will lead to a diminution in the efficiency of the police. If anything, it should drive up efficiency and productivity. I repeat; Labour, in this debate and before it, has so far as I am aware—I am sure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington will correct me after the debate—not promised to reverse those necessary reductions.
Andrew Bridgen
My hon. Friend talks about reductions. In my county of Leicestershire, recorded crime is down by 25% since 2010.
Mr Ruffley
Those are truly heroic figures and great testimony to the police men and women in the Leicestershire constabulary, to the police and crime panel and to the police and crime commissioner. I have no doubt also that my hon. Friend spends a great deal of time scrutinising and holding the police service in his constituency to account, as do I with my Suffolk colleagues.
In the last year of the Labour Government, Suffolk constabulary, to be parochial just for one moment, saw a principal formula of £41,498,000—again, these are cash figures. In 2014-15, that is projected to rise in cash terms to—wait for this, Madam Deputy Speaker—£43,627,000. If we add in council tax support funding, specific grants and the business rate contribution, which has latterly taken over from the revenue support grant, the total general and specific grants received by Suffolk constabulary in the last year of the Labour Government amounted to £70,969,000. In 2014-15—the year that is the subject of this debate on the grant settlement—the figure is £77,915,000. Total funding for Suffolk in the last year of the Labour Government was £110,335,000; in 2014-15 that will rise to £116,579,000.
I give those details simply to illustrate that this caricature of cuts really does not wash. Although we had 51,000 recorded crimes 10 years ago, Suffolk constabulary posted 38,000 crimes in 2013—a significant fall in our county. Policemen and women in Suffolk deserve the credit for that, which is proof—if proof were needed—that they are doing more and being more productive, against a very tight financial backdrop.
We have had a great deal of shroud waving today and heard a lot of criticism of what should really be a source of celebration—the most modernising package of police reform in over half a century and a clear-eyed and immensely capable Home Secretary seeing through this difficult agenda with much less hostility, criticism and obstruction than anyone would have predicted before the last election. It is in that spirit of purposeful reform, which is embodied in my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that I conclude my remarks.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who is very knowledgeable about these matters. When he was shadow policing Minister—I remember him speaking from the Dispatch Box—he was one of those who always welcomed any increase in the police grant, recognising the huge importance of the police service to our country.
The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) keeps referring to “his” county of Leicestershire—a bit greedily, I think. I am going to borrow a bit of it, because I represent a tiny proportion, compared with the large chunk that he represents. We are very proud of our police service in our county of Leicestershire. I want to give the House an example of why we are so proud of the people in our police service. Recently, PC Martin Bentley won a bravery award, for which he was nominated by the Leicestershire Police Federation. He was stabbed and slashed several times and needed 16 stitches and skin grafts, but he still went on to make the arrest.
The policing Minister was present with me and others, including the Home Secretary and the shadow policing Minister, at the bravery awards, where we recognised the huge contribution that members of the police service make—individual men and women, who every day of their lives put their lives on the line for us all. We have talked a lot in this debate about statistics, and the millions and billions of pounds being spent on the police service, but it is those individuals who go the extra mile and protect the public.
It is also right to recognise the contribution made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who is probably the mother of neighbourhood policing. I am not clear whether the father was Tony Blair or Jacqui Smith—I do not want to go down that line—[Interruption.] I will take your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. In my right hon. Friend’s time as policing Minister, she established an important principle which is with us today. No matter what we talk about in the Westminster village—whether it is about these great changes that are being made or anything else—it is what happens in the neighbourhoods, on the streets and in the villages, towns and cities of our country that matters the most; and I am afraid that this is where we have a problem with the police grant.
I am worried that the sum of money now available to the police service up and down the country is giving us a great deal of concern. I am also worried that morale in the police service is regarded as at its lowest in its history. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) would want to highlight the work of the Stevens inquiry. I accept that Government Members do not regard it as an independent commission or an all-singing, all-dancing royal commission—even though it is headed by someone as distinguished as Lord Stevens—but one of the facts that came out of the Stevens report was the low morale.
My worry is that if we embark on any further reductions in funding, it will affect the morale of the police force. I will come to the changes in the policing landscape—the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds was absolutely right about the revolution in policing and police management that we have seen under this Home Secretary—but no matter what we say about that, I do not feel that ordinary bobbies on the beat feel that they have been consulted enough about the massive changes that have occurred. Alongside that is the reduction in their pay and pensions. Hon. Members only have to walk around the Westminster estate and talk to any police officer about how they feel about the present state of the police service and most of them will say, sadly, that they cannot wait to be out of the service because it has changed so much. We as politicians need to recognise that the people who count—the people who deliver, in our neighbourhoods and our towns and cities—feel that they have not been consulted.
Mr Ruffley
If morale and the terms and conditions are as bad as the right hon. Gentleman seems to be saying, is that at all reflected in the numbers of young men and women seeking to join the police service? How is recruitment going?
Keith Vaz
That is a very interesting point. I do not know, but I understand that recruitment is not going terrifically well in certain areas of the country, although it is in some. That is why I am concerned about the £1,000 that people have to pay for the certificate in policing. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about recruitment when he sums up. Of course, rather than young people joining the service, I am talking about very experienced people who want to get out. We need to take that into consideration.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I am sure that my right hon. Friend and our Front-Bench spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), would agree that when we meet the police in the west midlands—and we have done so regularly over the years—we have seen that there is a morale problem. The police seem to be used as a political football these days and although we might well quote statistics and figures about how much is being spent on them, at the end of the day when somebody’s pensions, wages and conditions are attacked that is asking for a problem. There is no doubt that there is a major morale problem in the West Midlands police. The other problem is that a city such as Coventry will have a senior police officer for three or four years and just as the public get to know who they are they go off to another post. That cannot be right either.
Keith Vaz
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. That is an issue we must deal with and Ministers must engage with the police service much more than they have done.
I agree 100% with the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds about the revolution in policing. I am not sure that I can get away with being quite as nice to the Home Secretary as the hon. Gentleman was, given that I am an Opposition Member of Parliament. I cannot show favouritism because the Home Secretary appears before our Committee—that of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and myself—on a number of occasions and I must be independent. I agree that there has been a revolution in policing and I am on the record as supporting what the Government have done.
If there was a fault of the previous Government, who presided over a golden age in policing in the amount of money given, it was that no questions were asked and no reforms were required. There was a very large cheque—of course, the shadow Minister was not a Member then—
Keith Vaz
It was not. A very large cheque was given but nothing was received in return by way of reform.
The creation of the NCA and the College of Policing and the abolition of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which I do not think functioned particularly well, and of the Serious Organised Crime Agency are examples of where the Government have got it absolutely right. We have a new landscape of policing, but I wonder whether this is the time to go ahead with such widespread cuts while knowing that to get the new structure up and running successfully it must be well resourced. The worst possible thing is to have new structures without providing the money that is necessary for them to do their job. I hope that if those organisations require additional resources they will be given them.
I bumped into Keith Bristow recently as he was coming out of the Home Secretary’s office and I reminded him that he had not appeared before the Committee for a while. He told me of all the NCA’s successes. He is very much a hands-on person and will go on operations, and he invited the Select Committee to join him on an NCA operation. The problem with SOCA was that we never knew what it was doing as well as we know what Keith Bristow and the NCA are doing. Why? Members of the NCA tell the press that they are going to raid someone and everyone turns up and we all know the good work that the agency is doing.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way on the critical subject of the NCA, and I welcome the information it provides. In Northern Ireland, we are significantly handicapped by the fact that the necessary measures have not been implemented to allow the agency to operate in Northern Ireland. The border stops at Stranraer and Liverpool for us because the Northern Ireland Assembly has failed to agree a way forward for the agency’s operation. Does he agree that this House must get to grips with that and protect all its citizens all the time?
Keith Vaz
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I went to Belfast on his invitation, where I met Matt Baggott, to whom I pay tribute as I understand that he has just announced that he will leave the police after many years of service. It is right that the NCA should cover the whole of the United Kingdom and we should not have a situation in which a separate deal must be made with the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and the Chairman of the Committee for Justice in his Assembly will persist in their efforts to ensure that the NCA covers the whole of Northern Ireland.
I say to the Minister—I know that he is deep in conversation with the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose)—
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (John Penrose)
We are listening.
Keith Vaz
It is not possible to listen and talk at the same time, distinguished though the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare is. Perhaps they are talking about his promotion, and I congratulate him on his re-promotion to the Front Bench. We will miss him on the Administration Committee and in all the important work we have to do there.
Let me give a couple of quotes. Tony Lloyd, a police and crime commissioner, has said that the police are
“on the edge of a cliff”
after £100 million of cuts. Sir Peter Fahy, a distinguished chief constable, who is not elected, has said that 700 police posts will go, reducing his force to 6,400 officers. I have a rather remarkable quote from the chief constable of South Yorkshire, David Crompton, who said:
“Contrary to popular opinion the force doesn’t deal with crime for the majority of time—less than a quarter of what we deal with is crime…while we are spending time on these things we can’t spend as much time as we might want to on crime.”
What do the officers of South Yorkshire spend 75% of their time on? We need to know that. Chief constables are concerned about these reductions and we need to listen to what they say.
The Minister and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds referred to the reduction in crime, which I welcome. It is a good thing when crime goes down, but I am worried about what has been unearthed by the Public Administration Committee, which is the concern expressed by a number of its witnesses that crime statistics are not as accurate as they should be. That is something that Ministers should look at.
Richard Drax
I welcome the fact that crime is falling statistically, but I hear—certainly in my constituency—that many people are not reporting it, in many cases not because the police do not do a good job but because those who have experienced crime feel that action will not be taken.
Keith Vaz
That is a serious issue. People may feel that they cannot access police officers in the way they have done, so they do not report crime. We need to consider this issue when we look at the crime reduction figures. We should be encouraging our constituents to report those crimes, enabling the police to log them and explain what happens to them.
I hope that there is enough in the budget for new technology. I know that this is a feature of what the Minister is hoping to do: better collaboration, making sure that there are economies of scale. When the Select Committee considered procurement two years ago, it felt that the Home Office should produce a catalogue of best deals for local police forces. We named it after the previous permanent secretary and called it the Ghosh list, but she left shortly after, so we decided to name it the Sedwill list, after the current permanent secretary. There are no plans for him to leave. It is important that the Home Office looks at procurement issues. Only this week, the Select Committee visited the Metropolitan police firearms unit. We were all encouraged to take up firearms and shoot at targets to see how difficult it was for officers. I am afraid that it was more Austin Powers than James Bond for the Committee, but it gave us a flavour of what officers have to go through. One point made by the assistant commissioner, Mark Rowley, was his desire and that of the commissioner to have police officers wear cameras.
Keith Vaz
The Minister nods in agreement. That is a good idea, but that will cost more money, and I am not sure that the grant will cover the ambitions that the Minister and we all have to ensure that our police service is properly equipped.
The new landscape is welcome. The cuts have probably gone as far as they should have done. I want to see better engagement with the police service. We have a debate tomorrow on the Police Federation, but that is a separate issue. At the end of the day, policing is about what happens locally, and if local people and local police feel that they are not being well served, that is a problem for all of us.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I now have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the motion relating to the draft Public Bodies Order. The Ayes were 289 and the Noes were 203, so the Question was agreed to.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
It is, as ever, a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee. I recommend membership of that Committee, if only for the chance to see the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) brandishing a firearm in a training exercise. There were photos of that.
I have some sympathy with the shadow Minister, because before I was elected to this place I was leader of the opposition on Cambridgeshire county council. It is incredibly tempting simply to say, “I would do everything better and I would spend more money on it,” without identifying what would be done better and particularly where the money would come from. On the council I forced my own group to make our annual proposals go through the same scrutiny process as the administration did, so that we would be forced to work out where the money would come from to pay for what we wanted to do. That meant that our proposals were far more coherent and were at least plausible ways of doing things.
While I have some sympathy with the shadow Minister, who said encouragingly that Labour would, in principle, spend more, without specifying how much more or where it would come from, I also have a sense of déjà vu. So far as I can recall, every year when we have had this debate—at least in the current Parliament—Opposition Members have made similar comments. They have said that too little money is being spent, and that we are about to see a huge increase in crime as a result. Every year, when crime has not increased, it has been suggested that it is about to increase, and that we simply need to wait a little longer.
Dr Huppert
I hope that the hon. Gentleman, to whom I shall give way in a moment, will accept that we have, in fact, seen a reduction in crime, whether it is measured by police reporting or by the crime survey.
Jack Dromey
Let me make it absolutely clear that what the Opposition have said from the outset is that economies are necessary and can be achieved, and that we accepted expert advice on the 12% figure. The hon. Gentleman is part of a Government who have imposed a 20% cut. Has he apologised to those who elected him on the basis that he was going to put an additional 3,000 police officers on the beat?
Dr Huppert
Even in that intervention, the hon. Gentleman very carefully avoided saying where he would get the extra money. I think that we would all love to have more money to spend on policing, and, indeed, on almost everything that a Government do; the problem is where that money is to come from.
The hon. Gentleman also missed an opportunity to intervene earlier—this is relevant to the point that he raised just now—in order to congratulate Cambridgeshire constabulary, which in 2012-13 recruited 72 constables and 13 officers who transferred themselves to the area. I have not scaled up that number to cover the whole country, but it shows what can be achieved. I feel no need to apologise to the people of Cambridgeshire for the fact that we have been recruiting those extra police, and have been able to protect the front line in the county. The hon. Gentleman is welcome to intervene again to give a clearer view of what he would cut in order to raise the extra money, but if he does not wish to do so, I shall move on to the more substantive aspects of the debate.
Let me begin by paying a tribute, which I think all Members would echo, to the work done by the vast majority of the police. They do a fantastic job day in, day out. Some times are easier than others, but most times are quite tough for police officers. It is a very hard job and it makes a big difference to people’s lives, whether it involves directly combating crime and catching criminals, or the much broader role that police officers play. I have always welcomed community policing, although I must say that I was slightly concerned when, back in the days when I was a councillor, one of the best community beat officers in my constituency, who had managed to halve the crime level in a single year, was given a reprimand for not arresting enough people. I think that that was target-driven rather than being particularly sensible.
As I have said, the police in general do a fantastic job, and they feel let down by the few officers who behave badly. A number of officers have spoken to me directly about some of the issues that we explored in the Select Committee, such as Plebgate, and have told me that they are ashamed to wear the same uniform as some of those involved. Those officers deserve better. According to recent reports, in the last few years there have been more than 2,000 cases of officers and staff breaching data protection rules, in some instances by looking at the police national computer. Those officers constitute only a small fraction of the total force, and like most police officers, I wish that they would behave much better.
We are lucky in this country to have such good policing, and to have a core of policing by consent. I hope that that continues, because I am not at all keen on the idea of increasing militarisation in the police. For that reason I am concerned about Tasers, although they are a subject for another debate. Policing by consent—the sort of policing that we have here—is not just about throwing money at problems, and it is not just about passing more and more laws to make more and more actions criminal offences; it is about giving communities a say, and working closely with them. We need the police to work as part of the community, and for the community.
Richard Drax
The hon. Gentleman has just mentioned Tasers, and said that they were a subject for a debate on another day. I wonder whether he has ever faced two or three completely drunk hooligans at three o’clock in the morning with no more protection than a protective vest.
Dr Huppert
As it happens, I had very similar experiences when I was an ambulance technician with St John Ambulance. One of the things we did in order to increase our safety was try to make it clear that we were not playing any form of quasi-militaristic role, and that the role that we were playing was much more relaxed. I worry about the message that is sent to people who see something that looks like a firearm and is used like a firearm. I agree that there is a place for Tasers as a less lethal option, but I do not think that they should be rolled out for basic use. That is a subject for another debate, however.
The police work very well. The establishment of the College of Policing is one of the best things that the Government have done in this area. It will make it much easier for policing to become a more established profession and for the police to work with a proper evidence base and a more effective way of sharing and developing information. That will follow on from the work that is already being done to reduce crime despite tight budgets.
When times are tough, it is even more important to do things that actually work to reduce crime and the fear of crime, rather than things that merely work anecdotally. A huge amount of research has been done in this area, and I pay tribute to the work of Professor Larry Sherman at the institute of criminology at Cambridge university. He is a member of the board of the College of Policing, and he has done a great deal of work on what actually makes a difference in reducing crime. How we place police officers and how we move them around a city can make a difference, for example. He has also produced proposals relating to crime harm indices. Where his proposals have been tried, they have been very effective in reducing crime. That is the sort of lesson that the college should be developing and that we should all be trying to follow.
We should also look at other ways of reducing crime. Providing more support to people serving very short sentences is a really good thing, for example. We know that some people reoffend repeatedly, and it is more efficient to invest in reducing their reoffending than to invest in catching them and dealing with them afterwards. I am also pleased to see a drive towards the use of more technology. It is far more helpful to get police officers to go out and do their job, as they want to do, rather than fighting technological problems. The police are far happier when that happens. I have spent time with a police officer, and I will never forget that it took more than an hour to download a video from a shoulder-mounted camera because of technological problems. That was an hour that could have been much better spent.
We should also give the police much more flexibility to innovate. An example is a scheme in my constituency known as “lights instead of tickets”. Cyclists who cycle without lights are given seven days to buy lights to avoid paying a fine. That has led to a huge number of people acquiring lights, which is far better than a huge number of people paying a fine and continuing to cycle without lights.
We can also ensure that money is spent more usefully by focusing on the more serious crimes. I will not go into detail, but the Deputy Prime Minister has suggested certain reforms of our drugs policy. The Home Affairs Select Committee has also found that we could do as Portugal has done, in transferring effort and money from the police and criminal justice system to the health service to help to reduce addiction. Similarly, we could reduce the stop and search that does not lead to arrests. That would save police time and free up the police to get on with other things.
Perhaps the Minister could give us an update on the reforms of stop and search. Such reforms are important because they relate to trust in the police. Certain communities start to lose trust in the police because of stop and search and, in my view, because of increasing Taser use. That lack of community interaction is a problem. It leads to distrust and makes it harder for the police to find out what is happening. It makes people work against the police rather than with them.
We could also do much more to help the police by sharing information, although that must obviously be done carefully. The Select Committee has recommended asking hospitals to share non-confidential information—about numbers of incidents, for example—with the police more often. There have been some good pilot models of that, but they do not happen often enough. The public could also have more information. The data available from police.uk is helpful, but we could go further in that regard. Indeed, Professor Sherman has some ideas on how to engage communities and give them real information about what is going on. Such data also need to include hate crime, which should not be considered separately from the main national crime statistics.
The whole information drive is important, but we do not always use the most up-to-date information. I hope that the Minister will comment on this. I note that some of the figures in the report on the police grant have used the 2001 census data. I represent a county that is growing rapidly, and I hope that we can move to using more modern censuses, because we are already facing issues based on the present population, not the one we had in 2001.
The subject of saving money has been discussed at length. I am pleased that the proposed expenditure of £1.8 billion on the communications data Bill will now be available for other policing. When I asked the Met commissioner how he would use that amount of money over 10 years, he said that he would use it to get more neighbourhood policing, more technology and more training. I am pleased that we are able to do that, rather than spending it on the original proposals.
The finances are tight. We would all love to have more money available to spend on absolutely everything, but it is a great tribute to the police that despite times being tough, crime continues to fall. I hope that that will continue for a very long time to come and that we will see more effective use of our wonderful police.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). It is fair to say that we do not always see eye to eye on a range of issues, but it is always interesting to listen to his point of view, which is always well backed up by a scientific approach that he embraces—I find it very useful indeed.
I rarely speak in the House at length on policing issues, partly because I spent three years as police Minister and I do not think that reprising my experience is terribly helpful for Members in that same role. Today, however, I have made an exception, because I am becoming increasingly worried about the direction of travel of our police service. Part of my concern is about finance, but many of my concerns are about the stresses and strains on neighbourhood policing. This is not particularly about my introducing neighbourhood policing; this is about neighbourhood policing being such a fundamental change to the way in which we did policing in this country. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee that there was reform during our period of government, and neighbourhood policing was the biggest bit of reform that we introduced. It is now established not only in this country—for all time, I hope—but increasingly in other European countries and countries across the world, where it is recognised that sustainable policing must be done with people, not to them. It must be done with consent, gathering the community around who then become the eyes and ears of the police. Much more intelligence is obtained that way, and the police become far more effective in fighting crime.
Convincing the police service that neighbourhood policing was not a fuzzy, warm community development project but a hard-headed reform to make the police service more effective was quite a job in changing culture. I well remember that when I started talking to chief constables about neighbourhood policing and how we needed to build relationships—to get to know the head teacher, the shopkeepers, the children and the people in the community—some of them looked at me as though I was from Relate marriage guidance, talking to them about relationships. When I hear our shadow Minister talking in the House today about the need to have relationships, it shows how far we have moved on police culture—recognising that relationships are often far more useful than the traditional tools of policing.
I am speaking in this debate because I am very concerned about what is happening to our police service. Greater Manchester’s force has had a fantastic record over the past 10 to 15 years, but we are now seeing cuts totalling about £135 million over the five-year period between 2011 to 2015, and already 1,000 police officers have had to go. Sir Peter Fahy, who is a very respected chief constable, just as he was when he was at Cheshire during my time as Minister, and who is scrupulously non-partisan and non-political, has said:
“When I took the post the force had 8,200 officers and it is now just below 7,000. We are now on our way to 6,400—and that’s incredibly painful.”
Sir Peter Fahy is not a man to cry wolf and everyone in the House should take notice when he says that this process is incredibly painful.
It is fair to say that crime, antisocial behaviour, drugs and family breakdown were the scourge of our community of Salford and Eccles 15 years ago. It was incredibly difficult to attract business and investment to the city because of the huge amount of crime that was going on. People did not feel that the police were in control of the neighbourhoods; they felt that the criminal gangs were in control of the neighbourhoods in my city. That caused massive unemployment and a huge amount of family disintegration. Some 15 years ago my city was in a terrible state, but the fact that we have a grip of crime is the most fundamental reason why it has become a much better place to live. It is why we have been able to attract investment, such as the MediaCityUK—home to the BBC and ITV—and the regeneration programmes we have seen happen. It is one of the reasons why we had, until recently, the fastest falling level of youth unemployment in the whole north-west and why we get £200 million from visitors to Salford—who would ever have thought that it would be a tourist destination, with people wanting to come to our city? It is also why we have more people employed in the MediaCityUK area than we had when it was at its height as a docks.
Those are amazing transformations. Probably the single biggest issue was getting a grip of crime, making people feel safe in their homes, and tackling drugs and some of the serious and organised crime gangs that we had in Salford. We have been incredibly successful. Yes, the figures over the past three years have continued to be good on some of those crimes, but they are not as good as they were on burglary—we saw burglary go down by 54%—and some of the other crimes.
I saw a worrying statistic from Greater Manchester police this week which showed that antisocial behaviour has started to creep back up. Antisocial behaviour, before it was even defined by the previous Labour Government, was sometimes dismissed as petty or low-level crime—the sort of crime that we almost have to accept if we live in an inner-city environment. We had a massive drive to tackle antisocial behaviour, with a whole new set of powers and the Respect campaign. We said that we wanted to be on the side of decent people in communities and to drive out the antisocial behaviour that made people’s lives such a misery. There was long-term harassment and really serious crime, which could not be dismissed as low-level incidents.
Huge warning bells ring for me when I see a statistic that shows that that sort of crime is now beginning to break through again. I look at some of the evidence around the statistics, the veracity of which people are beginning to question. Lord Stevens has said that we could be on a tipping point for another rise in crime. If we start to see crime rise again in places such as Salford and Eccles, all of that good work over the past 10 to 15 years will be at risk. The business investment will be at risk. People will feel that it is not the kind of community in which they want to live. I am absolutely determined not to say that we need more money. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) will ask me the same question he asked my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). Yes, money is tight, and that means that hard decisions must be made. I would have supported a 12% cut, not a 20% cut, but we could argue that for the whole afternoon. There were things we could have done through collaboration and better procurement. Those were all on our agenda for making those cuts. In hard times, we have to use creativity, innovation and imagination. I am afraid that I am not seeing enough of that in the present Government’s approach.
When I was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, I used to say to local government that, in order to face the coming years of austerity, we would have to have community budgets and a Total Place organisation in which all the public sector pooled its budgets, rationalised its inspection regimes, shared the same targets and had a system whereby all that public money, whether it was for policing, regeneration or whatever, was in the same pot. We thought that that was the way to survive these years of austerity without having an absolutely disastrous effect on our public services. We said that to local government, and if I get a chance in the next debate, I will reinforce these matters for the Secretary of State.
Local government has stepped up to the plate. The 10 authorities in the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities have a community budget; they are pooling resources. The police in my area have co-location with the local authority, the health service and mental health. We have a system of sharing information, which is the multi-agency system for data sharing. It is in that way that we have been able to survive some of the tremendous cuts.
The Minister will know about Operation Gulf in Salford, which has been going on for three years. It tackles the serious crime gangs—there are at least 32 of them—and it has had amazing success. It has won the Home Office national award for an operation over the past two years. Much to my delight it has put some serious criminals behind bars for a good number of years, and it has done that because it has used smart policing, imagination and creativity. It has taken the Al Capone approach: if we cannot get the criminals on the particular crime we want them for, we can get them on money laundering, employing illegal immigrants and not having tax on their cars. The police can be in their face every single day of the week, and that is the way we get results. They have been able to do that because they have had co-operation from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the local authority, the Department for Work and Pensions, the mental health services and every other bit of the system. That is the kind of creativity that is required now and over the next few years. It would mean central Government saying to local government, “Get your act together. Pool your resources. Get yourself in shape. Line yourself up. Have a strategic objective, and that is how you make an impact.”
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is fascinating to listen to my right hon. Friend speak on this subject. When we talk about how to provide policing at a time of great cuts, we must also consider the creativity that will be necessary in rural areas. Does she agree that rural police forces will need to get together and think creatively?
Hazel Blears
I do indeed. Part of the challenge facing police services is the need to deliver in many different environments and circumstances. We must consider sparsity and the difficulty of travel. In more rural areas, for example, the need for technology and communications is perhaps even greater than it is in concentrated inner-city areas. Again, creativity in the use of technology is really important.
In Greater Manchester we now have this top-slice application to the innovation fund. The chief constable is working on redesigning Greater Manchester police to see how we can get through the next few years, and I absolutely support him in that. In the process, he has taken one of my superintendents, Wayne Miller, off my Salford beat. I wish Wayne well in his new role in that change project. I want to place on the record the fact that he has been a tremendous superintendent. He brings with him real hands-on experience of neighbourhood and community policing and will make a great contribution to the plans for the future.
My chief superintendent, Kevin Mulligan, has recently retired. He was the architect of Operation Gulf. He is a fantastic, hands-on police officer who has done a tremendous job. He has made several arrests on his own and goes out policing on new year’s eve and Christmas eve—that is the kind of dedicated officer he is.
I spent a good period of time with our new chief superintendent last Friday. Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle is an incredibly impressive woman in Greater Manchester police. I have no doubt that she is up to the challenge of policing Salford and Eccles, with all the issues we face. She has also been given Trafford, so she now has double the number of people to look after and try to keep safe in our area, double the number of police officers to lead and double the number of police staff. She will be looking after 450,000 people, so her job is actually bigger than that of looking after the centre of Manchester, which has its own chief superintendent. I am worried about that. When we talk about the thin blue line being stretched, we also need to think about leadership capacity, because if we are to be creative and to do innovative things, we need really strong leadership. Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, impressive though she is, will have her work cut out to try to take policing forward in our city.
What I think really needs to happen is something I raised with the Minister earlier. When we introduced neighbourhood policing, there was extra money available, so in some forces neighbourhood policing was layered on top of the existing response capacity. I hope that the Minister will consider integrating response policing with neighbourhood policing. Yes, we need response policing, because we need to have someone in a vehicle who can go and sort out a particular incident, but the way that they hand over the incident to the neighbourhood team is a misuse of resources. Getting the response police officers to own the neighbourhood as much as the neighbourhood police officers do would enable us to get more for less.
We recently decided to put our criminal investigation department officers out as part of the neighbourhood teams. That was incredibly controversial, because CID officers are not used to that role. However, it has made a really big difference, because our neighbourhood teams now include the people who are good at community and the CID detectives. If we get the response people in there as well, we will have a range of resources that we can draw upon, even when numbers are shrinking, to enable that extra capacity. I ask the Minister to look at some of the things Greater Manchester police have been doing to try to get that capacity to go further.
What I would say to central Government, and I say it to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is that five years ago I said to the then Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, that I was amazed that the success of a Cabinet Minister is judged by how big their budget is, how big their legislation is, and how big a beast they are in the Cabinet jungle. The new world requires people to be collaborative. Why do not several Cabinet Ministers have jointly shared budgets? Why are they not incentivised to collaborate? Why are they not judged on their success in terms of their ability to do teamwork? Why do we still have so many silos in central Government? When we said to local government, “You’ve got to break down your silos”, people there stepped up to the plate. It is about time that we changed the way in which national Government works so that my success as, say, Education Secretary is dependent on another Minister’s success as Justice Secretary or Home Secretary.
At the end of the day, the people who use the public services the most are all from the same families. We know this from the troubled families project, which is making a difference but is still primarily run by one Department. Why do we not have joint commissioning of the services we need to be able to deal with all those families? I could tell Members here and now the top 20 or 30 families in Salford and Eccles who use public services disproportionately, whether it be the police, education or the national health service. That is why we need joint commissioning systems, incentives to collaborate, and, I hope, an end to the days of stand-off bilaterals between Cabinet Ministers who simply seek to protect their own empire and their own Department rather than being prepared to collaborate for the greater good.
My final point is about reform. I am never short of ideas about reform and I like to talk about it. I remember that somebody once said that we are at our best when we are at our boldest, and I have never forgotten that. I make this plea to the Minister and to all Ministers involved in public services. If they want to get the best out of people and to get innovation and change, and if they want to get more for less, they have to be prepared to empower the people at the front line—the people in the service—to be able to make that change. There is a culture in Government—I do not make any allegation in respect of any individual Minister—of keeping power at the centre despite fine words about localism. It is about time that central Government acted in a way where they modelled good behaviour, as any good leader is required to do. If we want to survive these next few years, the funds are inevitably going to be less, whichever Government are in power, and therefore central Government must take a lead in being innovative, creative, collaborative and independent, just as on the board of any company where the directors would be collaborating together for the greater good. I urge the Minister to take that message back to the Home Secretary, and perhaps he could be the champion of innovation and change at the centre.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). My tone will be as balanced as hers and that of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who made a very thoughtful speech, as he always does.
The Minister, who has kindly sat through all the speeches, has heard me speak before about the issue I am going to raise. I hope he does not raise his eyebrows to the roof and say, “Oh dear, here comes Drax again”, but I am afraid I am going to raise it anyway because my job is to stand up for my constituents and for my police force in Dorset, which does an outstanding job. I pay credit to the outgoing chief constable, Martin Baker, who has been replaced by an another outstanding chief constable, Debbie Simpson. They have both galvanised Dorset police. They have collaborated and they have saved: they have done everything they could in the years before this spending review came in and since. We are now down to the bone. I will be parochial in the sense that I will focus my comments on Dorset police and not the police nationally.
I am grateful to our new police and crime commissioner, Martyn Underhill, for a lot of the information that I am going to give—I say “a lot”, but it is not that much and I will not take long—and I concur with his views and concerns. First, it is only fair that I praise the brave men and women of Dorset police; everyone who has spoken has done likewise. We cannot overestimate the courage that these men and women continually show to keep us safe on the streets and at home. While we are all tucked up in bed, many of them are out patrolling the streets at night and tackling some pretty ferocious people while armed with not much more than a protective jacket and occasionally with a Taser if needed.
The comprehensive spending review indicated or demanded savings of 20%. As we have heard, savings across all forces in 2014-15 will be 3.3%. For Dorset, that means a loss of £3.1 million. As has also been mentioned, taking into account the top-slicing in such areas as the police innovation fund and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Dorset must make savings of 4.8%, which equates to well over £4 million. The point for the Minister is that that will once again place Dorset at the bottom of the pile. I simply cannot repeat it enough. I shall say it again—at the bottom of the pile.
Last year, the formula funding per head in Dorset was the lowest in the land. The needs-based funding formula for policing, which is supposed to determine how much each area receives, has never been properly implemented. Since 2010, Dorset police has been short-changed to the tune of £11 million. In real terms, the figure is a lot more. Last year, Dorset lost more officers and staff in proportion to other forces across the country—a full 6%. During the entire period of the CSR, Dorset will have lost 400 posts.
Whenever I mention or hear the dreadful word “damping”, I cannot help thinking of that awful thing that creeps up from the floor, ruins the walls and costs people a fortune in redecorating their house, but that is the technical jargon. Under damping, each force faces the same reduction in core Government funding in 2014-15, which will exacerbate the inequities that already exist in Dorset.
Let me say to the Minister—if he will stop talking to his Whips—that this situation in Dorset simply cannot go on for ever. Because of its size, topography and population centres, Dorset faces unique police challenges. The county is almost evenly split, with one half living in a large conurbation, and the other half scattered across rural communities. The two halves require substantially different forms of policing. In addition, we have tourism and the night-time economy. I know that many other constituencies have them too, but I am proud to say that Dorset is one of the most beautiful counties in the country. We attract 14 million tourists every year. The thriving night-time economy has grown, as it has in so many other parts of the country, and it requires a significant police presence all year round. One would have thought that those two aspects would be included in a common-sense funding formula, but they are not.
I was a journalist at the BBC in Dorset for some 10 years and I have spoken—often off the record—to the police wearing a different hat. From talking to officers on a busy Friday night, I know that they are very thin on the ground. There is no doubt about that. Although crime is down, which I of course welcome, the reality away from this place—we are sitting very comfortably on green Benches—is that brave men and women are out there at 3 o’clock in the morning facing the thousands of people, who are often out of control and drunk, coming out of nightclubs and bars. There are very few officers to tackle those thousands of people.
Over the years, I have been told that because there are so few police officers, they dare not get too involved in many incidents, as that would require two or three officers to go back to the cells, and they simply cannot afford to reduce their numbers on the ground. The logical conclusion is that a situation must get very bad before the police will physically intervene, because they do not have the numbers to deal with it. That is not their fault; in such situations, they simply do not have the numbers on the ground.
The formula originally evolved on the basis of a reasonably even level of council tax across the counties and parity in the policing that was delivered. It no longer works. It is perhaps blindingly obvious that a formula that gives one force 80% of its money from central Government and others, such as Dorset, less than half does not stand up to scrutiny.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I apologise for joining the debate late, Madam Deputy Speaker.
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the effect of the manning formula in places such as our constituencies in Dorset. Does he agree that the manning formula needs to be reconsidered to take account of the number of visitors who come to a place? Bournemouth swells by 15,000 or 20,000 people on a Friday night. That is not taken into consideration, and it places excess pressure on the limited number of police.
Richard Drax
I concur entirely with my hon. Friend. Because there is a demand for more officers at busy times, such as weekends, those officers are not available on other days of the week. Although there is less crime during the day and in the week, it is equally important that police officers are seen at those times.
Council tax can no longer be increased to pay for grant shortfalls. The recent changes by the Department for Communities and Local Government capped increases at 2%. Due to the shortfall in moneys from central Government, Dorset police has set its precept at 1.96% for 2014-15. Surveys of the public show that they generally support that. Mr Underhill and the chief constable are trying to maintain a balance between sustaining a viable police force and not overburdening the taxpayer. The rise will cover essential expenditure, including on 16 extra police officers, seven rural community vehicles, 300 body-worn cameras and a campaign to make people more aware of cybercrime.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East mentioned technology. Although everyone in this House recognises the value of technology, I have some advice for the Minister. I have many friends in the armed services who went to Iraq. There was a huge reliance on the technology that we and the Americans had, but there was no intelligence from people on the ground or “human int.”, as it is called. The result is there for all to see. The west did not understand what was happening on the ground or the consequences of invading a country such as Iraq.
I am sure that there is no intention to invade Dorset, but I draw the comparison because human int. is the key to a successful police force and, more importantly, to tackling crime. Nothing beats seeing police officers on the ground in our constituencies. It happens too rarely, but through no fault of the officers. In the Army, we patrolled around Northern Ireland in groups of 12, day and night. Like police officers, my soldiers brought back valuable information about what they had seen or heard and about what the local hoods were doing, who they were with, what pubs they were visiting and whether they were happy or sad. Such information is crucial in everyday policing.
Unlike the rest of local government, which received a two-year settlement, the police have a provisional finance settlement only for 2014-15. We thought that that would be the last year of savings. I am concerned that they are now likely to continue until 2017-18. It is estimated that Dorset will have to make savings of 3.7% in 2015-16 and 3.5% in each of the following two years, so annual funding will fall from £114.3 million last year to £108.7 million in 2017-18.
The future is bleak in Dorset. I do not like to be negative because I am an optimist. Dorset police is doing everything that it can, but we have been at the bottom of the pile for a long time and the funding formula is grossly unfair to us. Dorset police has identified potentially serious funding problems in 2016-17. Mr Underhill arrived in post and immediately had to face savings of £10 million. He described Dorset police as
“already stripped to the bone.”
Crime figures have fallen nationally and I welcome that—we all do—but calls for assistance and the number of incidents have risen. Despite those pressures, Dorset police has still earned one of the highest levels of public confidence of any police force in the country. But, Minister, enough is enough. For too long, Dorset police has been expected to do more with less. Dorset residents pay the same as, or more than, everyone else in the country, yet they are rewarded with gratuitously low levels of funding for their police. It is to the force’s enduring credit that they have managed so well for so long on so little.
I do not necessarily like speaking so bluntly to the Minister, and certainly not from the Government Benches, but I feel that I have no choice because the situation is so concerning. Dorset police has done all it can, and it continues to look at every possible avenue to provide a better service and better value for money. I agree, in part, with the phrase “value for money”, but if that comes at the cost of losing what I and my constituents want, which is to see police officers on the beat doing the job we want them to do, perhaps value for money should be looked at in a different way. Finally, I ask the Minister to rectify our situation now, before it is too late.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I apologise for arriving late to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am sure you will forgive me because I was at a debate in the other place on the future of the currency in Scotland after 2014, and that is an important issue for us all.
I welcome the reality-check speech by the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), and it is important that we pause and carry out a reality check regarding policing budgets in our constituencies and how that affects us. Let me say at the outset that I miss the voice of the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East. It was in debates such as this that he really made his mark because he knew the subject so well. His expertise was honed in Northern Ireland when dealing with policing and police infrastructure there, and we miss his wisdom in these debates.
Northern Ireland’s policing is going through a significant change. Our Chief Constable has announced that he intends to step down in September this year after five years of service, which means that we have to open up a new policing competition. No doubt many current deputy chief constables and police chief constables across England, Scotland and Wales will look at the opportunity offered by the job of Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Our last three Chief Constables were brought in from services on the mainland, and the position offers a significant opportunity that needs to be strongly considered.
I pay tribute to the service of Matt Baggott and what he brought to policing. He was Mr Community Police Chief Constable, and he brought important principles of community policing into our service and on to the books and activities of our police officers, and we should pay tribute to that. I also pay tribute to our Deputy Chief Constable, Judith Gillespie, who has announced her retirement in the spring this year after 32 years of service. She became the highest-ranking female police officer ever to serve in Northern Ireland, which is a huge credit to her and the service she has given. Indeed, she did not take what could have been a lucrative severance package a few years ago, because she wanted to serve her community instead. That in itself should be marked and paid tribute to.
I want to bring key issues of national significance to the attention of the Minister. The National Crime Agency, under the management of Keith Bristow, is a very important development that we support, and I am glad that the House supports it too. What concerns me gravely is that it is being prevented from having operational power in Northern Ireland, because insufficient pressure has been applied by the Minister, or by his team, on the Northern Ireland Executive to sort this matter out. While there is a significant willingness by Unionist parties and the Alliance party to sort it out, they are being checkmated by the nationalist and republican agenda—indeed, it is those people who benefit from the fact that the NCA is not operational in Northern Ireland. They benefit because some of the people they previously ran with—serious and organised criminals—have a free run as the NCA has not been extended to Northern Ireland. Smuggling, prostitution, cross-border crime are not being ignored, but they are not being given the complete, full and proper attention that the NCA could give.
Importantly, our policing budget is being stretched, because our own police officers have to deal with those issues. I, and many politicians across this House, have met Keith Bristow, and I know the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has met him. He has indicated his willingness to be held to account by the current policing infrastructure in Northern Ireland, so that he can give certainty and transparency to the concerns—some legitimate, many fictitious—that some nationalists have raised. It is important that we put that willingness to be held to account on the record. If the NCA continues to be blocked from operating in Northern Ireland, I echo the words of the Northern Ireland First Minister when he spoke to the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs when it met in Northern Ireland. He said that this House should take the matter by the throat and insist that the NCA is put in place, over the head of the Assembly if necessary. Everyone is suffering as a result of what has happened and we should deal with it.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman recall that he and I served on the Committee that introduced the NCA? Is he disappointed, as I am, that the assurances of the Minister have not been fulfilled? The comments that the hon. Gentleman is making now are the same as those he made in that Committee.
Ian Paisley
I thank the hon. Lady for saying that. I am delighted that she was listening to me in Committee—I thought we just spoke in this place and that no one actually listened. I am sad that my words were not heeded. We had a commitment from the then Minister with responsibility for policing to get something done and to sort the problem out. Well, it is not sorted out. We have a significant gap in policing national crime. That does not just affect Northern Ireland; it affects what these people do when they export their terrorism here to mainland Britain and on to Europe. We have a national responsibility to sort this matter out, and to sort it out fast.
I was delighted that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, was the first Chair of that Committee to visit Northern Ireland for about 20 years. He paid significant attention to this matter and met the Justice Minister at Stormont and the Chairman of our equivalent Select Committee, Mr Paul Givan. He went through the key issues with him and said that he and his Committee wanted to see the NCA operating properly and effectively in Northern Ireland. I will leave that matter with the Minister and I hope he will pick it up.
We have significant national crime problems in Northern Ireland and that is what I want to focus on in the rest of my remarks.
Andrew Percy
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The motion relates to England and Wales and the hon. Gentleman has spoken for a considerable time solely about policing in Northern Ireland. He has just told us that he wishes to go on speaking about Northern Ireland, but the motion in the name of the Secretary of State states:
“That the Police Grant Report (England and Wales)…which was laid before this House…be approved.”
There is no mention of Northern Ireland.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing that out. I am sure the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) was going to come back in order for the debate on the motion.
Ian Paisley
I do not believe that I have strayed from the issue. I have been talking about the National Crime Agency, which operates in the whole United Kingdom and whose budget is decided exclusively by this place—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) might have a bit of a giggle at that, but it is an important issue that affects criminality and how criminals operate in this country. He should know better. A so-called friend of Northern Ireland should know better than to try to raise a frivolous matter in this debate. I am surprised, because it is not a joke.
The National Crime Agency is a national issue, and the big issues of criminality that affect Northern Ireland have implications here. Of the drugs that circulate around Manchester and Liverpool, most of the cannabis is grown in Northern Ireland. Last year, 42 cannabis farms were discovered in Northern Ireland. Most of the trade was not in cannabis dealing or for smoking the drug in Northern Ireland: cannabis was brought to Liverpool on ferries and boats to be used in this part of the country. Hon. Members should wake up to that reality. The National Crime Agency is not operating as effectively as it should be operating in my part of the kingdom, so the hon. Gentleman and his constituents will face problems. He should recognise that. I am angry about that point, and it probably shows. It is just as well that I am on this side of the House and that there is a red line in front of me; I can tell the hon. Gentleman that.
Fuel smuggling is another important issue that is cross-border and cross-jurisdictional. Because of fuel smuggling in Northern Ireland, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Exchequer here lose £600 million a year. That is not a paltry sum. It is enough to run most of the hospitals in Northern Ireland. That is another national issue that is dealt with by HMRC and should also be dealt with by the National Crime Agency.
I now focus on how we pay to deal with national crime. There are 43 police services operational in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Only the Police Service of Northern Ireland picks up the tab for national security policing in its jurisdiction. That is wrong. That tab should be picked up nationally, in the same way that it is picked up for Manchester and Liverpool, here in London and in Scotland. The fact that it is not is putting policing in Northern Ireland at a significant disadvantage. This year, we are running a deficit of £30 million in policing, and next year that will increase to £57 million. In the next spending round, the figure will rise to about £200 million.
I urge the Minister, when he goes back and speaks to his Cabinet colleagues—the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister—to make the case that this issue should be brought into the centre. Expenditure on dealing with national crime issues and terrorism should be paid for centrally, not locally. If we could get that budget paid for centrally, the current budget for Northern Ireland would allow us to employ the additional police officers that we need.
The Police Federation in Northern Ireland says that we are short of 1,000 officers. The Chief Constable says that he would like to run a competition to get another 300 to 500 officers, so we need to recruit a number of officers that is somewhere in the middle of the two figures. The only way we can achieve that is by addressing the deficit in our budget. None of the other 42 police services operational here is asked to pay for national security. Why are the police in Northern Ireland asked to pay for national security? We are not only dealing with Irish-based terrorism but with national criminality—and with Islamic terrorist activity as well. We pick that tab up too, and that is wrong.
The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee mentioned additional equipment for police officers and the wearing of cameras. They are expensive, but I believe they are useful and should be routinely deployed on police officers, not only to protect them from false allegations, but to ensure that civilians are protected whenever they come across police officers.
I agree thoroughly with the points made by the hon. Member for South Dorset. He made the point clearly that we need more bobbies on the beat. The more bobbies we have on the beat, the more we will see that they disrupt crime and play a very effective role.
I want to focus on an issue that has left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth—plebgate and its impact. Plebgate has left the police in London looking rather poor because of how officers approached a Member of Parliament. It is important that the employment in the Cabinet of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) is remedied soon. This is the appropriate place to make that point.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) who, up until his outburst on me, I considered an hon. Friend—I agree with many of his political positions. He said he would go on to speak about policing in Northern Ireland, and I believe I was perfectly entitled to question whether or not that was in order, particularly because I have been sitting in the Chamber from the beginning of the debate waiting to speak, and because the debate relates to the police grant in England and Wales. That is not to decry our fantastic Union—it is always a pleasure and delight to hear about Northern Ireland—but I am sorry he interpreted my attempts to bring him back to order in such a manner. I am sure we will still be friends.
I shall speak to the report as it relates to England and Wales, and my police force in Humberside, which serves the East Riding of Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire. I speak on the police grant debate most years. I have always abstained on the budget because of my concern, as previous Ministers have heard, about the scale of the reductions. I fully understand and support the need for reductions, but I am concerned about their scale, particularly as they come at the same time as a change in officers’ terms and conditions, which has had an impact on morale. I shall say more about that later.
I tend to say something about the Labour position every year in such debates. In 2007, police numbers were falling in my area—they fell by 137. [Interruption.] It would be nice if I could hear myself. There seems to be some noise coming from the Government Back Benches.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I will chair the proceedings. If every speaker were heard in utter silence, I would be so pleased, but that rarely happens. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman’s hon. Friends can take note that he is struggling to make himself heard above the noise.
Andrew Percy
I am happy to be ignored in perfect silence or to be heckled, but when the noise is so close, it is a little difficult to hear oneself think. One expects an element of quiet—perhaps it comes with being a schoolteacher. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), my neighbour, will concur with the requirement for people to listen in silence.
On the Labour position on policing cuts, 137 officers were cut in 2007 in my area. There was no opposition from Labour representatives at the time. In fact, they supported the reductions and the civilianisation of roles, so I am a little amused when local Labour politicians engage in campaigns against police cuts and reductions in police numbers. They did not have such an issue with them in 2007. I respect the shadow Minister greatly, but I was unclear on the Labour position on funding for our police. He did not rule out cuts—he clearly could not do so given the statements made by the shadow Chancellor—but he did not tell us what the scale of those cuts would be. It is a little unfair for him to be critical of the Government without putting a proper alternative forward.
Jack Dromey
I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, but let me make myself absolutely clear: the best advice from HMIC was that 12% cuts could be made without impacting on the front line. We accepted that in government and then in opposition, and it has been our position ever since. The problem is that the Government have gone far beyond that, to 20% cuts, and as a consequence we have lost 15,000 police officers, including 10,000 from the front line.
Andrew Percy
We know the argument about whether the figure is really 12% or 14%. Either way, however, Labour has not said how it would pay for it. It has made a range of spending commitments, including repealing various welfare measures, but it has not said how it would pay for them. It is fine to say, “Let’s limit cuts to 12%”, but it is incumbent on the Opposition, who after all aspire to government, to explain how they would pay for it. We did not hear that today.
I am unclear also about neighbourhood policing. In my area, we have seen a move away from neighbourhood policing. We went from ward-based policing—a lot of public money was spent on ward-based police stations that never opened to the public—towards larger local policing teams. That happened before this Government came to power. I heard Labour’s commitment to neighbourhood policing, but we tried it in Humberside, and we have now moved to area-based policing, which has been very effective. It contains elements of neighbourhood policing and best practice, but not quite as originally envisaged.
I concur with colleagues who are unsure whether to believe crime figures—I was critical of them as a local councillor, under the last Government, when major falls were trumpeted—although there has undoubtedly been a fall in crime, particularly in antisocial behaviour. I was a local councillor for 10 years, and it used to be an issue of great concern—there were issues with street corners and public places—but in my experience it has now abated. Nevertheless, I do not believe the crime figures as they are presented, not least because a lot of crime still goes unreported. In addition, there are many crimes that years ago would have been reported, but are not now. I had my car broken into five times in 18 months, but I did not report each crime, as would have happened perhaps 10 or 15 years ago. So although we should welcome the general fall in crime, I do not believe it has fallen as far as is claimed.
Local authorities can have an impact on local policing. We have seen an excellent example of that in north Lincolnshire under the leadership of Liz Redfern, who took over the council from Labour in 2011. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Absolutely. She pledged to use local council funding to provide additional police community support officers in rural areas so that Humberside police could get on with policing in the urban areas, where the crime statistics showed such policing was necessary. We provided those additional PCSOs through local grants to the police, and only a few weeks ago, I welcomed the new PCSOs, Michelle Thorley and Dan Dreggs, who work out of Epworth and cover the whole of the isle of Axholme. They are doing a great job, funded by the local council.
Despite the massive cuts to local authorities we have heard about, the local council has also provided CCTV funding, and a new CCTV system is now coming into place in Epworth. Moreover, they, along with East Riding of Yorkshire council, have a sharing arrangement with Humberside police for fuel and vehicles, which is to be welcomed, while our police and crime commissioner, Matthew Grove, and his deputy, Paul Robinson, are working on a strategy for sharing buildings, which sometimes involves moving police stations into shared buildings. We must be careful to ensure a continuous presence—we do not want the services diminished—but in fact there is an increasing police presence, and in a couple of weeks a new station will open in my constituency.
The pressure on budgets has led to those developments, which we need to see more of, so I ask the Minister to ensure that funding for local authorities takes account of such innovative practices and working. In my area, Humberside police have received £1 million from the innovation fund to give police officers and PCSOs tablet devices so that they can get out on the front line and be more visible and do their work there, which is to be welcomed. We need funding to support those kinds of measures.
I am working through the 20-day police parliamentary scheme, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), my near neighbour, completed a few years ago. I have found that incredibly useful. The weekend before last, I did two night shifts with an instant response team based in Clough road police station in Hull, which covers the eastern part of the city. It was an interesting experience. I have done a number of nights in Grimsby, which was also very interesting, as well as joining public order and traffic patrols in my area. I have been struck by how dedicated staff are, but I have also been struck by how under attack some of them feel. They feel the pressure of reduced resources, as well as changes to terms and conditions and to pensions. I have been very defensive on those, particularly on pensions, on which I have had some robust discussions with police officers.
I am more sympathetic on the issue of how thin the thin blue line can be stretched. I have been uncomfortable with the scale of reductions in spending, although I understand the reasons for them, given the legacy we came to office to deal with. But we have to be careful. We have protection for NHS and school funding. I hope that, in further reductions, we will look closely at policing. In the latest round there has been protection, but we need to move on that. I get a sense from local officers that they are at a point where they can hold the line at the moment, but a small upturn in crime figures might put them under pressure.
I have also been struck by how much of the police work is not actually police work, as has been mentioned. They seem to be massively involved in social work, and in dealing with family disorder and breakdown, alcohol misuse, drug misuse and serious mental health issues. A lot of police officers said to me that they would love to be able to spend their time fighting crime, but they are spending far too much time picking up failings in other services. That must be factored in when we look at the budgets.
Our police service does a fantastic job but I think reform was needed. In my 10 years as a local councillor in Hull, I remember that lots of money was showered on policing locally. Our police precept went up by 500 per cent in the 13 years of the last Government, and a lot of buildings were built that were not open to the public. A lot of money was thrown at initiatives that were not necessarily well thought through or assessed for their effectiveness. It was a question of “There is a problem. Let us throw some money at it and hope it works.” In lots of cases, it did not work. There was a huge waste of money and we are still dealing with the legacy of some of those issues, including the buildings that were built as part of Humberside police authority’s massive expansion programme of police stations that were never open to the public.
Money is not the answer to everything. We know that and I think the Government are going in the right direction in terms of trying to promote innovation. However, we have to be conscious of the fact that we are potentially getting to a point in policing where the line has been stretched very thin and we need to be careful in moving forward. I fear that if there is an upturn in crime any time soon, we may well not be able to respond as we would want to.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned the police and crime commissioner. Does he agree that we have seen a fundamental shift from a policing service that was too often looking to Whitehall to one that is grounded in the local community? Does he also agree that Matthew Grove in our area has done a great job of making sure that the police meet local needs, albeit they are struggling with limited resources?
Andrew Percy
Yes, I agree entirely. I shall end with the point that we need to look at whether the PCCs can take over the role of the fire authority as well and try to bring both services together.
Damian Green
With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will try to respond to some, although inevitably not all, of the points made in what has been a very lively and positive debate. I understand that there are concerns about reductions in funding but we are confident that they are challenging but manageable. What we see around the country in the constituencies of many hon. Members is that the police are not just making the necessary savings, but are transforming the way in which they provide the service to the public. In doing so, the measure is whether crime continues to fall—and crime does continue to fall.
Let me deal with one or two of the points made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) who speaks for the Labour party. Although he spoke for more than 30 minutes, essentially to attack Government cuts, he could not answer whether a Labour Government would reverse any of those cuts. Let me clarify for him that what the Home Secretary and I have said, along with everybody else, is that our only target for the police is to cut crime. We have removed the plethora of detailed targets that the previous Government set the police, which got in the way of cutting crime, and said that cutting crime is the only thing the police need to do.
The hon. Gentleman tried to separate that from crime prevention. Preventing crime contributes to cutting crime and of course that is the most desirable way of doing it. That brings me to neighbourhood policing, which he and the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) emphasised. One of the things about effective neighbourhood policing—to which I am as committed as anyone—is that it leads to a cut in crime. Effective policing on the ground means that things are spotted earlier. The net effect is that the crime figures continue to come down, so we urge all police forces to do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) was characteristically forensic and knowledgeable on this subject. He pointed out how money better spent can and does lead to better policing.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Select Committee on Home Affairs, asked about recruitment and morale. I am happy to report that a number of forces are recruiting again—we have heard that Cambridgeshire now has more police. In all those areas, recruitment is extremely attractive. Forces that go out to find new police officers find people pouring in through the door wanting to do the job.
The point made about the formula by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) is precisely why we are having the biggest review of the formula for more than a decade—so that we get it right and the current unfairnesses are removed.
A number of hon. Members talked about technology. I am glad that the House has welcomed our emphasis on innovation and technology. The whole point about technology is to release police officers to be on the beat and on the streets more often than they are now. That feeds into crime prevention, neighbourhood policing and all the other desirable things we want in policing. If we use modern, digital technology better, we will have more effective and visible police officers. That is at the heart of many of the innovations we are making, particularly those we are supporting through the police innovation fund.
People have asked how the technology will be paid for. The answer is that the first round of the police innovation fund was hugely successful and the second round will be two and a half times the size of the first. Police forces up and down the country, along with their police and crime commissioners, are using the fund to drive the use of technology, which will make policing even more effective in the future. I am confident that both the PCCs and the forces will be able to continue to deliver those efficiencies while providing the excellent service that the public deserve. I commend the motion to the House.
Question put.
Local Government Finance
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
20:17 - The House divided: - Ayes: 276 / Noes: 185 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I can report to the House that the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments has cleared the two reports that are to be debated.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
I beg to move,
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2014-15 (HC 1056), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this we shall consider the following motion:
That the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2014-15 (HC 1055), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.
Brandon Lewis
Members on both sides of the House may well be aware that until now the Secretary of State has not missed a local government finance settlement debate in this Parliament. He sends his apologies, and hopes to join in the debate later in the evening, but, as I am sure Members will understand, he is currently attending a Cobra meeting.
The coalition Government have been working determinedly to restore the public finances, which were left in such disarray by the last Labour Government. It has been complicated and difficult work, and difficult decisions have had to be made. It is in the context of our responsible, long-term economic plan that we have been consulting on the local government finance settlement for 2014-15. Our proposals are fair and balanced, and provide an effective basis for all local authorities to transform local services and promote efficiency. Following a wide range of representations and meetings, we confirmed last week that the settlement would remain almost entirely as announced in December. This is effectively the second year of a two-year settlement, which gives councils a new level of self-determination so that they can take control of their own finances.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
May I return the Minister to the words “fair and balanced”? The average cut in spending power for 2014-15 across England will be £71.44, whereas in Birmingham it will be twice that, at £145.33. How can I explain to people in Birmingham that that is “fair and balanced”?
Brandon Lewis
I am sure that the hon. Lady will not be surprised to learn that authorities such as Birmingham have higher spending power in the first place. The 10 most deprived areas in the country have an average spending power of £3,026 per dwelling, while the average spending power of the 10 least deprived is about £1,900.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
How can it be fair that my constituents in Northumberland pay a third more in council tax than the urban residents in Newcastle, but receive £100 less per head in services? Our Government have done so little so far to deal with the unfairness that the last Government left for rural areas.
Brandon Lewis
Actually, that is not an unreasonable point. Members highlight the changes in spending power between the different authorities, but they sometimes forget that some of them had high spending power in the first place. The contrast between areas like Newcastle and Windsor is very marked.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
On that point about fairness, does the Minister recognise that areas like County Durham have high levels of deprivation and need? For example, the cost of looked-after children is much greater in such areas, because the numbers involved are much greater proportionally in places like Durham, Birmingham and Newcastle than in more affluent areas such as Wokingham.
Brandon Lewis
I think the hon. Gentleman will find that that is why those areas have substantially higher spending power in the first place. He should also note that a member of his own Front-Bench team supported the petition for a fairer spread between urban and rural areas a couple of months ago.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Urban areas receive 50% more in central Government grant than rural areas which, contrary to what some Opposition Members suggest, have lower average incomes, so poorer people are paying higher taxes and getting fewer services. That cannot be sustained.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend has made that point about rural areas with great passion on a number of occasions, and I will deal with it in a moment.
After years of doffing their caps to central Government and talking down their areas to scrape together more handouts, councils can now embrace the autonomy that this settlement gives them. Councils have risen to the challenge of delivering more for less, but local government spending still accounts for a quarter of all public spending. In the current year, it will spend £117 billion, which is £3 billion more than last year. That makes the local government bill bigger than that of the NHS and double the defence budget. It is therefore necessary for councils to continue to find sensible savings.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Speaking of fairness, I believe that it is fair to the hard-pressed taxpayers in my constituency that their council tax has been frozen, not least because the Government have given us more than £7 million to enable that to happen. That funding was opposed by the Labour opposition.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is good to see councils across the country freezing council tax and moving away from the situation that we had under the last Government, when it roughly doubled.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
On the subject of how councils spend their money, North Lincolnshire council, which has been Conservative-run since 2011, has frozen its council tax for four years despite the funding cuts and despite having less per head than other councils. It has reversed the previous Labour council’s cuts to youth services and increased spending on and the building of new libraries. It is also replacing damaged and leaking classrooms, which the previous Labour council did not do. It has managed to do all that without having to place any extra burdens on council tax payers. This can be done if councils are prepared to show true leadership by cutting the people at the top rather than the services at the bottom.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The leader of that council is Liz Redfern, and it is a great example of a well run council. It is showing that we can deliver more for less. Good councils across the country are changing the way in which they deliver services by doing exactly the kind of work that my hon. Friend has outlined.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
We cannot always place the burden on local authorities. In Coventry, for example, the cumulative effect will be a cut of 24%, involving 1,000 jobs. More important, children’s services and social services will be cut, and education services will be cut, which will affect school build. The Government are setting the clock back: when they impose a freeze, it is like a dam that will burst in three or four years’ time.
Brandon Lewis
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the statement we made before Christmas, he will see that that is not the case, because we have rolled the freeze grant into the base to help councils. I suggest that his council may want to listen to councils such as North Lincolnshire, which has shown that it can achieve improvements in services, even while spending less.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I have been in the Minister’s position, albeit some time ago, and I wonder whether he agrees that some Members are engaging in bad cherry-picking by pointing out certain difficulties. They also point out that the system of calculation is complicated, but the reason it is complicated is that it uses a balance of factors that suits each individual local authority. It is therefore unfair to pick out the difficult cases without balancing them with the others.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend, with his experience, makes a clear point, which highlights how some Labour Members sometimes like to forget the starting point from which they are working and what high spending power some of these authorities have.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I congratulate the Government on changing the Bellwin formula at this point, which is relevant to the local government settlement. The percentage has gone from 85% to 100%, and the limit has now been relaxed from £1.7 million to £1.1 million. That is good, but my local authority tells me that although their pothole gangs have gone from 13 to 35, all planned work, other than drainage work, has had to be put on hold, so there is still a need for more.
Brandon Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I know she is rightly fighting hard for her area. As the Prime Minister said today, we must make sure that we do all that we can to ensure that areas have everything they need in this situation, and I will discuss flooding in a few moments.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
On the Government’s own figures, Liverpool has the highest level of deprivation in the country, yet it has an entrepreneurial council that is working hard to back business and support jobs. In those circumstances, with the council showing so much initiative against a background of such adversity, why has Liverpool suffered the greatest cuts of all local authorities in the country?
Brandon Lewis
Actually, it has not. A council that has some of the greatest cuts is my own local authority in Great Yarmouth, which was left a black hole by the last Labour Government through the working neighbourhoods fund. I gently say to the hon. Lady that she might want to remind Mayor Anderson that Liverpool’s authority has £116 million in reserve, one of the highest spending powers in the country in the first place, a regional growth fund and a city deal. This Government are working with such local authorities.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I thank the Minister for meeting MPs from Birmingham to look at this issue, and I congratulate hon. Members generally on highlighting the difficulty of working out what a fair system is for allocating local government finance. The Government have focused on percentage reductions in spending power. Does the Minister agree that, after incentives, looking towards the reduction in percentage spending power, not absolute spending power, provides an equality of pain that gives us a way forward? It takes into account the fact that in areas like Greater Birmingham, where people work in Birmingham but live around it and require services from Birmingham but are not contributing towards—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the Minister replies, may I remind the House that 17 Members wish to participate in this debate? Interventions must be short, and I will start to interrupt them if they continue to be as long as they have been so far.
Brandon Lewis
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman made that point in the meeting we had. As I said to him, I will happily go through it in more detail over the next couple of months, meeting him and officials to look at some of the ideas he is talking about.
Brandon Lewis
I will make a bit of progress, bearing in mind what Madam Deputy Speaker said, and then take more interventions.
It is necessary for councils to continue finding sensible savings, to modernise services and to cut back on waste. Recent opinion polls have shown that that is achievable, and we have examples from around the country of councils doing just that. The level of satisfaction with councils is increasing compared with the situation in 2010, highlighting that even when savings are being made councils can maintain or improve services for residents.
This year’s settlement is fair. It is fair to north and south, rural and urban, metropolitan and shire. Let us be clear that next year councils will be armed with significant spending power, averaging £2,089 per dwelling; the top 10 most deprived councils in the country will average more than £3,000 per dwelling compared with a figure of about £1,900 per dwelling for the least deprived areas. We are protecting cities and those authorities facing a higher demand for services, despite what the Opposition suggest. As I say, the top 10% most deprived authorities will be more than £1,000 per household better off than the least deprived 10%. Places such as Newcastle receive £2,400 in spending power, about £900 more than places like Windsor and Maidenhead.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
I do not agree with the Minister about Brighton and Hove’s council being satisfactory. The bonkers Green Brighton and Hove council is sitting on tens of millions of pounds of reserves, is spending millions of pounds on its leadership teams and is totally out of touch with residents. What can the Minister do about it?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend has done a great deal by bringing this matter to the attention of Members and putting it on the record. What I say to councils, including the one in Brighton, is that they should do the right thing by their residents and freeze council tax to help hard-working people and families. We understand the pressures that all authorities face, and the division of funding demonstrates that we have tried to be fair.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
How on earth can the Minister say that this settlement is fair when, three months ago, the Audit Commission, the local government expert, said that
“councils in the most deprived areas have seen substantially greater reductions in government funding as a share of revenue expenditure than those in less deprived areas”?
Is the Audit Commission wrong?
Brandon Lewis
As I said just a few moments ago, 10% of the most deprived areas of the country have an average spending power of £3,026 per household, compared with £1,900 for the least deprived 10% of areas. We must bear that starting point in mind. The most deprived areas have greater spending power. The average reduction in spending power this year is just 2.9%, with no council being more than 6.9% worse off. This is the highest level of protection that we have been able to offer councils in three years.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The Minister has spoken about councils being able to put a freeze on council tax for a further year. Does he not realise that many councils could see what was coming? It did not take a genius to see that the financial situation in 2010-11 would be difficult. Rugby borough council recognised that, and is now looking at a council tax cut for the coming year.
Brandon Lewis
Again, my hon. Friend gives a good example, to which I will be referring in just a moment. Good councils have planned for this and worked for their residents. Not only are they able to freeze the council tax, but in some cases, councils such as Rugby have done the excellent thing and cut council tax.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Birmingham has cut £300 million from back-office services, but is still reeling from the biggest cuts in local government history. It is losing 23% of its spending power, while Wokingham is gaining 1%. How can it be right that the 10 most deprived areas are hit 10 times harder than the 10 least deprived areas? How can that be fair?
Brandon Lewis
The 10% most deprived areas in the country and the areas with the most need have a higher spending power in the first place and get a bigger Government grant.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
On this issue of spending power, may I take the Minister back to the first and second answers that he gave and see how he puts them together? My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) talked about the reduction in spending power in a deprived area such as Birmingham. The Minister said, yes, but it has a higher spending power in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) then said that the reason—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This is not an opportunity to make a speech. I want the hon. Gentleman to put a short question to the Minister.
Richard Burden
The Minister said that the reason was that such areas have higher needs. If that is the case, let us go back to the same question: why do the most deprived areas with the highest needs get the biggest reductions?
Brandon Lewis
It is best to refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave a few moments ago.
In response to the question about flooding asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), let me say that we are currently experiencing the wettest winter for 250 years, and that has an impact on local authorities’ finances. Many are working tirelessly for the safety of their communities. The Government have made it clear that they are committed to supporting them unequivocally. The severe flooding and storms have affected rural and urban, town and country alike from Great Yarmouth to Dawlish.
Sixty-two local authorities have thus far indicated that they will apply under the Bellwin scheme for financial assistance. The grant reimburses local authorities for the cost of their immediate actions to safeguard life and property. We have enhanced the terms of the Bellwin scheme in response to the most recent severe weather events. The floor has been lowered so that more councils can apply, which will be of particular benefit to the unitary and county authorities. We estimate that that could be worth an extra £15 million to those councils, and we will be paying 100% above the threshold as opposed to the previous 85%. For the longer term, I am committed, along with my colleagues across Whitehall, to undertake a review of the Bellwin scheme to assess what changes may be needed in the light of more frequent and challenging weather events. Members will no doubt already have noted that we have provided a £7 million severe weather recovery fund for those areas affected before and over Christmas.
We have also listened to the wider concerns—I note the comments that have been made in interventions already this afternoon—of colleagues in rural areas about the extra challenges their local authorities might face in achieving service delivery efficiencies. We are topping up the rural services delivery funding by an extra £3 million this year, including the extra £2 million announced today, so it is now worth £11.5 million, which is a further boost to the 95 authorities that will benefit this year.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
Does the Minister not recognise, however, that that is less than the cost of employing an officer to work out what the missing money between the rural and urban split would be? Three million quid divided by 95 local authorities is about 30 grand each.
Brandon Lewis
The difference between the urban and rural authorities is between 13% and 10% when it comes to spending power, depending on whether we are looking at the counties or the districts. We will be working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the next few months to do some research on the difference in the cost of delivering services, which is raised regularly by Members from rural constituencies, and get to the bottom of the issue.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
No doubt the Minister has studied the case made by the Rural Fair Share campaign and will be aware that Cornwall, for example, is not only rural, but among the most deprived areas of the country. Does he accept the principle that there is a comparative unfairness between urban and rural local authorities? Even if he cannot address the issue now, does he accept that the Government should address it in time?
Brandon Lewis
As I have said, the difference in spending power between urban and rural areas is between 13% and 10%—unless we are talking about a fire authority, in which case it is plus 3 for rural areas—so there is definitely a gap between the two. The work that DEFRA will do will look at differences in the costs in rural and urban areas.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
On fairness, the Minister earlier compared Newcastle and Windsor. Is he aware that Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, has said:
‘When Government ministers compare such different councils as affluent Windsor and metropolitan Newcastle in an attempt to justify the “fairness” of the settlement it only serves to highlight how out of touch this process has become’?
Brandon Lewis
I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman feels that way about his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who used that very comparison himself.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
To return to flooding, can the Minister confirm whether he will be making an application to the solidarity fund? I know that the threshold is high, but if it is taken on a regional basis that would be a really helpful source of additional funding for the south-west.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend tempts me away from the local government finance settlement. The Government look at such things, but the fund currently has a threshold of about £3.7 billion, and the Government would have to pay back the majority of what we got because of the way the mechanism works.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), will the Minister give us a guarantee that in the longer term he will grapple with the issue of funding for rural areas? Shropshire is the largest land-locked county in England, and providing services in such large areas inextricably costs more.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Fortunately, in Staffordshire the Trent has not flooded, but we are facing cuts across the board—to the police, youth services, disability services and now libraries. In Newcastle-under-Lyme the actual cash cut has been 13.6%, but under total revenue spending power it magically becomes just 4.4%. Which figure is correct?
Brandon Lewis
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should look at spending power, which is what the Local Government Association prefers to use, because it outlines the amount of money and the way local councils have influence and control. It is the entire spend that a local authority has; it does not just single out one small part of its funding. That is an important change in how local government finance has worked, as we are now moving to a system in which more and more of the money is in the entire control of local authorities with their own autonomy.
Brandon Lewis
I will give way to the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee before making some progress.
Mr Betts
I draw the Minister’s attention to what he told the Committee on 27 January. He said that the system is changing from one based on allocation according to need, which now will be reflected merely in the base business line rate in 2013-14. Basically, the Government will distribute grant according to local authorities’ ability to raise their own resources. Is that not a fundamental change?
Brandon Lewis
It is a total change away from the begging bowl system to a reward-and-incentive-based system for local authorities.
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
Does not this debate highlight what these debates have highlighted year after year—the lack of transparency in being able to judge one side against the other? Every council has had to deal with cuts; some have dealt with them well and some have not. How can voters judge which is which?
Brandon Lewis
In my experience, voters are pretty good judges of what is a good council as opposed to what is a bad council. We have already heard examples of councils that are doing really good work in transforming the way in which they deliver services and work together. I will come to that specifically in a moment.
We are continuing to encourage councils to grow their own economies. Last year’s transformation challenge award incentivised councils to rethink how they go about their business and to transform fundamentally the structure of their local services. Eighteen areas received a share of £7 million to jump-start innovative projects. Following this success, we will continue with the transformation challenge this year, and I will announce the terms and details shortly.
The expertise that councils have shared with other councils and the expertise being shared through the community budget pilots and the transformation network highlight the fact that this is the right approach. Authorities such as Staffordshire Moorlands and High Peak are showing that they can save about 18% by sharing management and working in a different way. Likewise, South Holland, Breckland and other councils around the country are working more innovatively.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the Government’s £600 million-plus investment in rural broadband is another route for councils to make significant efficiencies?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The transformation of how we communicate, particularly through broadband, makes it possible to do many more things more efficiently and effectively, and it will no doubt continue to change how we deliver services and are able to work together across authorities.
The efficiency support grant has further incentivised transformation. The councils facing the largest spending reductions, many of which were in that position because they were abandoned by Labour’s reduction in the working neighbourhoods fund and left with a black hole in 2010, are now being given a leg-up towards making these savings through the transitional grant. I must declare my interest, as Great Yarmouth is one of the authorities that Labour left stranded. Authorities receiving the grant are protected by our safety net, which is bigger and stronger than last year. Despite some areas choosing to play politics with this—I am disappointed that Labour-run Great Yarmouth borough council refuses to follow the lead of other councils, sometimes even cross-party—councils such as Hastings and Pendle are doing some really good work on transforming things. Areas such as High Peak and Staffordshire Moorlands are working cross-party to share management and show the way to savings of about 18%. They are showing the way forward, and I hope that others will follow. Those in receipt of funding are making progress with their efficiencies, with many going a long way towards that, including many Labour-led areas. There is, however, more to do.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
I agree that transformation, integration and doing things differently is one way of mitigating the impact of the cuts. However, over the past few years my local authority in Salford has already cut our adult social care budget by £21 million. We were the last local authority in Greater Manchester to have to retreat to the position of providing support only to people with serious and critical needs. That means that 1,000 people in Salford will no longer receive support and care from the local authority. Those are real families in great distress, and the Minister must at least take account of that.
Brandon Lewis
I would be happy to meet the right hon. Lady and other Members from Salford if that would help. In a moment, I will touch on the better care fund, because we do need to look at how we change, reform and transform the delivery of adult social services, particularly social care. That is one of the things that my Department and the Department of Health are working on. I am working closely with the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), to deliver for local authorities.
We want to go further with the efficiency support grant. The Government do not want to continue as we have had to do, year after year, in patching up problems left from the Labour legacy. We have listened to authorities and to Members—not only me, before I was in post, but those such as my hon. Friends the Members for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson)—about dealing with this issue once and for all and finding a permanent fix. Therefore, for councils that are on track with their efficiency plans and are delivering on the second year of their business plans, which we will review later this year, the grant will be rolled into their settlement in 2015-16. This a massive opportunity—a big reward—that will go a long way to filling, once and for all, the black hole in which seven authorities were left by Labour.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
May I ask the Minister whether his Department has done any kind of research into the long-term financial viability of local authorities? We already know that some are nearing the cliff edge, so what assessment has his Department made and what will he do to make sure that they do not go bankrupt?
Brandon Lewis
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the work showing not only that local authorities are coping well, but that good ones are improving front-line services.
Mr Burrowes
My hon. Friend mentioned the legacy from Labour. He will know, not least from Great Yarmouth, that damping is an issue for Enfield. Damping poses a structural challenge for places such as Enfield, with unmet need that is embedded year after year, and it does not reflect the growing population and deprivation issues.
Brandon Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of damping. I know that hon. Members have differing views about it, but it means that we can have stability in the baseline. It also recognises need as we move towards a new system, the business rates retention scheme, which I will turn to in a few moments.
Councils can become masters of their own destiny in other ways. The new homes bonus rewards councils that have increased the local housing supply, helping them to meet the needs of a growing community. In 2014-15, the new homes bonus will be worth £916 million, which is money for councils to spend as they see fit. Those authorities that have had an increase in their funding—Members have mentioned some of them—have had that increase because they have done the right thing: they have built more houses, and they have got more money for doing so.
The business rates retention scheme has revolutionised the potential to grow local economies, and has given councils a hand in their success. Under the previous Government, councils did not get to see that money—£11 billion in business rates—that they can now retain. Councils sit on a total of £230 billion of assets, and we must do more to turn those assets into better services for local people.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Minister has talked about giving councils greater control over their spending, which has been reduced hugely—for example, Newcastle has lost £100 million—and about the new homes bonus, which is top-sliced from councils’ money and then controlled by this Government. How does he reconcile the Government’s apparent liberating of councils with their control of councils’ money?
Brandon Lewis
As we have said before, the Government are moving to a different system, in which councils are incentivised for doing things. The new homes bonus is a good example: if they build houses, they will get more money. Councils that need more support with creating or changing to cutting-edge services will now be able to use up to £200 million from asset sales to pay the one-off costs of service transformation.
The autumn statement protected local authorities from further cuts to services by setting out a two-year settlement, so allowing councils to plan for the longer term and to have stability in the services they provide to taxpayers. This year, we are publishing illustrative figures for 2015-16 to enable councils to do that.
As was announced in the spending round, £3.8 billion will become available from the better care fund in 2015-16. That touches on a point made by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). The better care fund is a real opportunity for local authorities. It will give our civic leaders a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to encourage better working between their local NHS and social care services but, importantly, to change for the better the lives of the most vulnerable people in our communities. Such a stable platform for forward planning, which is part of our long-term economic plan, will provide councils with the scope to merge back offices, to tackle fraud and to save £2 billion. Improving council tax collection will help to bring in the outstanding total of £2.4 billion in uncollected council tax. Our proposals put councils in charge of their finances and, for the first time in the history of local government finance, give them a direct stake in the success of the local economy.
We recognise the crucial role that councils can play in helping with the cost of living. We have offered councils support so that they can freeze council tax bills, despite the fact that those bills doubled under the previous Government. Since 2010, council tax bills have fallen by an average of 10% in real terms. The total freeze funding up to 2015-16 is £5.2 billion. That is a serious commitment by the Government to help hard-working families. Over the lifetime of this Parliament, the average band D taxpayer could save up to £1,100 thanks to our council tax freeze. The Chancellor has agreed, as he has in previous years, to put the next two years of funding into the baseline. That eliminates any risk of a cliff edge and offers the maximum possible certainty to councils.
Everyone in this House should expect councils to do their bit for hard-working families. They must recognise that they have a duty to take up the freeze offer. Councils that do not accept the freeze and instead want to raise bills by 2% or more may do so, but only by holding a binding referendum. We believe that that strikes the right balance between direct and representative democracy. I say to all councils, take the freeze. If they do not do so, but want to avoid a referendum, the increase will benefit them to the tune of just 0.9%. My message to councillors who are considering that is to go back and push their officers to deliver more for their residents. We have given local electorates the power to veto excessive rises through a referendum. Councils should trust the people if they are confident that they have a case for putting up taxes.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
My hon. Friend has been very generous in giving way. Will he look again at the threshold for referendums for fire services, particularly small ones such as East Sussex? If they want to put their precepts up by £3 a year, which is less than 1p a week, it would raise £900,000, but doing so would require a referendum that would cost up to £750,000. That does not make sense and I ask him to look at it again.
Brandon Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Local authority and fire authority treasurers often make that point. They say that they do not want to accept the freeze, but they want to build up their base. However, if they win a referendum, they get that in their base for ever, so I simply do not buy that argument. To answer my hon. Friend directly, last year we had a differential for the lowest charging authorities. We look at that on an annual basis. Although we are not doing it this year, we do not rule out doing it in future. With regard to referendums, there is a cost-saving opportunity for authorities this year, because we are allowing council tax referendums to be held on the same day as the European elections, which is 22 May.
So far, 161 councils have publicly announced that they intend to ease the monthly bills burden for families. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) mentioned, some authorities, such as Rugby, Croydon and Kensington and Chelsea, are even in a position to offer residents a one-off council tax rebate, so successful have they been in making savings. I expect many more councils to sign up to the freeze to make a difference to the cost of living for hard-working people and to demonstrate that locally elected leaders make the right choices for their electorate. I encourage councils to make the right choice and to offer a freeze for the fourth year.
Our do-it-yourself, reward-based mantra is a stark contrast to the old begging-bowl mentality. A substantial amount of money is available to local government in 2014-15. It is a bigger budget than the NHS and defence budgets. This settlement offers councils further freedoms, flexibilities and incentives to build more homes; to create more local jobs; to boost business and enterprise; and, ultimately, to provide more and better first-class services for their local residents.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Local government faces the biggest cuts of any part of the public sector. All around the country, councils are having to take incredibly tough decisions about the future of local services.
The Minister is like an abstract artist—the picture that he has painted today is clearly a departure from reality. Nobody believes his figures. He has claimed that the cuts are modest. He says that they can all be dealt with through efficiencies and that there will be no impact on front-line services. He should tell that to the elderly people who have had their home care withdrawn. He should tell it to the parents of children with special needs who cannot get the help that they need. He should tell it to the shift workers in my constituency who have to walk home at night in darkness because the streetlights are not on. He should tell it to the young people whose bus to school, college or work no longer runs. He should tell it to the Tory council leaders who were so appalled at the lack of understanding of the impact of the cuts among Ministers in his Department that they wrote to the Prime Minister to complain about the posturing. He should tell it to the council leaders in the poorest areas of our country who face the cruellest, deepest cuts of all.
The real picture is stark. The LGA says that over this Parliament, local government core funding will fall by 40% and councils will have to make £20 billion of savings. As hon. Members have pointed out, all councils face challenges, but the fundamentally unfair distribution of the cuts is particularly damaging to many communities. Even under the Government’s spending power measure, which is deliberately designed to mask the real impact, the 10 most deprived areas have had a cumulative cut that is 10 times more than the 10 least deprived areas.
The Prime Minister used to say, “We’re all in this together”, but his local authority and that of the Secretaries of State for Justice, for Health, for Education and for Defence, are getting an increase in spending power, while local authorities such as Hackney, Liverpool—as we have heard—and Manchester face the largest cuts. The coalition peer, Lord Shipley, said in the House of Lords last month that
“there is no doubt that the cuts have been steeper in the more deprived parts of the country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 January 2014; Vol. 750, c. 1700.]
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
If the Labour party wins the general election it proposes further cuts. What formula would it use to identify the equity or fairness of any distribution of cuts?
Andy Sawford
The Labour party has said that we accept the Government’s spending plans, but what we will not do is cut in such a fundamentally unfair way. I will come on to what the Labour Government will do.
Grahame M. Morris
Does my hon. Friend accept that the coalition Government are breaking the post-war consensus in which the revenue support grant was used to equalise resource allocation?
Andy Sawford
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point and I will come to it in a moment.
The widely respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation published research in November stating:
“Cuts in spending power and budgeted spend are systematically greater in more deprived local authorities than in more affluent ones”
We know that that unfairness is not an accident. The former local government Minister, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who is in his place, told the House,
“Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt”—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 450.]
As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) rightly says, since 1948 funding has been allocated to local authorities according to need. In December, the National Audit Office, in its report on council tax support, commented on the end of the formula grant system which it claims
“redistributed business rates according to a formula that determined each local authority’s grant by considering local authorities’ needs and ability to raise resources through council tax.”
That system was by no means perfect—hon. Members have pointed out some of its shortcomings—but it became complex because it strived for fairness. Any reform must keep that principle of fairness at its heart.
Andy Sawford
I will make progress on this point, and then I will take further interventions.
Will the Government tell the House what meaningful consultation there has been, and who gave them permission to remove a principle that has stood for 65 years—that councils should be funded according to need? The House of Commons Library states:
“Prior to 2013/14 local authorities received formula grant at the Local Government Finance Settlement. The formula used was based on a four block model which included its relative need. In the first year of the Business Rate Retention Scheme this link remained in the funding baselines, but the relationship between funding and need exists now only to the extent that they are present in the original baselines.”
As each year goes by, there will be further erosion of the relationship between funding and need. The Library clearly states that
“reductions are generally larger for more deprived areas and smaller amongst less deprived areas.”
Mr Graham Stuart
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way; he is being most generous. I notice that he did not respond to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) about where Labour would make cuts. On the issue of need, density was given four times the weighting of sparsity, even though there is no link between density of population and increased cost and delivery of services. How was that fair?
Andy Sawford
If the hon. Gentleman will be patient for a moment, I will, of course, come on to what Labour will do if it forms the next Government. On sparsity, I took part in the debate that he and others led last year, which I thought was excellent. I recognise many of the issues that he raised and there is a sparse rural authority in my constituency in East Northamptonshire. The formula should of course take account of rural sparsity, as well as urban deprivation. There is always a debate to be had about fairness within the system, but what is critical is that the part of local authority funding with fairness at its heart—notwithstanding the debate that will be had—is now being eroded, so the opportunity to ensure that funding is fair and according to need is being lost.
Paul Farrelly
To put the cuts in perspective, in Newcastle-under-Lyme in north Staffordshire, an area of great deprivation, we will now have lost half our Government grant. We face the prospect, in the near future, of losing 75% of grant. How can councils in those circumstances be viable and address local need satisfactorily?
Andy Sawford
My hon. Friend makes the point powerfully. The reduction in spending power of areas with higher needs and lower resources, and the increase in spending power in the wealthiest areas, will not just close the funding difference between such areas, but in time reverse it. That is already happening.
Andy Sawford
Of course I will give way to the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government.
Mr Betts
My hon. Friend has made a very important point. I come back to the comments the Minister made in his appearance before the Select Committee on 27 January. I asked whether the principle of the grant settlement, which equalises differences in needs and differences in resources between authorities, had been effectively eroded. The Minister said yes, there had been a big shift away from the begging bowl structure of the past to an incentive-based structure for the future.
Andy Sawford
My hon. Friend makes the point powerfully, with all of his experience as Chair of the Select Committee.
Spending power in Leeds will be lower than Wokingham’s in 2014-15, and will fall every year despite higher service pressures. Spending power for my hon. Friend’s own authority of Sheffield and for Newcastle, which has also been mentioned, will broadly match Wokingham’s in 2015-16 and then fall below it in future years despite higher service pressures. The spending pressures that councils face are very different. Newcastle has 101 looked-after children per 10,000 people, whereas Wokingham has 24. Homelessness and supported housing costs are £145 per dwelling in Newcastle and £48 in Wokingham. Statutory concessionary travel costs are £85 per dwelling in Newcastle and £14 in Wokingham. Where is the fairness in a funding system that does not recognise such large differences in need?
The revenue support grant element, which recognises need, will shrink from £15.2 billion in 2013-14 to £9.3 billion by 2015-16. Modelling shows that it could be gone altogether by the end of the next Parliament. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which the Government are fond of quoting, is clear in its analysis that the poorest areas are feeling the squeeze. Minority communities are particularly affected, too. Of the 30 areas in England with the highest black and minority ethnic populations, 29 face cuts above national average and eight face cuts of double the national average. The Department’s own impact assessment raises concerns about the effect of cuts on BME communities and about services to the very young, the elderly and the disabled. It says it is not possible to make a substantial assessment. I have to ask the Minister why not, given the scale of these cuts? Why has his Department not conducted a full impact assessment, as it was urged to do by the Public Accounts Committee?
Daniel Kawczynski
Under 13 years of the Labour Government we saw a huge increase in salaries for officers and chief executives in councils. I would like to have the hon. Gentleman’s views on how that can be controlled going forward, because it accounts for a great deal of money.
Andy Sawford
Chief officer pay is something that should, rightly, be determined locally. We would of course want local authorities to be responsible. I urge the hon. Gentleman to recognise, however, that some of the highest paid chief officers were in Conservative local authorities. We will not be taking any lectures on that point.
The Government seem to have introduced the term “spending power” to hide the true scale of the cuts. London Councils says that it is extremely concerned that the spending power calculation is misleading and incorrect. The Government say that spending power is the total amount of money available to a local authority but the LGA tells us that there is double counting, such as with health budgets that are also in the Department of Health’s figures. Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy says that
“these figures demonstrate…statement on the local government settlement this year was by any usual standards an…opaque announcement.”
The Minister says that the change to spending power is a shift in Government policy to reduce dependence. He uses that term about the begging bowl that, frankly, I find offensive. He says that this is about reducing dependence on central Government and freeing councils to encourage local growth. If that is true, we have to ask why it has taken so long for this Government to make a U-turn on business rates, which have risen by £2,000 since May 2010. Why will they not join this side of the House and go further by cutting rates for 1.5 million small and medium businesses? We agree, of course, that councils should not simply be a post-box for the Treasury, and schemes such as the local authority business growth incentive were introduced by the last Labour Government. We will look to reform any so-called incentivisation so that the system works fairly for all areas of the country and is alongside, rather than a replacement for, mechanisms for fair distribution of funding according to need.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
First, I find it ironic that the hon. Gentleman should criticise any change to the business rates model that his party resisted for so many years. Secondly, he talks in terms of the four-block model, which is generally regarded as discredited now. Would he persist with it or not?
Andy Sawford
The consensus around recognising need in local authority areas existed for more than 65 years, until this Government broke it. We have been clear that we will look in the next Parliament to restore fairness in the formula, and of course we will look to ensure that the model in place recognises need.
Andy Sawford
Let me make a bit of progress. The Minister spoke for 38 minutes, and I know that many hon. Members wish to contribute.
It is to be welcomed that the Government are compensating local authorities for the cap on business rates, but I am told by SIGOMA that the compensation amounts appear to be less than the estimated reduction in total business rates. I hope that the Minister who responds to the debate will comment on that point. Holdbacks to fund the business rate safety net have also been top-sliced unfairly from councils. While Windsor and Maidenhead contribute to the £120 million holdback at a share of £2.27 per dwelling, Middlesbrough contributed £7.97 per dwelling. Why does the Minister think that is right?
I pay tribute to my colleagues, especially the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who led an important debate on this last year. There was a limited U-turn by the Government on holdbacks. But when the Minister replies today I hope that he can update the House on what recent assessment has been made on the business rate safety net.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I see that the shadow Minister is carrying on the same creative accounting as the last Labour Government. They say that they will stick to the same budget as we will, but they will reduce business rates. I welcome that, but where will they get the money from? They will have to cut it from somewhere else.
Andy Sawford
The hon. Gentleman will have to do a bit better than that. The reduction in business rates is clearly costed by not going ahead with the cut in corporation tax for the largest businesses in the country. It is a clearly costed policy.
The new homes bonus is another top-slice from the formula grant, and the Government seem confused about its purpose. Their website describes it as:
“A grant paid by central government to local councils for increasing the number of homes and their use.”
But the Housing Minister told the House recently:
“I am afraid the new homes bonus is not about encouraging people to build homes.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2013; Vol. 571, c. 11.]
The National Audit Office report on the new homes bonus said it certainly is not about increasing the number of homes, stating:
“Overall we found little evidence that the Bonus has yet made significant changes to local authorities’ behaviour towards increasing housing supply…We found no association between individual local authorities’ planning application approval rates and the numbers of homes qualifying for the Bonus.”
As the new homes bonus is a top-slice without a purpose, I can understand why local authority leaders and members are frustrated by the fact that it compounds the problem of unfairness—because of course it comes from the grant.
London Councils has brought to my attention the Government’s recent decision to require London local government to transfer £70 million of its new homes bonus grant to the GLA. That is a centralising step by the Government in London. Those councils want to know why they are being treated differently from the rest of the country, and I hope that when the Minister responds later he will justify that.
Other changes are having an impact on councils. There is much concern about the localisation of welfare support. The funding has been passed from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and has already been cut in half in the process. There are no plans for any funding to be available after 2015. Do the Government recognise the impact that that will have on the ability of councils to help the most vulnerable people in our communities?
That leads me on to the Government’s new poll tax for the poorest people. The cuts to council tax support mean that many people on the lowest incomes will see their council tax bills jump. These people are carers, the disabled, single mums, war widows and veterans, and they will all have to pay more council tax and, in some cases, the bedroom tax, the impact of which my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) powerfully denounced earlier. Today the Prime Minister has again chosen not to rule out another tax cut for millionaires, so we can see where the Government’s priorities lie.
When people face a cost of living crisis, it is right that local authorities do their best to keep council tax down. In recent weeks, the Secretary of State has briefed the press that he would reduce the council tax referendum trigger, but he seems to have been overruled at the last minute by the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister. The whole process has been a complete shambles. SIGOMA has said that the late announcement of the threshold was unacceptable. Councillor Caitlin Bisknell of Derbyshire county council contacted me on the day of the announcement to tell me that the council was in the middle of a meeting to set its budget for next year when it was informed by the Government of the referendum limit. While the Secretary of State has been posturing and dithering, councils have been trying to plan ahead. Local councils and communities are the ones who are left to pick up the pieces of the Government’s incompetence.
For all the talk of a council tax freeze, more than a third of local authorities put council tax up last year. According to a recent survey by The Daily Telegraph, more than half the local authorities preparing to increase council tax this year are Conservative councils, including Oxfordshire, the Prime Minister’s county council, which plans to raise its bill for a second year running.
Mr Burrowes
Will the shadow Minister make it clear whether Labour supports the council tax freeze? I am sure he will come on to what he would hope to do if he had the opportunity in government, which I very much hope he does not. I have been reading the Public Finance magazine, which says that he is actively considering plans for new council tax bands. May we have those details now?
Andy Sawford
We are looking at representations that have been made to us by local government as part of our review on how we ensure that the funding formula is fairer in the next Parliament and fair to all councils. The hon. Gentleman mentions the council tax freeze, but there is no freeze. Many councils around the country are planning to put their council tax up. More than half of them are Conservative councils. Who blazed that trail? Councils such as Labour Hackney, which has been freezing council tax for eight years, did so. The three biggest council tax rises during the Labour period in power were by Tory councils.
The Minister has told us that local authorities can deal with the cuts by making sensible savings and reducing waste. The Prime Minister has described local government as the most efficient part of the public sector. While councils have had to make bigger and earlier cuts than any other part of the public sector and make massive savings, the Secretary of State has lumbered taxpayers with a limo bill of close to £500,000, reportedly the biggest of any Whitehall Department. The biscuit bill is rocketing, and the Department has even been fined for running an unauthorised overdraft. The Minister should therefore not patronise councils with his suggestions for savings.
Labour Hackney council’s social care services are supporting people to stay in their own homes and out of formal care, which saves £2 million annually. Bolsover and North East Derbyshire councils have pooled staff and resources and are saving £1.5 million a year. Blackburn with Darwen council saved £2.2 million in one year using pioneering telecare technology. Oldham council is using a co-operative commissioning approach for its children’s centres. The process is producing savings of £220,000 and protecting those vital children’s centres.
Despite the great work to make savings and reconfigure services in the best possible way for communities in the circumstances, the truth is that many local authorities are being pushed to the brink, as hon. Members have pointed out. LGA figures show that there is a big financial black hole in local government finances, which is widening by £2.1 billion a year. It is expected to reach £15 billion by the end of 2020. That is fuelling growing concerns that local authorities lack the ability to continue to deliver front-line services.
The LGA’s Conservative leader, Sir Merrick Cockell told the Communities and Local Government Committee that 86 authorities are near the tipping point of failure. The Government simply do not know how they will respond when councils fall over. When the permanent secretary to the Department for Communities and Local Government was questioned by the Public Accounts Committee, he said that councils have a statutory duty to balance their books. He is relying on that statutory duty in the face of reality. I am sure finance officers will do their best to advise councils on how to balance the books, but they are not magicians. The Minister must tell us what plans the Government have for when an authority becomes no longer viable.
Hon. Members have asked about the next Labour Government’s plans. We will not be able to stop the cuts or turn back the clock, but we will put fairness at the heart of the relationship between central and local government, and at the heart of our approach to local government finance. It is simply wrong that the most deprived local authorities and the communities that can least afford it are being hit hardest. It is often the areas with the highest demand for services that have the least capacity to raise income through business rates or council tax.
It is crucial that we support councils to deliver economic growth in all areas of the country, and to do that we will extend the model of city deals throughout local government and devolve power over housing and planning and jobs and skills—for example, through co-commissioning of the Work programme. We would also take forward our Total Place programme, which, being far too limited in scope, has sadly stalled under this Government, despite its clear potential. Furthermore, the local government innovation taskforce set up by the Leader of the Opposition is developing an ambitious programme requiring central and local government to work together as we transfer much more power and responsibility to councils. In this way, while resources will be tight, councils will have a fair chance to find a way forward for their communities.
In conclusion, in the Chancellor’s spending review in May 2010, he said—[Interruption.] Hon. Members might want to listen—it is their policy, their announcement. The Chancellor said:
“The Government will…limit…the impact of reductions in spending on the most vulnerable in society, and on those regions heavily dependent on the public sector”
and that
“the Government will look closely at the effects of its decisions on different groups in society, especially the least well off, and on different regions.”
Sadly, on local government funding, that promise of fairness is not worth the paper it is written on. Far from being localists, the Government have shown themselves to be mean and meddling at every turn, and nowhere more so than in taking the most from the communities and the people in the greatest need.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It will be necessary to have a six-minute time limit on all Back-Bench contributions, although it might be necessary to revisit that later.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
I wish I could say it was a pleasure to follow that speech.
The shadow Minister could have come to the House, in a statesmanlike way, and acknowledged that there was a serious crisis in the public finances that the previous Government made a considerable contribution to creating; that the Government faced a difficult task; that the four-block formula was widely discredited; that for 13 years under Labour council tax spiralled in areas such as mine, more than doubling and creating hardship for those on low wages and the elderly; and that for 13 years MPs for rural areas tried to persuade Ministers that the four-block formula did not capture need properly. Like most people, he knows it does not capture need or deal with the heterogeneous nature of rural deprivation, but rather discriminates against rural poverty and is fundamentally flawed. Instead, all we heard was that the system he would employ would be fairer—well, without the detail, nobody will believe that.
Torridge has the lowest wages in the country—lower than Liverpool, lower than Manchester, lower than the cities for which the shadow Minister was speaking, lower than other Labour-represented areas—the lowest average household incomes in Devon, the lowest income in Devon, the lowest output per capita in the south-west and the highest unemployment in the south-west. There are really deprived areas in these rural areas. For 13 years, Members on this side of the House, as well as some on his side, endeavoured to persuade the Labour Government that this formula was morally bankrupt, but all he can do is pick out and criticise specific aspects of how the Government have dealt with local government funding.
The problem is that the whole formula is wrong. I want to concentrate on certain difficulties that he acknowledged—although he did not say what he would do about them—concerning the highly discriminating way the system treats rural areas. Council tax has spiralled in rural areas: it is £86 per head higher than the average, yet they get £145 per head less in grant funding. Those of us who represent these areas, including, I believe, those on the Opposition Benches, feel that that is an inequity. What would he do about that? We have got to do something about it.
I have to say with regret to my hon. Friend the Minister that this Government are not doing enough about it. It is not enough to say that £11 million, with the extra £2 million that he has found today down the back of the sofa, corrects the anomaly that small rural district councils and shire county councils are facing. West Devon has had to take out the best part of 14% of its budget over the last three years. In Torridge, there are similar problems.
One point that the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) made with which I did agree was that this Government and any future Government that the Labour party may one day in the distant future form will have to decide whether they want small rural district and borough councils, because many of them—certainly some in the south-west—are on the brink of viability. I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. It may be that we have to look hard at the whole question of the reorganisation of local government in those areas and at whether we can maintain them.
I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to look again at the issue of rural sparsity and fairness to rural areas. The issue seems to be widely acknowledged and what has been done so far is not sufficient. One of the most frustrating factors that those of us on the Government Benches have experienced in meeting the Secretary of State—he has been very good with his time, as has my hon. Friend the Minister—is that every time we present a case, we are told that the figures are not what we say they are. Yet there seems to be no agreed common ground as to what those figures are so that we can both talk on the same level and on the same playing field. I urge my hon. Friend to sit down with the campaign that is growing in momentum and force on this side of the House—I hope that he acknowledges that—and see whether we can agree common terminology and common ground as to what these figures mean, so that we can achieve fairness in the future. I respectfully suggest to the Government that that is something to which they need to attribute the greatest priority because there is a growing sense of frustration on the Government Benches which will not for much longer be capped, if I can put it that way. I hope that, in closing, my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to help us with that.
I want to deal very briefly with the position of Devonshire county council, which is facing a huge problem following the recent severe weather. The new changes to the Bellwin formula are welcome but I understand that the formula does not deal with repair and maintenance. The Devonshire county council has £750 million—
Mr Graham Stuart
The East Riding was devastated by floods in 2007 and I am very interested to hear further observations from my hon. and learned Friend.
Mr Cox
My hon. Friend’s intervention enables me to say that the problem with the Bellwin formula is that it does not cover repair and is for a limited period. Repairs in the south-west, and particularly in Devon, are now up to a backlog of £750 million. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to look again at the Bellwin formula to consider whether it properly takes account of the costs that large rural shires are facing after this hugely problematic and severe weather.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that this point is absolutely essential, because the Prime Minister, in his visit to Devon and Cornwall, made it clear that councils would be compensated for all the costs of clearing up after the storm? Confusion will creep in unless this is dealt with in the way that my hon. and learned Friend describes.
Mr Cox
I agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider that. The changes that have been announced recently are very welcome but they do not go far enough, particularly for large counties, such as Devon and Cornwall, that have huge road networks, many of which have a backlog of repairs that is being made massively worse by the current spate of bad weather. We are facing huge backlogs of repair and maintenance. The current formula does not go far enough to address those problems. The Prime Minister has made this solemn pledge and I hope, and am sure, that my hon. Friend the Minister will want to see that that is properly fulfilled.
In conclusion, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to heed this point; the problem relating to the anomaly of small rural councils and county councils—shire councils—will not go away. Torridge and West Devon are facing an existential threat from the cuts that they have faced. In West Devon and in Torridge they have cut, cut and cut again. They have gone far beyond the 40 ways that were announced some time ago. I urge my hon. Friend to address that problem and the rural anomalies.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I want to address three fundamental unfairnesses in the settlement. The first is the lateness with which the Government made their decisions. Reference has already been made to the threshold for council tax increases. It is simply not fair for local councils to find that out when many of them had already come to their budgetary decisions. The Local Government Chronicle has just done a survey of 160 local council finance officers, 14% of whom admitted that they were basically scrambling around making changes to their budgets at the last minute in an attempt to anticipate what the threshold would be. Local authorities have a difficult job anyway, without the Government making it unnecessarily more difficult in that way.
Secondly, let us look at the cuts that local government is once again facing compared with the rest of government. Around 20% of the grant to local authorities will be cut in this settlement and next year’s. That is far bigger than the cut to other Departments. Even by the Government’s own figures for spending power, the cut over those two years, excluding the ring-fenced grants for public health and the better care fund, is around 10%. Again, that is much bigger than for other Departments. The Local Government Association has calculated the real-terms cuts in Government support to local authorities over the course of this Parliament at 40%—more than twice that for other Departments. Are the services that people receive from their councils—road sweeping, refuse collection, public health, checking food hygiene, local leisure centres and parks—really less important than the services provided by all other Departments? I do not believe they are, but if they are in the Government’s mind, they have to justify that as the basis for extra cuts for local authorities.
Let us look at the distribution of unfairness among local councils. We heard an interesting analysis earlier from a number of my hon. Friends who asked the Minister questions. Essentially it boiled down to this. Councils with the highest grant have had the highest cuts; those councils had a higher grant because they had higher needs; therefore, councils with the highest needs have had the highest cuts. That is the logic of the situation.
John Hemming
Earlier the shadow Minister was unable to tell the House how he would allocate the cuts that Labour would make to local government. Has the hon. Gentleman been told what the Labour party would do and, if so, will he tell the House?
Mr Betts
I am sorry, but if the hon. Gentleman wants me to invent a grant settlement in the course of a six-minute speech, I am not going to oblige him.
When the Minister appeared before the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, he admitted a fundamental change of Government policy, away from a needs-based system. The only needs taken into account are those reflected in the baseline of business rates, which started with the new arrangement in 2013-14. The new term—the settlement funding agreement—is really composed of two parts: the business rate base and the revenue support grant. As the business rate base is held constant or increases with inflation each year, the totality of cuts that the Government make falls on the revenue support grant element of the settlement funding agreement. Within the revenue support grant is something called the council tax resource equalisation adjustment. That has been cut by 25% this year, yet it is the mechanism by which extra resources are given to the poorest areas with the most deprivation. Those areas have had the biggest cuts, with resources transferred away from them. That is how the mechanism works in practice.
We can add to that the new homes bonus, which of course is not a bonus from Government, but is top-sliced from other Government funding—on the basis, therefore, of the grant that authorities already have—and then transferred to authorities according to the homes they are building. The Minister might say that that is an incentive to build homes—that is not what the Housing Minister said last time he was asked—but in the end, that money comes from a top-slice of grant, which means that those authorities with the greatest need and the greatest amount of grant pay the most into the system in the first place, and most of them lose out in the totality of the process.
Reference has already been made to my authority, Sheffield. The Minister likes to make comparisons with other areas that have not had as much grant in the past, saying that the Government are only doing a bit of evening up. Wokingham does not have the same needs as Sheffield, but in 2015-16, if we exclude the ring-fenced public health and better care fund grants that can be spent only on what they are allocated for, the spending power of Sheffield will be the same as that of Wokingham. That is impossible to justify according to anybody’s definition of fairness and reasonableness. Leeds already has less spending power and Newcastle will have less in two years. That is simply unfair. Does anyone on the Government Benches want to justify the idea that Wokingham’s spending power after 2015-16 should be higher than Sheffield’s? That is the system that Ministers are creating.
As the Minister knows, I am not against bringing some incentives into the local government finance system. I understand the desire for some localisation of business rates. I am in favour in the longer term of councils having the chance to raise more money at a local level rather than being dependent on Government, as an important element of localism involves freeing councils up to raise funds as well as giving them more powers.
Mr Betts
I said that I would take only one intervention, so my hon. Friend will have to excuse me. Other Members want to get in.
The system is fundamentally broken and I support the proposals made by the LGA in its “Rewiring public services” document. Let us give local authorities a budget for a whole Parliament so that they can plan ahead and let us consider involving the LGA in the process of distributing grant. I want to go further than that. I want a fundamental review of local government finance based on three principles. First, we should give more powers and responsibilities to local authorities, building on community budgets and city deals and going further than they do. Secondly, let us consider giving councils more fiscal autonomy, as the Select Committee is in the context of fiscal devolution to cities. We can then see whether we can reach some agreement to enable councils to raise more of their own resources. Finally and fundamentally, when the Government distribute money to councils they must do it in a fair way that reflects needs and deprivation. That is the element that the Government have forgotten in this settlement.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
Last November, I joined 30 colleagues on the Floor of this House to present petitions calling on the Government to close the gap in local government funding between rural and urban areas by a mere 10% by 2020. The petitions included 1,700 signatures from my constituency. In my view, that was a modest ask and I believe that we should look to the Government to do at least that and more in brisk order.
I recognise the problems faced by the Department for Communities and Local Government in the era of austerity, the need to eliminate the deficit and, of course, the debt repayments that will follow even when the deficit has been eliminated, but I believe that local government is taking too much of the burden—more than other Departments—and that, as the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) said a few moments ago, some local authorities are now facing such difficulties that their viability is in doubt.
It is vital that the Government should face up to the crisis towards which we are heading at great speed. Fundamentally, my complaint is as follows: why should some of the poorest people in the country, on the lowest wages, pay far more in council tax and receive far less grant from central Government while at the same time local services erode around them? That is what is happening in Devon and it is certainly what is happening in my constituency. The district council grant has been halved since 2010 and the total budget has been cut by a third over that time. This year alone, the Government have sliced the grant to the district council by 13.4%.
As for the wider picture, the situation is frankly no better for Devon county council. By next year, it will have seen a 60% cut in Government grant during the lifetime of this Parliament. Our schools and our health system are underfunded and, as other Members have said, the current system is quite simply broken. Rural residents pay council tax that is on average £86 a head higher than urban residents. They receive £145 less in Government grant than their urban counterparts, and this is a funding gap as wide as 50%.
It is welcome that the Government recognise the principle of there being a problem, and that they have put in place this emergency grant for a second year running, but I am sorry to say that even at the enhanced level that has been announced for the grant today, it closes that gap by only £1.04 a head, and at this rate it will take us 86 years to put right the gap in council tax payments, and 145 years to put right the gap in Government grant. This is simply not an adequate response to the scale of the problem that is faced in many rural communities throughout the country.
The Government make much of the spending power measure and bandy that about. That is a flawed measure. It looks at the current council tax revenues and believes that it is acceptable for some areas to pay much higher council tax and sees no reason why that should not continue in perpetuity. It also obscures the scale and impact of reductions in funding and the challenges that councils now face. For example, under the spending power measure, Devon county council has lost only 1.5% as against a national average of 2.9% in the latest settlement. But that obscures the fact that it has lost 9% in revenue support grant and, as I said, the district in my area has lost 13.4% in Government grant. Similar figures can be seen throughout the country.
Paul Farrelly
The figures from Devon mirror the situation in Staffordshire. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a funny sort of localism that imposes referendum limits centrally from Whitehall?
Sir Nick Harvey
I agree, just as I think it is a funny form of localism that then starts trying to tell local authorities how often the bins should be emptied.
As the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee said, the whole model of local Government funding is now so fundamentally broken that there needs to be a cross-party endeavour to rebuild something from scratch on a blank sheet of paper. The situation that we are in now is untenable. Somehow or other, Whitehall convinces itself that by putting this degree of hardship on to local government, the public anger at seeing some of the services that impact on their daily lives most directly will miraculously be focused solely upon the local authorities that send out the bill. I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends that I simply do not believe that that is a sound political calculation. The public are not stupid and they will see the difficulties that local government, regardless of the party running any particular council, is facing at this time, and they will hold central Government to be responsible for it.
We have already heard from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) in the next-door seat about the parlous state of the highways and roads, but Devon county council is now consulting about a programme of cuts that will end all its non-statutory obligations: ending the subsidy on meals on wheels; closing its day centres; getting rid of all its residential care homes; axing mobile libraries and the smaller local libraries; and doing away with the youth service, except for young offenders. This will cause absolute fury on the part of voters. I do not think that it is acceptable. We have people moving into our area who are aghast at the low level of public services that they find in comparison with other parts of the country that they have come from. This is just not acceptable. It cannot go on like this. I made a speech similar to this last year. I told Ministers that they needed to do something about it if they wanted my support in the Lobby. A year has gone by, they have done nothing about it and they will not have my support in the Lobby this evening.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey). What he said threw into sharp relief what had been said by the Minister, whose speech elevated George Orwell’s newspeak to a fine art. As the hon. Gentleman made clear, the Minister paraded his shop-soiled mantra about spending power, but objective observers might think that it was more about the freedom to dine at the Ritz.
I make no apology for focusing on the particular problems of my own town and my own council, because Blackpool, which is sixth in the index of multiple deprivation, will have suffered a cumulative cut of 20.6% between 2010 and 2016. We were hit particularly hard by the abolition of the area-based grants in the first emergency budget. The present process takes very little account of the special circumstances of towns such as Blackpool, which are experiencing pressures from incomers on services such as housing and social care. We have also been hit extremely hard by the demographic double whammy of the bedroom tax and cuts in council tax benefit, which others have already mentioned.
However, it is not just a question of the actual hardship; it is also a question of the process. Our local authority has been notified of a 2014-15 in-year new homes bonus of £25,000, the second lowest in the country. The borough treasurer says that that is due to earlier than planned demolition of the Queens Park estate and conversion programmes for houses in multiple occupation, two very worthy initiatives for which Blackpool appears to have been perversely penalised.
The cumulative budget cuts for what is one of the smallest unitary authorities in the country are expected to amount to £88 million over the five years between 2011 and 2015-16. Last week, in a report to the executive, the borough treasurer pointed out that since the approval of this year’s budget by the full council, there had been six separate announcements from the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government impacting significantly and adversely on Blackpool’s central Government funding allocations for the next two years, and requiring plans for budget cuts to be revisited each time. The discriminatory nature of the proposals is demonstrated by the fact that Blackpool will lose £105 per head, five times more than the losses that will be suffered by the two authorities that will lose the least.
We are also suffering as a result of the proposed £1.1 billion top-slice in the new homes bonus in 2015-16, and the transfer of an estimated 35% of that to local enterprise partnerships. In Blackpool’s case, that means losing £4.4 million of revenue support grant from the new homes bonus top slice, while receiving new homes bonus grant of only about £2.3 million. Overall, Blackpool stands to lose £2.9 million from the transfer.
When the Government make their spending and funding announcements, they should be clear, transparent and unequivocal, rather than revising downwards at a later stage. I speak with feeling because my constituency contains two of the most disadvantaged areas in England with populations of more than 30,000, namely Bloomfield and Brunswick wards. Let me describe the effects of those cuts in human terms. Virtually all the formal youth services have had to go over the last two years. The CCTV budget has been cut, the budget for trams has been cut by £100,000 this year, and the budget for the road safety partnership has also been cut. I could go on.
The reduction in the spending power of areas with higher needs and lower resources, and the changes that the Government are introducing, will not just close the funding difference, but, in time, will potentially reverse it. It is simply wrong that Blackpool should experience a cumulative cut of 20%, when Chichester experiences a 0.2% cut, Spelthorne a 1.2% increase, Reigate a 2% increase, and Surrey Heath a 1% increase. What do all those areas have in common? They are all prosperous, southern, Conservative councils.
We need to help councils to deliver economic growth in all areas of the country. That is why this week’s proposals from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and what was said today by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) are so important. Earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and I produced a pamphlet for the Smith Institute, in which we discussed some of the ways in which Labour councils are already doing things for themselves, and major changes in funding that could be made in the next Parliament.
This Government have worked on the basis of sham localism. They have talked about localism, but they have delivered centralism. We want a fundamental review, and we want to give incentives and initiatives, but that can be done only if everyone works across the boundaries of existing local and central Government and does things together. This Government have completely failed to do that. They have shown no enthusiasm for our Total Place projects, and the bankruptcy of their policies is revealed by the comments that are being made by their own council leaders as well as by ours.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on his speech, and I commend his statement to the House. This is a difficult settlement for anyone to have to achieve, and my hon. Friend has done it as well and efficiently as I would expect him to. It is a settlement that I would have commended to the House when I was a Minister.
I welcome the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) to his new position, but he made a disappointing speech. Frankly, it was full of wind and rhetoric, and contained very little analysis. The truth is that the Minister has delivered the best possible settlement for local government that he could in these difficult circumstances, and he has worked tirelessly to do so. I will tell the hon. Member for Corby why he is wrong. He failed to answer a question when I intervened on him earlier. While we are wedded to a four-block formula, we will always have difficulties with the way in which we deliver resource to local government. We are stuck with it for this Parliament, however, so let us be sensible and realistic about it. The Government have done the best they can in the circumstances. The paucity of imagination among Opposition Members is striking; they will not move away from that point.
Such a paucity of imagination also exists among some of our coalition colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) has made a powerful speech, and much of his analysis was broadly correct. However, when I was the local government Minister and I sought to reform the system by giving more recognition to rurality and bringing greater efficiency into the system, I was baulked at every turn by our coalition partners, who had no desire to make any change. That is the reality of public life; we have to live with what we have.
I believe that it is wrong when an efficient local authority such as my own in Bromley—which will, I trust, freeze its council tax tonight—is not rewarded for its historical efficiency. For years, we have started from a lower base than others, yet we get no recognition for that in the spending formula. That needs consensus to be taken on board. It is offensive that we do not adequately take on board the cost of running services in rural areas, although many of us tried to do that. I was surprised that my coalition colleagues were more concerned with protecting the position of the metropolitan authorities. Sheffield and Stockport were more important to them than protecting the issues affecting their people in the south-west of England. The reality is that they were unwilling to engage in a serious debate on the reform of the four-block formula.
That is not the fault of the Minister. He has done the best he can with the hand that has been dealt to him. In a future Parliament, however, we might have to think about what we should do with local government finance. That will not be done under these coalition arrangements, and it will not be done unless we are more honest about giving incentives to local authorities to recognise hard work.
My local authority has benefited to the tune of some £5 million through the new homes bonus, because we have worked efficiently and effectively. We have sought to do that in connection with our new business rates. We have worked hard, yet I see nothing in the formula that will reward us. In the London system, we are not rewarded for our historical efficiencies, and that is wrong.
We need to take a more sensible approach in order to get through this current period. The Minister has done that fairly and efficiently, but we now need to think more sensibly about what we do in respect of a system that rewards growth and hard work, and rewards local authorities for driving up their own economic base. Some Labour Members raise their eyebrows at that, but Newham council is a local authority that has worked hard to drive up its economic base and does not get a reward under the four block system. Unless we are prepared to deal with the four block system, we are doomed to a perpetual dance around—a bit like the last act of Eugene Onegin and the Polonaise—redressing a formula that is fundamentally flawed.
Grahame M. Morris
I do not necessarily agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis, but does he accept that it is possible to do both: we can incentivise growth, economic development and housing development, and still address need, without the requirement to destroy the equalisation elements of the formula?
Robert Neill
I think we all accept that there will always be an element of equalisation in the formula, but if the system becomes entirely about equalisation, rather than about incentivisation, we will be getting into the wrong place in terms of bringing in market economics and growth. I want an element of equalisation in any formula—everyone does—but I say seriously to the hon. Gentleman that he misses out the importance of recognising that efficiency should be written into the formula. We are in a binary resource-versus-needs equation at the moment in the way the four blocks operate, and there is also an inefficient means within the blocks. I worked this out once and found that about 297—I may have lost a couple along the way—bits of regression and analysis in the formula are worked out. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) nods, because she had to suffer about 300 in her time—we have scaled it back a bit. This is a ludicrously complicated formula, it does not get to the heart of where need is, and very often the interactions of the bits of the regression and analysis are counter-intuitive. So unless we are prepared to sit down in the new Parliament—it will not happen in this one—to examine seriously the formulation for local government finance, we will not get anywhere.
The Minister has presented a workable, sensible and effective proposal that will take us through until the general election and beyond. This House needs to take on board the fact that we will be having these same circular debates time and again unless we are radical about the need to change local government finance for the future. Such change will come after the general election, but all of us, if we are serious about local government, need to get a grip on that and be prepared to think outside the box of where we currently are. That would be in all our interests.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Local government is important to everyone. It is about improving people’s quality of life, developing potential, protecting the vulnerable and supporting communities. That is why the Government’s attacks on local services are so destructive. When the severest financial cuts are made on the poorest, that is grossly irresponsible. I listened with horror to what the Chairman of the Select Committee told us: the Government have now admitted that they are no longer concerned about protecting the vulnerable and are more interested in protecting the rich—that is outrageous.
It is completely unacceptable that Liverpool, which on the Government’s own figures is the most deprived local authority in the country, has suffered the deepest cuts yet again. Liverpool will suffer drastic cuts in spending power this year and it will suffer them again next year, with its funding slashed by another 5.4%—£32 million—which is the equivalent of £148 a household. By contrast, Surrey Heath is facing cuts of £73,000—a mere 0.1% cut. That is an indication of where the Government’s priorities lie. In real terms, Liverpool’s funding has been cut by 52% since 2010, and the figure is likely to reach 58% by 2016-17. As 76% of Liverpool’s finance for local services comes from central Government, in recognition of the city’s needs, the cut will be devastating.
I was appalled to hear the Minister state at the beginning of this debate that he regarded that support as a handout. I call it justice; it is about recognising need. He sees supporting deprived communities as giving a handout, which he is rapidly withdrawing. It is an absolute disgrace, and I am pleased that he has put that on the record in this debate today. The reality for Liverpool is that services such as nurseries, care for the under-fives, social care for the vulnerable, which includes 5,000 care packages, library, regeneration and youth services will all be at risk. Whatever spurious lines he tries to go down, the finger of blame will be pointed clearly at the Government who will be responsible.
I noted that the Minister attempted to divert this debate by talking about Liverpool’s reserves. Those reserves are held because they are legally required to be held, mainly on behalf of schools. Furthermore, despite the devastating blows to local services coming from this Government to the city of Liverpool, the council and its mayor are responsible people and they are determined to maintain the city’s finances in a prudent manner, and they will not deviate from that.
Andy Sawford
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point about Liverpool’s reserves, which we calculate are equivalent to one month’s operating costs for Liverpool council. That is a prudent level of reserves. Perhaps, it wants more reserves in order to have some sustainability given the context that she is powerfully describing.
Mrs Ellman
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Nothing that the Minister has said tonight can deviate from the reality that the Government are hitting hardest the poorest areas of the country. They describe the funding that they give as a handout, and they are shameless in their intention to continue hammering the poorest areas of the country. It is absolutely outrageous and absolutely unacceptable. Of course, the cuts in local government support to Liverpool are not the only blows being dealt to the city. For example, the hated bedroom tax is already affecting more than 11,000 Liverpool households, which are losing an average of £14 a week. That combined with the additional council tax charges that the poorest people are being required to pay means that a large number of people are now being asked to pay £16 a week more. That might not sound much to a millionaire or to people who are extremely wealthy, but for a poor person in work struggling to survive on a low wage and to maintain their family, this is an additional hammer blow, which is unacceptable and disgraceful. One consequence is increasing debt for vulnerable people, and that is something about which the Government should be concerned. Instead, they seem to have washed their hands of it and simply do not care.
I have described the current situation in Liverpool in relation to previous revenue support grant settlements and to what is going to happen in the coming two years. It is all credit to the city of Liverpool, its elected council and elected mayor, that the city is resilient. It is fighting hard to support jobs, back enterprise and bring investment to the city. For example, the mayor has already restored the cruise liner terminal. The council promotes investment worth millions of pounds. It is about to host the international festival for business on behalf of the United Kingdom. It is delivering apprenticeships and it has protected people from the impact of Government cuts. However, this settlement makes that task harder; indeed it might even make it impossible. The people of Liverpool know what is happening and who is to blame. Even at this late hour, I ask the Government to think again about the unfair cuts they are inflicting on the people of Liverpool and treat Liverpool citizens with the respect they deserve.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Devon, as we have heard today, is in a particularly difficult position, partly as a result of its rurality and size—we have more roads than Denmark, for example, and they take a lot of maintaining—and partly because of the age of our population. Teignbridge district council, my local authority, has the highest number of over-65s in the whole of the south-west. That puts a huge burden on councils, whether district or county.
The spending power of both types of local authority in Devon is determined by four key factors: the level of the revenue support grant; special support, particularly efficiency support for sparse areas; business rates; and council tax. The challenge with the revenue support grant, as we have heard, is that it has been massively squeezed—by some 8.5%. Why are the Government doing that? I entirely understand that they want to incentivise good behaviour, but Devon has been good. It has collected 98% of its council tax and cut its reserves to the bone. The average grant for rural Devon is 50% less than that for its urban counterparts.
What impact will that have on some of the very special services that we all value, such as education? Devon is sixth from the bottom in the education funding table. It gets £480 per pupil less than the average. I do not believe that is acceptable. To say that we can clearly do with less because we get good results is simply not true. It also has an impact on public health. In Devon we receive £29 per person—remember the age of our population—yet the national average is £51 per person.
The Government, and indeed previous Governments, have recognised that unfairness. They said in 2012 that it is not right, but so far nothing has been done. The ESSA—efficiency support for sparse areas—was intended to provide the answer. Although I am grateful that the figure this year will be £11.5 million, rather than the £8.5 million we had last year, because of damping it will give us less than 90p a head. We need three times more than that. How much of that funding will my local district council get? Last year it got £2,275, so I guess that this year it will get less than £2,500. Last year the county council got £741,318, so this year it will get less than £800,000.
The take for business rates assumes that businesses can afford to pay. Many businesses in my constituency are finding business rates one of the most difficult things they have to budget for. I am pleased that the Government have undertaken to cover the lost revenue through the 2% cap, which I welcome, but it is an ongoing challenge. The reality is that business rates, as currently constructed, help neither the taxpayer, nor the local authority. They are in need of substantial reform. Council tax, the other source of revenue, is a concern for those living in rural areas, because they already pay £86 per head more than those in urban areas. Even if there was no freeze, there is only so far the pips can be squeezed. Frankly, I do not believe that we can go any further.
In my view, therefore, the settlement penalises rural communities and does not reward good councils. I urge the Government to look at it very carefully, because this cannot go on. I would certainly like to see some progress made by this time next year.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
It is rare indeed that I make a foray into local government territory—I do not think that it is entirely helpful for previous Ministers to reprise their experiences—but I have spoken today on the police settlement and will speak in this debate because I have been galvanised by the sight of what is happening in my community.
When I came to the House of Commons 17 years ago, it is safe to say that Salford was not the most attractive place to live. We had a huge range of problems, including crime, family breakdown, drugs and dreadful housing provision. We found it virtually impossible to attract business investment, and nobody wanted to live, work or raise a family there. Over the past 16 years we have seen a transformation in Salford and in Eccles. In many ways it is hard to believe that it is the same place. We now have MediaCityUK, the BBC, ITV and Salford Quays. Tourists and visitors now spend £200 million in Salford. Who would even have thought that tourists would be visiting Salford for a weekend break?
For a time, we had the fastest-falling youth unemployment rate in the whole of the north-west region. Our young people were getting skills, they had aspirations, and they were getting decent jobs. We have had a huge amount of regeneration. We are just about to put the final piece of the jigsaw in place with the Pendleton Together programme, for which I am grateful for Government support; we got £120 million through a private finance initiative. That will mean that virtually all of the city has seen some regeneration over the past 15 years. Yet what am I seeing now? In relation to crime, I am seeing antisocial behaviour starting to creep back into the system, despite the valiant efforts of our police service. I am seeing youth unemployment rising at an absolutely heartbreaking rate. I am beginning to see all the advantages we have gained starting to be rolled back.
I believe that this settlement is unfair. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Select Committee, that we need to build a new system. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said that we need a radical new system, and indeed we do, because the current system is badly hurting the most vulnerable people. Despite the success story of Salford, we remain a city with a huge number of vulnerable people, young and old. We have already put in place £97 million-worth of cuts over the past three years, and we have another £25 million-worth of cuts to make. Our spending power has been cut by 19.5%. On every single measure, our city is under strain, and many of our residents are now at breaking point. That is not just because of the local government settlement; it is the cumulative effect of the bedroom tax, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) mentioned, all the welfare reform provisions that have been introduced, and pressures on the health service.
Today we have had two debates. A Minister from the Home Office came to talk to us about policing, and now a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government has come to talk to us about local government. The cumulative effect of the cuts made by the Department for Work and Pensions in housing, transport, health and all the other areas is what matters to our constituents, because they do not see this in Government Department silo terms. In government, we said to local government, “You’ve got to get your act together. You’ve got to do Total Place, you’ve got to have community budgets, you’ve got to pool your budgets, your inspection regimes and your targets, because that’s the only way to survive this period of austerity.” That is absolutely right because it is the only way that we will be able to protect public services.
At central Government level, there is none of that joining up at all. A Cabinet Minister is judged on how big their budget is, how big their legislation is, or whether they are a big hitter; they are encouraged to operate as an individual. Yet we ought to be collaborating on all these issues. In the previous debate, I suggested that the Treasury ought to allocate interdependent budgets to two or three different Ministers so as to say, “Your success is dependent on your collaboration with your colleagues; we do not operate in silos.” On any company board, the sales director is dependent on the marketing director and the human resources director for the success of the enterprise. Our whole system of governing in this country is utterly old-fashioned and out of date.
This is nothing new. Five years ago, when I was in the Cabinet, I said to the Cabinet Secretary, “If you’re saying to local government, ‘You’ve got to join things up and look through a different lens’, then absolutely the same requirement is on central Government.” I am told that there is a bit of interest in this kind of reform at central Government level. I shall be pushing for that with every bit of my energy, because it is the only way that we, as a country, will be able to survive austerity. When my party comes back into government, which I hope will be very soon, we will face the same pressures. Being more creative, more innovative and more joined-up about the resources that we have to spend is the way we will make a difference.
I commend the report by the Local Government Association, “Rewiring public services”. It has done a brilliant job in trying to get some consensus across the political parties. It talks about more devolution, more co-location, a five-year funding settlement, fair sharing of resources across England, bringing all the Government Departments in England together, wider revenue-raising powers, and municipal bonds. That is the kind of innovation and creativity that we need. Just keeping on with this discredited route of salami-slicing our services will not protect the people who we all know are absolutely desperate. The sooner we get on with this programme of major reform, the better. I note the Minister’s invitation to me to come and make representations. I ask him, even at this late stage, please to consider the impact of this on some of the poorest people in my city, who are absolutely desperate at the moment.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). She made an interesting speech, as one would expect. Many hon. Members’ speeches have been powerful, not least in suggesting the weakness of the system that guides local government funding.
There is a consensus of disappointment—albeit unspoken on Labour Benches—about the speech made on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition by the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford). It entirely lacked any alternative narrative or suggestion, other than a platitude about the system being fairer and needing to be looked at in future, to give us an idea of what the Labour party would do. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles was a Minister in the previous Government, and the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) was a senior figure in that Government. After all, the previous Government led us into this calamitous financial state, meaning that today’s Ministers have to make tough and difficult choices. Her Majesty’s Opposition’s total failure to recognise responsibility for the mess that the Government inherited, or to provide any insight into the tough decisions or choices they would make if they were ever allowed back into government by the British people, was disappointing. The House deserved better, and I expected more of the hon. Member for Corby, of whom I am actually an admirer.
I am a founder of Rural Fair Share, a cross-party campaign group of MPs from both sides of the House, and I am chair of the all-party group on rural services, so I make no apology for speaking from a rural perspective. Powerful speeches have been given by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). There was a very Devonian quality to much of their speeches. They spoke effectively for Devon, but also for rural areas right across this country, not least the East Riding of Yorkshire.
As has been said—I make no apology for saying this again—people in rural areas earn less than those in urban ones. The idea that people in rural areas are somehow all prosperous and wealthy compared with the massively deprived populations of urban areas is false. In truth, people on lower incomes are paying £86 more per head in council tax. That came about under the system instituted by Labour Members who talk about the cost of living crisis. It sometimes feels as though they do so with crocodile tears. They put in place a system in which poorer people pay higher levels of council tax, while their councils receive £145 less per head in central Government grant than those in urban areas, and the cost of delivering services in rural areas is higher, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said. Look at a map: where does it cost more to empty the bins—in the city or in the vast rural area around it? It is obvious that there are cost pressures.
Grahame M. Morris
The hon. Gentleman is selling a misconception to the House. Where are services more expensive? Let us look at the numbers for looked-after children, which, as he well knows as chair of the Education Committee, cost £40,000 to £50,000. In my area of Newcastle, there are 101 looked-after children per 10,000 of the population; in Wokingham, there are 24 per 10,000. That is an example of where costs are much higher.
Mr Stuart
It is fair to point out that Wokingham is not representative of all rural areas in this country. It is a rather unhelpful comparison. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that urban areas involve costs, and concentrated areas of deprivation have costs. No Government Members are suggesting complete equalisation, but to have an area with more low-income people paying higher levels of tax for fewer services is not sustainable.
I know that, in his heart of hearts, the hon. Gentleman was disappointed by the speech of the hon. Member for Corby, who simply failed to explain how Labour would wrestle with the issues. The Minister is wrestling with those issues. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is trying to heckle me. What we heard from him was a defence of a system that is indefensible. [Interruption.] It is indefensible to suggest that the system was based on need and that consensus had somehow been smashed. The truth is that the previous Labour Government refused to listen to voices from all parts of the House representing the rural interest. In fact, they allocated four times the weighting to population density—not deprivation, but density—than to sparsity. That was unjustifiable, but, sadly, it continues to be a fundamental part of the system today.
I, too, am pleased that there has been a minuscule increase today in the diminutive grant to rural areas from £9.5 million to £11.5 million. However, even the larger figure would not stretch to a grab bag of crisps for each resident who lives in a rural area, although that might depend on how competitive one’s local grocer is. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon laid out just how many decades it would take to equalise the figures. Those of us who speak on behalf of rural areas simply say to the Government that we must take more action to narrow the gap. We think that the 50% rural penalty—50% more funding goes to urban areas—should be reduced to no more than 40% within five years.
We have asked for more evidence. The Government have undertaken to carry out research on the cost of rural services. I fear, as do many of my hon. Friends, that the research will look just at rural services. It must compare the costs of services across urban and rural areas. It would then be able to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) about the number of children who are in care and the cost pressures that arise from that.
Not only must the funding system be dynamic and reward successful councils that promote housing and business, but it must have a baseline that genuinely reflects need. The system that Ministers are wrestling with today was inherited from the Labour party. It is not fair and it does not properly reflect need. The fact that rural communities have been penalised so much for so long just goes to show how morally bankrupt are the arguments that we have heard from the Labour party.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
I will concentrate on the settlement and the Government’s approach to localism.
I think that all Members accept that the United Kingdom remains one of the most centralised countries in the world. Most Members also accept that services are often better and more responsive when they are closer to communities and local people. There is a general consensus about the need for more localism. I accept that the Government have made some good decisions in respect of localism and have devolved some responsibilities to local government. They have not gone far enough, but they have made some progress. I was pleased that the Leader of the Opposition set out some principles earlier this week on the need for the further devolvement of responsibilities. The Government could do more to progress the localism agenda and that is reflected in the settlement. I will say more about that in a moment.
On Monday, I visited Manchester with the Communities and Local Government Committee. The Greater Manchester combined authority put forward a powerful argument for fiscal devolution. It wants more financial responsibilities to be devolved to local areas. I agree that there is a need for that, but the governance structures would have to be looked at.
I would like to make two important points about the settlement and localism. First and foremost, as the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee pointed out, the timing of the settlement has presented serious challenges for many local authorities, including Rochdale borough council. There has been considerable uncertainty and there are also issues with the information that is coming from the Treasury. There is no doubt that the Government need to inform local authorities earlier about their financial prospects. I understand that there was confusion because the Government left out vital information about small business rate relief and education services grants, and that caused problems for local authorities. It was not acceptable to spring the settlement on them for consultation 17 working days before Christmas. Local authorities cannot be expected to cope with those sorts of messages from the Government.
My second point is about crisis loans and the social fund that used to be administered by the Department for Work and Pensions. We now know that the Government decided to devolve that responsibility—we could call this localism—to local authorities so that they could administer crisis loans, community care grants and support to exceptionally vulnerable people. No one will be surprised to hear that when the Government devolved that funding to local governments, they cut it quite dramatically, and they now propose to cut it for the year ahead. We know from the settlement in December that the Government are cutting that funding to zero in 2015. It is good that the Government are localising that responsibility because local authorities can better understand people’s needs, but it is appalling that they have decided to cut to zero the funding for a safety net for the most vulnerable people in our society. That is not the sort of localism that the country wants or that people would expect.
Let me conclude with a few comments about the situation in Rochdale. It is right to say that when compared with more affluent councils, Rochdale has a relatively small council tax base and an equally small business rate base. Rochdale council does excellent work and has big ambitions, but the fact remains that Rochdale is reliant on the grant funding provided by Government. Because of that, the council is disproportionately affected by funding cuts of any size. The cumulative cuts in funding of nearly 23% to Rochdale council since the election put at risk all the work that the council is doing to help one of the most deprived communities in the country. Where cuts are made, they need to be fair. Those who can least afford to pay more, such as Rochdale council, should not be targeted for the deepest cuts, as they have been by this Government.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
May I start by saying that I do not speak for my party on these issues? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) does that. I find it discourteous to us as a party that the Chair routinely does not call the lead spokesperson from the Liberal Democrats at the appropriate point in these debates—that is a point for you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to take through.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman can call his speech over now if he wishes and we will bring on somebody else—I would be more than happy. I hope he is not questioning the Chair and the way that people have been called. It is for the Liberal Democrats to inform the Chair about who is speaking, and not us working off a list. I hope he wishes to withdraw his earlier remarks.
Stephen Gilbert
I will certainly withdraw those remarks, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will pass to my colleagues your guidance on how we can resolve that issue going forward.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I will not enter into a debate with the hon. Gentleman, but if Liberal Democrat Members do not know that after all these years, I do not think there is any help for them. Does he want to get on with the debate, or should I call somebody else?
Stephen Gilbert
Of course I do, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I have found this an invidious and divisive debate. It pits rural areas against urban, towns against cities, and north against south. Hon. Members from all sides of the House want to make the best representations for their local communities and get a fair deal for their local areas, but as my hon. Friends have demonstrated, particularly with Cornwall and Devon, this debate pits rural against urban communities. I hope that the Minister can see across the House, across the parties and across the rural-urban divide a desire to consider fundamentally how we reform local government finance in the future, whether that involves my hon. Friends the Members for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), or the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee who is from Sheffield. There is a clear desire to consider properly and fundamentally how we as a national Government grant resources to local councils. At the moment we have this annual theatre in which Members from across the House pop up and defend their individual parts of the country, but without a settled consensus on how the debate goes forward.
I want to speak not about the size of the local government settlement—I recognise, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister does, that the economic situation bequeathed to the coalition Government by the Labour party makes an increase in spending very difficult—but about the balance between rural and urban areas. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon so eloquently put on the record, urban areas have historically received 50% more per capita funding than rural areas, despite the fact that in rural areas such as Cornwall people on average pay higher council tax, earn lower wages and have higher housing costs as a proportion of their income. Local authorities, whether in Cornwall, Torridge and West Devon or North Devon, face difficulties in delivering services across rural and sparsely populated areas.
The Government have recognised this. In the spending settlement for 2013-14, they suggested that £200 million would be made available to increase the ability of rural authorities to meet those challenging circumstances. What happened, however, was that three quarters of that gain was damped so that the authorities losing out—the urban authorities, pretty much—did not suffer a sudden fall in funding. What we did not expect, and what nobody expected at that point, was that the Government would suspend moving the remaining three quarters of that gain until at least 2020, kicking the argument into the long grass and further delaying a fair settlement for authorities such as Cornwall.
What we have seen today in the Government’s increase in the ESSSA, or efficiency support for services in sparse areas, grant is welcome, but it is really just an additional £2 million on top of a paltry £9 million. If that £11 million is divided across the 95 most rural local authorities, they will have barely enough money to employ a full-time officer to work out the differential between what they should be receiving as a rural area and what they are getting. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that while it is welcome—it would be churlish to look a gift horse in the mouth, as it will make a difference—it is woefully insufficient to start to close the divide between rural and urban funding that so bedevils parts of the country such as Cornwall.
Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case and I agree with everything he says about Cornwall. Will he reflect on what we have learnt this evening from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and perhaps take up those arguments with the urban Members of his own party, so there can be a proper way forward?
Stephen Gilbert
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She makes the point that I started with: this is a very divisive debate, pitting colleagues within parties on all sides of the House against each other. It pits towns against the countryside and city councils against district councils. That speaks to the fundamental need for overall reform and cross-party consensus on how we deliver local government funding in a way that meets needs on the ground and is equitable across the country, because it ain’t doing that at the moment. I have joined a number of colleagues on the Government Benches in presenting arguments to the Government to the effect that the rural-urban divide needs to be eradicated over time.
Mr Graham Stuart
Further to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), if it is the case that Members of the hon. Gentleman’s party are standing in the way of a fairer settlement for rural areas, it may be worth having a quiet word. I would certainly urge him to do so, if that is the blockage.
Stephen Gilbert
There is no suggestion that any one of my colleagues, as opposed to any one of my hon. Friend’s colleagues on his side of the coalition, is standing in the way of tackling this funding formula. Of course, one of his colleagues is the Secretary of State. I think both the hon. Gentleman and I know that the funding formula bequeathed to us by the Labour party is one that really put in place the disparity between rural and urban areas, and one that he and I and all our colleagues on the Government Benches are asking our right hon. Friends in the Treasury and in the Department for Communities and Local Government to address.
I have joined colleagues on this side of the House in presenting the case for a fairer funding formula for Cornwall to Government. I am disappointed, to say the least, that that case has not been heard today. On that basis, it would be wrong for me to support what I think is an inadequate settlement tonight, and I shall continue to work with colleagues from all parts of the House to try to find consensus on how we deliver local government funding that is fit for purpose.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Hull is a very proud and resilient city, despite many setbacks that include being one of the most heavily bombed cities in the second world war outside of London and the loss of the fishing industry in the 1970s. Now we are looking at opportunities to renew Hull. We are looking at building on the city plan to develop our renewables industry and to develop and extend the industry around the Humber, and of course we have been nominated as city of culture for 2017, building on the wonderful facilities that we have in the city, like Hull Truck theatre and our excellent museum quarter, and the possibility of a Hockney gallery. I pay tribute to the Labour council in Hull and its leader, Councillor Brady, for having a vision of how Hull can go forward positively.
However, we are hampered by the unfair slashing of the local authority funding to Hull, repeated in many other northern cities. That is despite the Government saying, when they came to power, that they wanted to rebalance the economies of the north and south and address the problems of the general split between north and south. Hull is losing 25% of its budget. Of course, Hull has traditionally relied on central Government grants because our low property values mean we have a low council tax base and we have high levels of need. I fundamentally object to what the Minister said in his opening remarks—he said that local government was moving away from the begging bowl approach. That says a lot about the way he sees local government funding.
My city has more people in long-term unemployment than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. In one ward in Hull, men live seven years less than the English average. We have more low-skilled jobs, part-time work and people on zero-hours contracts than many other parts of the country. From this unfair local authority funding cut, we have already seen nearly 2,600 real jobs go in our local authority. I stress that those are real jobs—care assistants, and early years workers and support workers for troubled teenagers so that we do not end up having to spend a lot more money down the road when those children grow up and have more problems. Those are real jobs that are necessary in a city like Hull, and of course, when people lose their jobs, their spending power is lost to the local economy.
My constituents are finding out that the Government are balancing the books on the backs of the elderly, the disabled and the young, through the DWP changes that we have seen, such as the cruel bedroom tax, with 4,228 claimants affected in my city. Some 20,000 people who previously did not have to pay any council tax will now have to pay 8.5%, which will go up to 20% next year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, it is the pressure on the low-paid and the vulnerable that is really affecting cities such as Liverpool and Hull.
It is suggested that efficiency savings can be made, but they have already been made—they are long gone. It is not the fat that is being eaten into now; it is the bone. Hull was very badly flooded in 2007, and it is at such times that the resources that are available to local authorities, the fire brigade and the police come together to provide the support that communities need when they are in crisis. If we cut and cut and cut, those support mechanisms will no longer be there. My heart goes out to people in the south who are suffering flooding problems currently, but perhaps they are recognising that cutting statutory services is very foolish in the long run. The statutory services are retreating into their silos, which is not helpful for dealing with crises in our communities.
As I have said, when the Government came into office, they said they wanted to rebalance the economy between the north and the south, but the unfairness of the cuts in our city means we are struggling to provide support to our communities, develop the skills in our communities and bring businesses in. We just do not have the resources to do those things.
When Labour was in government, the Liberal Democrats always called for more money for Hull, but in this House they have consistently voted all the way to cut money for my city. The Liberal Democrats on Hull city council have now called for a council tax freeze, which would mean even more cuts to services. Lib Dems support the unfairness of the cuts to areas in the north such as mine. At the last general election, they pretended to be friends of the north and said they would stand up for Hull, Sheffield, Leeds and other cities, but the people of those cities will very well remember the actions of the Liberal Democrats in government. They are not friends of the north and that will not be forgotten.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
To date, committed local authorities under all parties for the most part have managed to protect front-line services. I should like to put on record that credit is due to many councillors throughout the country, particularly given that satisfaction in council services has increased.
However, today we discuss yet another difficult financial settlement. I want to start with some positives. I welcome the extra funding to enable councils to freeze council tax for the next two years despite the fact that I believe in localism and look forward to times when it will be appropriate for more local choices to be made. Given the inherited economic situation in 2010 and the measures that have had to be taken, it has been vital to protect our constituents from further pressures on their costs of living. I note with some pride that most if not all Liberal Democrat-controlled councils are expected to freeze council tax in 2014-15—a record that, I suspect, cannot be matched by the other two major parties.
I welcome the increased efficiency grant. I have always been supportive of business rate retention as an incentive for growth and job creation and hope it can be further localised in future. I welcome the changes that have been made on the new homes bonus—a consequence of the Government listening—so that more money goes directly to local councils than was once expected. However, I recognise that London councils face considerable top-slicing and are at a disadvantage.
I welcome the move to support adult social care and the challenge to local councils to integrate health and social care services, but I am deeply concerned about whether the funding will be adequate to deal with the needs of our most vulnerable constituents. City deals and the regional growth fund provide opportunities for further decentralisation, which I welcome, along with the additional funding. I welcome the extra funding for rural councils, but I concur with hon. Members who have said that that in no way gets to the heart of the matter. The rural penalty has been with us for a long time. I represent part of Purbeck district council and have presented a petition in the House on the matter. The gap goes on and on. We are not closing it. I have constituents on low wages and there are very high housing costs.
Bus services are among the many services being cut in the rural part of my constituency—I do not apologise for bringing it up again. My constituents, whether they are going to work or college, non-catchment sixth forms, apprenticeships or work training, are simply unable to use buses, as are tourists. The most recent cuts have made the situation diabolical. From April, in one large village, with a population of 1,800, whose bus route goes through several other villages, there will be a bus to Poole only two days a week, and evening services at 5.30 pm are being slashed, meaning that workers are not being supported. I have received representations from Colehill, Wareham town council and right across the rural part of my constituency about this matter, so will the Minister meet his counterparts in the Department for Transport to discuss this serious issue? Basically, some of my constituents face a stark choice: use a car or move from the village. That is very harsh.
I remain concerned about the local council tax reduction scheme. I understand from the National Association of Local Councils that about 20 billing authorities are not passing on council tax support funding to parish councils. What further action can the Minister take? Indeed, do billing authorities have any certainty about this stream of funding for the future? I am pleased, however, that the referendum principles have not been extended to the parish councils. Some of the deficits in services can be made up as reductions are made in other areas.
Local government is facing a tough situation, and the Government must listen to councils that fear they are facing a cliff edge or a precipice in future years. I also think that the rural penalty must be addressed sooner rather than later. We need to appreciate what local government does best, which is pulling local government services together. I support the rewiring of local government services as put forward by the Local Government Association. Among other things, local government borrowing that complies with prudential rules should be facilitated, but at the same time, I thank the Government for allowing councils to borrow more money in the last financial year. I want more, not fewer, and better quality services delivered by local government, and I want other services facilitated too.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I want to touch on my concerns about the overall settlement and about my own area of County Durham.
I commend to hon. Members who have not seen it the excellent briefing note provided by the House of Commons Library. Frankly, any impartial observer reading it would realise that it makes a complete mockery of the local government Minister’s claim that this is a fair settlement. He suggested that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest burden, but that is clearly not happening. At a time when ordinary people across the country—certainly in my constituency—are struggling with the cost of living crisis, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government think it is right that the most deprived communities in the country should bear the brunt of Government cuts, while the most affluent areas should escape relatively unscathed.
I say that advisedly. The revenue support grant for Durham is being cut by £28 million. It is suggested that these cuts have been applied fairly, but of the 14 councils in England that are receiving an increase, 13 have Tory MPs, four of whom are Cabinet Ministers. To my mind, this is gerrymandering of the revenue support grant, and it is targeting mainly Labour-held councils. They are the principal losers, because they are being targeted for much deeper cuts than their Conservative counterparts, and it is having a devastating impact on their ability to provide services locally.
I am amazed at the audacity of Government Members who claim that we are all in this together. During this Parliament, the 10 most deprived areas in England, including mine, are receiving cuts 10 times greater than the most affluent areas. Despite all the Government’s rhetoric about rebalancing the economy, Durham county council’s cumulative spending power is being reduced by a staggering 17.3% under this Government. The Treasury calculated that, for the period from 2011-17, £222 million is being lost. Conservative and Lib Dem Members were saying that we need to address the disparity between urban and rural areas. Members who represent affluent areas should come to my constituency; they should come to Peterlee and to Horden and see the problems that we have. They would then understand the lack of car ownership, the problems that people have in accessing services and their disadvantages.
Adult social care and children’s services account for over 60% of our expenditure. We have heard about the Barnett graph of doom, where all local government revenue will go on statutory functions, particularly social care. Many authorities, particularly in the north, will hit the buffers. The hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) suggested something similar was going to happen in the south-west. It should be a cause of concern for all of us.
It has somehow been implied that we are undeserving. My late father was a coal miner. County Durham made enormous sacrifices for the nation. The county has been scarred by a legacy of coal mining, shipbuilding and steelworks. That has a legacy in people’s health that we must recognise in greater need. There is a debt of honour that the Government should recognise. Consensus on the equalisation element of the revenue support grant has existed across all parties since the war. It is a serious matter to break it.
There are alternatives. My hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) mentioned the discussions that have taken place with the Local Government Association, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Government will be putting authorities such as mine under the most intense pressure and, quite frankly, the wheels will come off. They will not be able to deliver services. This will result in children and older people in deprived areas such as mine suffering worse services than their counterparts in more affluent parts of the country. That seems to me to be a perversity.
In areas such as County Durham, with a relatively small council tax base due to low house values—some 60% or 70% of the properties in my constituency are in band A—there are problems because of the greater use of local council tax support schemes. What does that mean? It means that we have a greater reliance upon Government grants to maintain the same level of services. So when grants are cut—even in the same proportion as in affluent areas—areas such as mine suffer the most. If this is the rebalancing of the economy that the Government are trumpeting, they are ignoring the reality of people’s needs. It is Robin Hood in reverse: rewarding those living under Tory councils at the expense of those in Labour councils.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I am glad to be the last speaker in this debate and that my patience has paid off. I am very keen to talk about the one thing on which there has been consensus: the overall local government settlement. The argument is very much to what extent the cake is split. I accept that the coalition Government had to do something about public spending in general. Local government spending is some £22 billion, or 25% to 30% of total public expenditure. When some three and a half years ago we inherited, from the previous Government probably the biggest deficit since the second world war, it was absolutely essential that we did something about it.
I very much welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has been several times down to the west country. The Bellwin formula is being looked at so that we can repair the coastline and do something about the flooding, in order to put the west country, and Devon and Cornwall in particular, literally back on the map of the railway system. It is essential that that is done.
I say this to Ministers—[Interruption.] I see that the Minister has returned to the Chamber; I very much welcome him back. We have had some interesting meetings with him and with the Secretary of State, at which we have been treated very courteously. Some £11 million has been found to get a fairer share for rural authorities—the generosity overwhelms me—but we are asking for another £20 million a year for five years to reduce the anomaly. What is £20 million out of £22 billion? By my arithmetic, it is less than 10% of 1%, or 0.01%. That is all we need to recognise and address the fact that local authorities in rural areas are not treated fairly. We pay some £85 more in council tax on average and receive £145 less in grant from the Government. That needs to be settled.
I have said this before, but Devon has more roads than the whole of Belgium, which imposes a huge cost. In January, it was estimated that some 7,500 potholes needed to be filled in Devon alone. All this will add an enormous cost to the delivery of our services. Bus services in Devon and the concessionary scheme cost the county council some £10 million. This is a concession that the county council makes: it does not have to find that money, but it makes sure that the people of Devon can get those concessionary fares.
The schools in Devon are much smaller than many across the country and are very spread out, with rural school transport imposing another cost. All these things have a huge impact on Devon county council. Devon county council has reduced its staffing by some 3,000 people over the last few years. It is therefore a lean, mean council that is delivering good headline and front-line services, but we need that help—not only for Devon county council, but for East Devon district council and Mid Devon district council, which is probably one of the most rural in the country.
My colleagues have made the point that when people drive through Devon and Cornwall, they see many parts that look hugely prosperous, but among them are some of the poorest people and the lowest wages. We welcome many tourists down to Devon and Cornwall, and when they retire from these wonderful, affluent areas of London and the home counties, as they love to do, that drives up house prices. That means that the local people have to pay an awful lot more for their homes. Therefore, those on lower wages are paying higher council tax than they should be and we are having lower services delivered than we should.
I urge Ministers—[Interruption.] I see that the Secretary of State is now in the Chamber; I very much welcome his listening to us. I ask that one of these days we finally sit down and agree the figures for the anomaly. Dare I say it, but another Secretary of State talked about moving the goalposts, and I think sometimes the goalposts do get moved when we sit down and talk about local government finance. I think Ministers accept that, which is why we put in place a formula to review the costs of delivering rural services and why we started to move money across in 2013-14. However, we have now put a damper on that and stopped that money flowing across.
I suggest that we sit down to discuss this and turn on the tap again, so that the funds can start to flow and we can get a fair settlement, because we will not get a fair settlement from Labour Members, who spent all the money, borrowed and created huge debts. It is therefore up to this Government to sort out the anomaly. I look forward to working with the Secretary of State to ensure that that happens, because the people in rural areas of Devon and across the country deserve a better deal and they expect this Government to deliver it.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
As I spent time contemplating this financial settlement for local government, I was reminded of my recent rereading of that towering classic of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”. That is basically what we have here: a tale of two local governments.
For some, it is, relatively speaking, the best of times. The comfortable twin towns of Reigate and Banstead and the wonderful Wokingham have barely been touched by the Secretary of State’s funding scythe. No shadow of Madame Guillotine stalks local government in the home counties. Indeed, as we have heard, some have even seen cumulative growth in spending power per household under this Government.
Local government is the most efficient part of the public sector and it is likely to be commended for its customary ability and experience of doing more with the same resources or the same for less. Innovation and service improvement are in the DNA of local government.
I was a local councillor for 18 years in Newham. We constantly challenged what we did and how we did it, and what we spent our money on. We were aware of the need to get every pound of value out of services, recognising that no service can stand still. We challenged ourselves so that we could direct investment to new priorities. That is the way of all well-managed councils, whatever their political complexion, but these swingeing cuts take councils well beyond the capacity to manage change in such a way.
We heard excellent speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) in which they spoke eloquently of the effect of the cuts.
For other parts of local government, the Liverpools, Newcastles, Manchesters and Blackpools—and, indeed, the Newhams and Hackneys—of this world, it is absolutely the worst of times. I must join my colleagues in drawing the attention of the House to the strong correlation between the cumulative level of cuts and deprivation. There is clear evidence that the poorest areas are being hit hardest.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) elucidated, it is the people in those communities and others like them who are bearing the brunt of the cuts. As we have heard, the 10 most deprived areas will, over this Parliament, have their spending power cut by 10 times the amount that the least deprived areas will. We will see a reduction in or the removal of vital local authority services, putting further pressure on struggling households and families. Hard times indeed.
Increased charges for essential services, the bedroom tax, and the localisation of council tax benefit—for localisation, read cuts—are having an impact on the most vulnerable in our communities. No wonder we see the burgeoning use of food banks, with people driven by desperation, despite the humiliation they feel, to rely on their neighbours for food and sustenance for themselves and their children. That will only get worse, as many are resorting to payday loans as an alternative source of money for food, warmth and rent.
My local authority, Newham, estimates that its real-term cuts will be about 39% between 2010-11 and 2015-16. That represents a cut of £97.6 million, or £300 for every resident. Compare that with a reduction of £16.6 million for Richmond upon Thames, or £88 per head.
It is not just in areas with Labour MPs that that unfairness is played out. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), I have been given access to some research carried out by the House of Commons Library. It shows the cumulative reduction over five years for the following Labour-led councils: minus 26.66% for Stockton, minus 23.63% for Broxtowe, minus 19.85% for Norwich and minus 19% for Thurrock. On the other hand, let us look at Surrey Heath, where the reduction is minus 0.75%. In Waverley, it is minus 0.37%. In Elmbridge, it is minus 0.25%. The winner? Epsom and Ewell, with a whopping increase of 3.51% over those five years.
Those local authorities share some characteristics. Not only are they in the least deprived local authority areas, but they are all represented in this place by Cabinet members. Where on earth is the fairness in that? It does not seem to me that we are all in this together. It seems that the Government are shredding the lives and the communities of the most vulnerable, while they make sure that people like them are protected. For shame. For shame. These cuts have a real cost, just as the cuts to the Environment Agency have had a cost. In local government cuts there is a cost to libraries, to looked-after children and to social care, and there will be a cost to an already struggling NHS.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) in his super speech and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) spoke eloquently about the fact that this is the year the Government have decided not to provide a dedicated resource to take the very poorest out of council tax liability. In the first six months of this financial year, 670,000 people faced bailiffs. What is the biggest calumny in this? The Government use the stick of non-collection of council tax from those low-waged council tax payers to beat the councils with. It is not Dickensian, it is Orwellian.
We can see from this local government settlement that the whole ethos of local government funding has shifted away from need. Those councils most dependent on Government funding, those with the lowest council tax base, those that are most deprived, are the ones that are being hit hardest. Councils for wealthier areas, unsurprisingly, have a larger council tax base, further insulating them from the chill experienced elsewhere.
This is a callous, cruel, short-sighted and just plain wrong approach. I cannot envisage a worse approach. It is another example of the Government balancing the books on the backs of the poor. But along with the charge of unfairness, along with the charge of partisan government, must come the charge of indifference. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said in his excellent speech, the autumn statement was late. The provisional local government settlement announcement was late, as was the council tax referendum limit announcement. How can the Government not understand that their dilatory complacency makes it so much harder for councils to plan for the excessive cuts that the Government have imposed? This settlement is wrong and it is callous. It takes money from poor areas and distributes it to those who are not in such need. I urge my hon. Friends and others in the Chamber who cannot accept the Government’s unfair settlement to join me in voting against it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
We have had 15 interesting speeches, plus other speeches from the Front Bench. I remind Members of the context in which the debate is taking place. The Government came to power with the pressing need to balance the nation’s books, and that meant reductions in all areas of Government spending, and local government has had to pay its fair share. Over the last few years the Government have had to make some tough decisions about public finances—tough decisions that the last Government shied away from in their last two years in office. The crash, remember, was in 2008.
But those tough decisions are now paying dividends. The national deficit has been reduced by a third, unemployment has fallen and employment is at an all time high, so it is vital that we stick to the disciplined course that we have set for ourselves. Like every part of the public sector, local government has had to pay its share to reduce that deficit and get the nation’s finances back on a stable footing. If I can characterise the comments made by most Labour Members, with some exceptions, this has all led to total unfairness to all of their cities and constituencies.
To remind Members again about the context, this Government have decided to protect the national health service budget in real terms. This Government have protected the schools budget in cash terms. This Government have put huge amounts of money behind children who, like me, were on free school meals. All of that money will benefit Salford, Liverpool, Sheffield and other places. We have also taken the poorest in society who are working out of the income tax threshold. We have raised the national minimum wage. We have raised the apprentice wage. We have raised the state pension. We have built more social houses than the last Government, and this Government will be the first in 30 years to leave office with more affordable and social housing in the housing stock. Together, we are building a stronger economy and a fairer society, in which everyone can get on in life.
Stephen Williams
I will take one intervention, from the Chairman of the Select Committee.
Stephen Williams
Many Members have contrasted the spending power of cities with that of southern authorities. However, it is absolutely clear that the spending power of authorities such as Newcastle is far in excess of that of many other authorities with similar responsibilities but entirely different demographics. It is completely wrong to say that unfairness is built into the system, given that the top 10% of the most deprived authorities in the country are the authorities with the most power to spend on their citizens.
As has been acknowledged during the debate, we are moving to an entirely new system of local government finance. I accept that there is more to be done and that there is a need for reform in the system, but I am sure that that reform will come when the economy has fully recovered.
Reference has been made to the amounts that are raised through council tax, and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), was criticised for his “language of begging bowl”. As someone who, when I was a council opposition leader in Bristol, went on deputations to local government Ministers in both the other parties, let me put it this way: local government had a supplicant relationship with central Government, and that is what this Government are trying to change. We are putting more incentives in the system for local authorities to build more houses. The business rates retention will encourage local economic growth: for the first time, local authorities will retain more of the benefit from economic growth in their own areas rather than handing 100% of it to the people in the Treasury, so that they can decide how much should be distributed around the country according to their own formulas and principles.
Another of the new incentives is the new homes bonus. I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), will be pleased that his authority in Bradford is to receive £2 million in new homes bonus. Leeds will receive £3 million in new homes bonus, and my city of Bristol will receive £2.2 million.
The other major criticism that we have heard today is that some parts of the country have lost out at the expense of others, either as a result of this settlement or over a long period. However, the settlement represents a fair deal for every part of the country—north and south, district and county, city and shire. As I said a few moments ago to the Chairman of the Select Committee, councils have an average spending power of £2,089 per household, and the average spending power reduction will be just 2.9% in the forthcoming year. Moreover, protection is built into the system for the most deprived areas of the country, which are the most dependent on grant.
We have also recognised that services are sometimes more difficult and expensive to deliver in rural areas. Many Members, particularly those on the Government Benches, recognised the real difficulty that rural authorities experience in delivering services to their constituents. I certainly recognise that poverty is found in all parts of the country. It is not necessarily concentrated only in city-centre constituencies such as mine; it is found in Barnstaple, in St Austell, and in many other rural and sparsely populated parts of the country. That is why we have already set aside £9.5 million—£1 million more than last year—to help the authorities in the most sparsely populated rural areas.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey)—there were many Devonian speakers in the debate—for saying that we ought to go a little further. In fact, today we have announced a significant amount of extra money: £2 million. That means an extra £44,000 for North Devon district council. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) said that the average per authority was £30,000, but Cornwall’s unitary authority will have just over half a million pounds extra.
Local authorities need to protect taxpayers by keeping their council tax down. For many of our constituents, the council tax bill represents a huge part of their monthly outgoings. In many cases, it is much more significant than other utility bills, so to denigrate the Government’s policy of encouraging local authorities to freeze council tax is to miss a major point of what the Opposition call the cost of living crisis. If they do not recognise that council tax is part of the cost of living pressure that all our constituents face, they are living in another world.
It is no surprise to find that Labour Members live in another world. Under the previous Government, council tax more than doubled, pushing a typical bill up to £120 a month for hard-working people and pensioners. This Government, however, have done everything possible to protect families from further increases. Over the past three years, council tax bills have been cut by 10% in real terms across England, and we are encouraging local authorities to continue to freeze their council tax. We will further incentivise them to do that not only by offering them a grant but by putting that grant into the baseline so that they can have certainty for future years.
Already, 137 local authorities have confirmed that they intend to reduce or freeze their council tax bills, including—as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) pointed out—almost all the Liberal Democrat local authorities. They include the local authorities led by directly elected mayors in Watford and Bedford, and the Liberal Democrats in my own city of Bristol want our city’s mayor to follow their example.
The referendum principle has been mentioned by many speakers today. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East criticised the Government for taking time to announce what the referendum threshold should be. We confirmed on 5 February that it will remain at 2%, which was the assumption that the local authorities were working on when planning their budgets. The hon. Gentleman was around during the last Parliament, and I must gently remind him that the previous Government frequently capped local authority council tax increases without announcing the cap until March, after the local authorities had set their budgets and started to prepare the bills to pop through people’s letter boxes. We have certainly improved on that situation.
There are many things that local authorities can do to balance their books in an efficient way. The Government are encouraging such efficiencies, and there is still plenty of scope. For instance, the Liberal Democrat council in Kingston-upon-Thames is investing in a combined heat and power system that will benefit its council buildings and private sector buildings, saving money and carbon at the same time. Cambridge council is protecting and enhancing local shops, which is good for local residents, good for tourists and good for local economic growth. The process is now being incentivised by the retention of business rates.
Mr Graham Stuart
Further to the speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) made earlier, will the Minister confirm or deny that the Liberal Democrats stood in the way of a fairer deal for rural areas?
Stephen Williams
I am not privy to every conversation that takes place, as my hon. Friend knows. I can assure him, however, that possibly the most powerful person in the Government with his hands on the purse strings from our side of the coalition, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is most certainly a friend of rural areas. He has pushed for the freeze in fuel duty, which is another example of the Government listening to the cries for help from rural communities. There is a danger, in these debates, that we see matters purely in the context of the silo of our own Department. I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears)—the former Secretary of State for this Department—that it is a mistake for Governments to do that, and we have not done it. Across the piece, we are doing our bit to help rural areas, including through freezing fuel duty. Had Labour’s plans been put into effect, rural motoring would have cost much more.
There is more that local government can do to hold down costs. An example can be seen in the tri-borough initiative in west London, involving Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster councils. The leader of Kensington and Chelsea council told me recently that the initiative was on track to save £40 million by combining back office and management services.
In conclusion, this coalition Government are all about building a stronger economy and a fairer society in order to help people to get on in life by giving them more power to decide what happens in their community and supporting their local area in ways that will allow their community to thrive and prosper. There is no doubt that some difficult decisions have had to be made about public finances, and councils cannot be exempted from that process. But councils have taken important steps towards modernising and transforming their services, and I certainly pay tribute, on behalf of all of my colleagues, to the efforts that many councils have made to live within their difficult budgets. I also think we must all acknowledge that more could be done to reduce the costs of delivering their services while keeping council tax down, and I have every confidence that they will rise to the challenge.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Division off.
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2014-15 (HC 1056), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.
Local Government Finance Report (England) 2014-15
Motion made, and Question put,
That the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2014-15 (HC 1055), which was laid before this House on 5 February, be approved.—(Brandon Lewis.)
Business without Debate
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Deferred Divisions
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Petitions
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to present a petition from 4,281 residents of South Staffordshire and other areas protesting against the proposals to build on green-belt land between Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Great Wyrley and Cheslyn Hay in the South Staffordshire constituency, and others,
Declares that the current proposals to build a car park, health centre and over 140 houses on greenbelt land by Landywood Lane, Great Wyrley will lead to the erosion of the distinct identity of our individual villages and could cause substantial environmental damage; further notes that despite the rejection by South Staffordshire District Council of the current proposals, in line with public opinion, the applicant has appealed to the Planning Inspectorate to ignore the wishes of local residents and overturn the council’s decision.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take all possible steps to ensure that the Planning Inspectorate upholds the decision reached by South Staffordshire District Council and rejects these proposals so that the greenbelt can be conserved for future generations.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001318]
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Since Mr Speaker is an ex officio Church Commissioner, he will be aware that on Monday 10 February a petition was delivered to the General Synod of the Church of England at Church House here in Westminster. May I appeal to you, Sir, to ask him, on behalf of my constituents, to take whatever steps he is able to ensure that that matter in the petition—the continued use of the bishop’s palace in Wells as the home of the bishops of Bath and Wells, as has been the custom and tradition for over 800 years—is discussed fully at the Church Commissioners’ next meeting and that the views of the petitioners are taken into account? I am most grateful, Sir, for your attention to this matter.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of that point of order. Obviously I can give no direct help, but I will ensure that Mr Speaker is aware of what has been said. I know that he is an avid reader of Hansard and will already have picked up on this before I speak to him. It may be helpful to the hon. Lady if I say that Church Commissioners questions is coming up tomorrow and she may be ingenious enough to raise it there as well.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
The petition relates to the Church Commissioners’ decision to relocate the Bishop of Bath and Wells from the flat in the bishop’s house, which they condemn as unsuitable for temporary living accommodation, citing reasons of sustainability and privacy. The diocese and the palace trust have expressed publicly their opposition, as have thousands of local residents who want to understand how the flat in the bishop’s house can be unsuitable, particularly when considerable sums were spent on repairs and maintenance four years ago; how travelling several miles to work, worship and back can be considered sustainable; and how a property on the A371 can be more private than the secluded flat in the bishop’s house, with its private garden, when the palace is closed to visitors from 4 pm at this time of year and 6 pm in the summer.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Church Commissioners’ decision to move the Bishop of Bath and Wells from the Bishop’s Palace and Gardens is a mistake and further that a local Petition on this subject has received well over 2,000 signatures.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Church Commissioners to wait until the new Bishop of Bath and Wells takes up office and then reconsiders and consults on whether he should reside at Bishop’s Palace and Gardens.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001319]
Ugandan Anti-homosexuality Law
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was passed by the Ugandan Parliament on 20 December 2013. It is now with President Museveni to be signed, returned with amendments or ignored, in which case it will become law automatically.
The law will extend the existing colonial anti-sodomy laws. It threatens maximum life sentences for those who commit a new offence of aggressive homosexuality, which is repeatedly to have homosexual sex, to have homosexual sex when HIV-positive, or with a disabled person or minor. Landlords will face imprisonment for renting to homosexuals or LGBT—lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender—organisations. The promotion of homosexuality will now be banned, which will effectively outlaw LGBT organisations and charities and significantly hamper HIV/AIDS work.
If this law is passed, Uganda will join a club of nations not only committed to the criminalisation of homosexual acts, but determined to expand legal discrimination beyond the normal boundaries of historical bigotry. The year 2013 was a disheartening one for LGBT activists worldwide: Nigeria and Russia passed and enacted their versions of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, India took a step backwards as its Supreme Court re-criminalised the sexual practice of one of the world’s largest LGBT populations, and the Singaporean Supreme Court rejected an appeal against its colonial era sodomy laws.
Those who support international human rights cannot accept that trend with a sense of mute, inert inevitability. Ugandan activists have demanded that we act; let us not fail to hear them. As the Parliamentary Friends of the Kaleidoscope Trust are aware, last week I and colleagues met Dr Frank Mugisha, the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, which is Uganda’s largest LGBT group. Although we cannot and should not be seen in the developed world as dictating the direction of local LGBT movements and inadvertently making their position even more difficult, Dr Mugisha was unequivocal about the necessity of our support.
The Bill’s supporters have repeatedly labelled homosexuality as alien to Africa, and as yet another element of western cultural imperialism, along with global brand fast-food restaurants, capitalism and secularism. That is a wishful fantasy for the African homophobe. Far from being esoteric or non-existent, the history of African homosexuality is increasingly well documented. In pre-colonial Uganda alone, same-sex relationships existed among the Bahima, Banyoro and Baganda tribes. The Iteso and the Lango tribes sanctioned men of alternative gender status, and the Lango even allowed mukodo dako, as they called them, to marry.
In fact, one western import is notably responsible for the current homophobia that is rife in Uganda—a hateful strand of Christianity, of the sort that prompted British sodomy laws to be enacted throughout the empire that still scar much of the Commonwealth. Those laws have been used as a fig leaf for bigotry. They represent the worst of the repressive colonial inheritance, not the well-intentioned colonial era good Samaritans, and those who wished to love their African neighbours as themselves. This aggressive, authoritarian version of Christianity is now preached by the disgraceful Scott Lively who, having mined the depths of prejudice in his own country, is now seeking to expand this hatred into Uganda.
A Christianity inclusive of homosexuality is not and should not be the exclusive preserve of western theologians. Archbishop Desmond Tutu made his feelings on the issue quite plain earlier this year:
“I would refuse to go to a homophobic Heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place. I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about Apartheid.”
President Museveni has committed himself to signing the Bill if homosexuals can be proven to be made and not born. I believe that he well understands the actual answer, but a group of so-called scientists have duly presented themselves to establish it. These scientists are led by Members of Parliament with scientific backgrounds from Museveni’s own ruling NRM—National Resistance Movement—party. Their lack of independence is not the only issue. One of them, Dr Kenneth Omona, told the The Observer of Uganda:
“In one study [it is] revealed that actually 50 per cent of the homosexuals revert to heterosexuality if rehabilitated in time. This, in itself, reveals a behavioural aspect”.
That unnamed study seems to be the mainstay of Dr Omona’s views on the issue. If only he listened to his former allies in this area. Exodus International, which used to be the largest international gay cure agency, shut down its operations in 2013 and issued a public apology.
More substantively, the views of those scientists conflict with the opinion of the major medical authorities, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the American Psychological Association. The Psychological Society of South Africa wrote an open letter stating as much to President Museveni in 2009. All those bodies confirm that homosexuality is the result of complex environmental and biological factors.
The supposed scientists may be high and dry intellectually and well away from the mainstream of global scientific opinion, but they draw on a rich vein of popular prejudice. If they were truly scientists, they would be ashamed of that. Another member of the commission, Dr Bitekyerezo, reduced the arguments for homosexuality’s biological connections to a belief in a single homosexual gene. Political courage and scientific objectivity seem to be wholly absent.
Another reason that is cited for the Bill is that it will protect the traditional African family unit. Beyond the difficulty of isolating a traditionally heterosexual African family, that claim founders under demographic evidence. The two countries with the highest fertility rates are Niger and Mali. They do not criminalise homosexuality and nor do 40% of the top 10 countries with the highest population growth rates.
A purported aim of the law is to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and specifically to target those who are HIV-positive. However, the belief that criminalisation decreases the spread of AIDS is a dangerous misconception. UNAIDS, Festus Mogae, the former President of Botswana, and the Zambian First Lady, Christine Kaseba-Sata, are among the many who have called for decriminalisation as a means to halt the spread of infection. The Lancet has even found that:
“The odds of HIV infection in black”
men who have sex with men
“relative to general populations were nearly two times higher in African and Caribbean countries that criminalise homosexual activity than for those living in countries where homosexual behaviour is legal.”
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this extremely important debate. I would have been at the meeting last week, had I not been off with ill health. If the Bill is passed on 24 February, not only will it criminalise sexual acts, but it will mean that if somebody knows that another person is homosexual, they will be expected to report them. Does he agree that that will affect people who need treatment, because they might think that the doctor will be obliged to tell the authorities of their homosexual behaviour?
Mr Blunt
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. I am extremely grateful for her intervention and support. She makes her point extremely well. The consequences of many aspects of the Bill will be simply appalling.
The International HIV/AIDS Alliance has naturally raised fears that the clauses that obstruct promotion will hamper HIV/AIDS charities in working with the LGBT community. HIV/AIDS treatment is dependent on equitable and non-discriminatory access to health care. The grounds on which the Bill is being justified are therefore not only false, but criminally dangerous.
Similarly, the Bill focuses on the protection of minors, thereby conflating homosexuality and child abuse. There is no denying that Uganda has a problem with child abuse. The Ugandan police force reported that it was the second most reported crime in 2011, the vast majority of it being between adult males and young girls. Clearly, what Uganda needs is not further criminalisation of homosexuality, but stronger legal action on child abuse. The confusion of those two separate issues is not only dangerous for the LGBT population; failing to deal with the real problem puts the children of Uganda at risk.
Sexual Minorities Uganda has suggested a range of amendments to the Bill that would better serve the Ugandan people in the effort to prevent child abuse and the spread of HIV. The first is to make the laws on sexual offences gender neutral. The second is to ensure that there is a system of mandated reporting of child abuse. The third is to commit the Government to addressing the risk factors associated with child sexual exploitation. The fourth is to prevent discriminatory access to health care, in line with Uganda’s own HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Bill of 2010.
If President Museveni implements the suggested amendments, or others of similar effect, he will live up to the constitution of Uganda, the Commonwealth Charter and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. They all enshrine the right to freedom from discrimination. He will have bravely stood up for what is scientifically sound and socially decent.
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that if the President chooses not to follow the path of protecting the civil rights of the community, our Government should—as we have done with other countries who have persecuted people—start to impose sanctions and travel bans on Ugandan politicians?
Mr Blunt
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come to that in a moment.
If President Museveni does what he is being asked to do by amending the Bill in the way that I and—more importantly—Sexual Minorities Uganda, have outlined, he will be vindicated by history. If he fails, however, as my hon. Friend says, we must respond. The responsibility for the original criminalisation of homosexuality in Uganda rests at our feet, and if that were not enough, our own international human rights commitments oblige us to condemn this Bill.
We should examine a range of responsive measures including travel bans for the main supporters of this legislation, not least for its leading cheerleader David Bahati. We should redirect the few Government aid programmes where we work explicitly with the Ugandan Government to suitable civil society organisations. We should conduct a proper audit of other programmes where we, directly or indirectly, deliver support through the EU or the UN to ensure that they are not simply pork-barrel expenditure directed by Ugandan politicians.
Outrage and dissatisfaction about this Bill will not be restricted to the LGBT community, much as we will be the most vocal in raising it. It is for the Government of all citizens of the United Kingdom to uphold the dignity of the individual and freedom from discrimination around the world. We therefore look to our Government to act and protect those values, and to take up the United Kingdom’s special historical responsibility as the original author of this intolerance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) on securing this important debate, on raising awareness of this subject in his early-day motion tabled on 5 February, and on the articulate, detailed and measured way in which he spoke about this issue. Members across the House share a common commitment to protecting minority rights, not only in Uganda but around the world, and they will, I am sure, be troubled by the situation outlined by my hon. Friend.
Human rights are a significant priority for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the UK Government remain firmly committed to ensuring that all LGBT people are free to live their lives in a safe, just and inclusive environment. Combating violence and discrimination against the LGBT community forms an integral part of our untiring efforts to protect and promote human rights internationally. We therefore share the concern about the legislation passed by the Ugandan Parliament last year.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was first introduced as a private Member’s Bill back in 2009, but we understand that it does not have the support of the Ugandan Government in its current form. It does, however, have widespread public and parliamentary support in Uganda, and on 20 December, as my hon. Friend outlined, the Ugandan Parliament tabled, debated and passed the Bill, although it requires presidential assent to become law.
In a public statement in response to the passing of the Bill, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson) expressed concern that the legislation was incompatible with the protection of minority rights, and that it would result in a rise in persecution, violence and discrimination across Uganda. We value the strong and close partnership between the UK and Uganda, and as friends we discuss areas of disagreement frankly. I have personally raised this issue on a number of occasions with my Ugandan counterparts, including President Museveni and, most recently, with the Ugandan Foreign Minister on 28 January. I hope to have an opportunity to raise it again tomorrow when I meet the Ugandan State Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Pamela Nash
Will the discussions on concerns about the Bill extend to the concerns of British companies investing in Uganda?
Mark Simmonds
If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will come on to that point. What I will say is that we are very aware and conscious of British citizens who work for UK companies that are investing in Africa, and how the Bill might impact on them too.
Only yesterday, I met the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, Frank Mugisha, to hear first hand the challenges that LGBT people in Uganda face, and to understand what steps are being taken to change perceptions of LGBT rights. This follows on from previous meetings I have had with human rights groups and civil society during my visits to Uganda. I can also tell the House that Mr Mugisha was able to meet ministerial colleagues at the Department for International Development and the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
The report by Sexual Minorities Uganda, which my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate cites, highlights the perpetuation of some of the disturbing myths about sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly, but not exclusively, in Africa. The report’s recommendations, as articulated by my hon. Friend, form the basis to take forward efforts to change social attitudes and behaviour towards LGBT people. I agree with the report’s view that the criminalisation of homosexuality will do nothing to address the concerns of child abuse and exploitation. This can only be effectively tackled through non-gender-specific legislation.
I am aware of the role that some sections of the religious community have played in promoting the Bill. I very much welcome the recent letter sent from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to the President of Uganda, and to all primates of the Anglican community, recalling the commitment to pastoral care and friendship for all, regardless of sexual orientation. I am also aware that the Papal Nuncio to Uganda expressed concern at the passing of the Bill, and that he would be working with Uganda’s Catholic bishops on this matter. He noted that the matter
“does not pass a test of a Christian caring approach to this issue.”
The Government share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend at the effect the Bill could have on efforts to combat the spread of HIV/Aids. An open letter to President Museveni, from Uganda’s Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, highlighted the risks to public health. My hon. Friend might be interested to know that DFID is providing £16.3 million over four years to support and improve HIV prevention response in Uganda, which will include provision for specifically targeting most at-risk populations.
As with many of our posts across the world, our high commission in Kampala works tirelessly to promote the universal values that are central to British foreign policy: tolerance, respect, equality, fairness and human rights. We believe that the case for tolerance and equality is best made by local voices. Since the Bill was passed by the Ugandan Parliament, we have worked with civil society to raise awareness of the impact the Bill will have on human rights. Our high commissioner in Kampala is supporting these groups to promote inclusivity, diversity and tolerance, working in co-ordination with international partners. We have provided support for training, advocacy and legal cases relating to the protection of LGBT rights. The high commission also supports the Kaleidoscope Trust, which my hon. Friend rightly mentioned, and its specific project in Uganda to promote strategic communications. My officials have also engaged extensively with UK and Ugandan NGOs, including Stonewall, the Kaleidoscope Trust and the Human Dignity Trust, to explain our approach.
I have listened carefully to calls in the debate to consider sanctions against those promoting the Bill, but I cannot give the commitment that my hon. Friend seeks to impose travel restrictions on those promoting this legislation. I do not believe that imposing travel bans on promoters of the Bill would be in the interests of LGBT minorities in Uganda or indeed those rightly working to defend their rights. The purpose of our development programme is to support poverty reduction and economic growth in Uganda.
Our development programme to Uganda goes through a variety of channels, including private sector organisations, NGOs and multilateral agencies. My hon. Friend may not be aware but budget support to the Government of Uganda was indefinitely suspended back in 2013, following allegations of corruption in the Ugandan Government. A tiny proportion of the UK’s development assistance is provided through financial aid to the Government of Uganda—only 1.1% of the total DFID allocation. That financial aid is specifically used to support public financial management, to strengthen the Government’s systems for managing fiduciary risk and for tackling corruption. There are very rigorous mechanisms in place to ensure that British taxpayers’ money is spent properly and for the purposes for which it was intended. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend to provide more details and to put a copy of that letter in the Library so that all hon. Members who are interested can see it and be reassured.
As is the case for all the countries we work in, financial aid to the Government of Uganda is predicated on fundamental commitments and agreed partnership principles, which include a commitment to poverty reduction, respect for human rights, improving public financial management, good governance, and transparency and the strengthening of domestic accountability. Although the focus of this debate has been on Uganda, I am only too aware that there are other countries of concern in Africa and elsewhere. My hon. Friend mentioned Russia in his opening remarks.
Mr Blunt
Before my hon. Friend goes wider than Uganda, may I gently say to him that the sanctions sought in my speech were extremely limited and focused on travel bans as the only active deterrent for people supporting the Bill. He has not told us why he feels these bans would cause the effect he alleges. It has only taken me this afternoon to get more than 100 parliamentarians to agree to support a letter to President Museveni along the lines of my speech. If this matter were pressed, my hon. Friend might be in a significant minority in the House.
Mark Simmonds
I did try to explain why I have come to this conclusion and the negative impact his request would have on those who are LGBT in Uganda and those promoting their rights. Travel bans, if they were to be part of an EU-wide sanctions package, would have to be agreed at European Union level, and are normally done as part of a wider sanctions package. He will also be aware that the Home Secretary has the power to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good. The Home Secretary’s decision will be made specifically on a case-by-case basis.
Mike Freer
I just want to press the issue of travel bans. I accept the Minister’s point, but if he cannot expand on it now I ask him to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) on the issue of why someone who is perpetrating a hate crime would be subject to a ban, as Dieudonné was last week, but the Ugandan politicians would be able to enter the country and pursue hate crimes freely?
Mark Simmonds
I am not sure I share my hon. Friend’s definition of a hate crime. He will be well aware of the sensitive nature of the issue and, hopefully, has gathered from my remarks the position of the UK Government. We stand up for LGBT individuals in Uganda and for their rights and will continue to do so, but my conclusion is that I do not believe that imposing a travel ban on those promoting the Bill, which is supported by Ugandan parliamentary and public opinion, would achieve the results that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate wish.
I will not stray beyond Uganda, Mr Deputy Speaker, but Her Majesty’s Government’s position is clear: all people, wherever they are in the world, and whatever their sexual orientation, should have the same rights. We are active and will maintain the effort. We will work with a range of non-governmental and LGBT organisations to provide support and increase capacity. I am proud of the Government’s strong record on promoting LGBT rights and human rights at home and across the world. That is something on which we will not compromise.
Free, tolerant, open and inclusive societies are better able to fulfil the aspirations of their people. They are more resilient and more forward looking. A country that is accountable and treats its people with dignity is more likely to foster creativity, ingenuity and economic opportunity, which are all prerequisites for long-term stability and security.
That is why we want a Commonwealth that lives up to its values, in which all citizens are free to live their lives in a safe, just and equal society. LGBT rights remain a controversial issue in the Commonwealth. We are keen to see significant progress, but we recognise and acknowledge that it will take time. The Commonwealth secretary-general’s recent statement calling for the Commonwealth values to be upheld in respect of sexual orientation and gender identity is a welcome step.
The measure of a society is how it treats its minorities. The Government will continue to carry that message forcefully and ceaselessly to Uganda and more than 80 other nations that still criminalise homosexuality. Through my hon. Friend’s articulation and eloquence this evening, and in calling for the debate, he has helped to ensure that that important message is heard.
Question put and agreed to.
Deferred Divisions
(10 years, 2 months ago)
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