Local Government Funding: North-East

Debate between Lord Beamish and David Amess

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman responds, I remind the House that three hon. Ladies still want to speak, as well as the Opposition spokesperson and the Minister who will respond. The debate finishes at 4 o’clock, so I hope that colleagues will bear that in mind.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) makes a pertinent point. We will end up with councils that deliver core statutory services, and even then they will be under pressure.

When the right hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles) was Secretary of State, he argued that somehow we could make the savings by having fewer pot plants in council departments, or by cutting staff numbers. I must tell the Minister that every council in the north-east has made back-office efficiencies. That will not enable them to meet the figures. For example, from 2011 to 2020 Durham will have lost £288 million from its budget. It is ludicrous to think we can make that up. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not here; previously he has accused councils of hoarding large balances, but that is a way of diverting attention. I will explain the situation in Durham. It has £220 million in reserves. However, only £30 million of that is actual reserves, in the sense of the 5% that, when I was in local government, local councils needed. The rest is allocated for other things, such as redundancies and things that will take place against a budget of more than £865 million. Let us knock on the head the nonsense that northern councils are awash with large reserves. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington demonstrated, they are down to the bone. The other thing is that reserves can be used only once. The Government’s idea about a way of somehow mixing revenue and capital is economically illiterate.

I want to finish on devolution, because we will no doubt get a load of guff from the Minister about it. The devolution being put forward for the north-east is a devolution of responsibilities without the cash to go with it; £30 million is on offer for the north-east so-called mayoral model. If the cuts to public health funding go forward as predicted, Durham alone will lose £20 million a year.

I noticed last week that a Conservative, Mr Jeremy Middleton, announced his candidacy for mayor of the north-east. Strangely, he said:

“I won’t be asking people to vote for me because I’m a Conservative. I’ll be asking them to vote for me because I’m the right man for the job.”

I had a look at his website this morning, and he has also said that through negotiation with Whitehall he will deliver

“a fair financial settlement with similar public funding per head as Scotland”.

I challenge him to state why he has sat quietly for the past six years without saying a single thing about local government finance being butchered in the north-east. He is a friend of the Chancellor, a former Conservative candidate—he thankfully failed in the by-election against my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—and has been an apologist for this Government. I ask the people of the north-east to remember that when and if we actually get this ludicrous situation with a mayor.

I am fully supportive of the idea of devolution, but devolution of responsibility without the funding, which is what this is, is not the way forward. Councils in the north-east are facing a crisis and there is only one explanation. It lies with the Government who are protecting their own areas in a party political way while not giving a damn about Labour-voting areas in the north-east of England.

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. I am having to impose a time limit of three minutes, which is unsatisfactory. I ask colleagues to resist making interventions.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Beamish and David Amess

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

It is an honour and privilege to follow any maiden speech, but it is particularly so in this case. I know I speak for the whole House when I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on a magnificent performance. He spoke with command, it was a measured speech and in every sense—whether it was the humorous side or the remarks he made about his predecessors—it was an absolute example of how an hon. Member should make a maiden speech. When I made my maiden speech at the end of 1983, it was an ordeal not only for me but for the House that had to listen to me.

The hon. Gentleman performed splendidly. I also held his predecessor in high regard as a parliamentarian and I much regret the way he left this House. Colleagues listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech will have come to the conclusion that he brings unique experience to this place that will greatly enrich our deliberations in the future. I certainly would not willingly jump out of an aeroplane, you would have to push me and that would be the end of it. I speak for the whole House—I do not think we get much Conservative support in Barnsley Central—when I wish him a long and successful career.

Turning to the Budget, there is no doubt that this has been the most difficult and gloomy time I have known for people in business—until today. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on his well-crafted and clever Budget, which will cheer up the country. It has already cheered up Government Members and, as colleagues will have observed from the general atmosphere among Opposition Members three or four hours ago, it has absolutely cheesed off the Opposition. I am getting sick to death with Members on the Conservative and, dare I say, Liberal Benches being castigated for the absolute mess that the country is in. One party alone is responsible for that—Labour. It is because of the Labour party that we are facing debt interest of £120 million a day and because of the Labour party that we have the biggest structural debt in the G7.

I want to share with colleagues who were elected last year what the past 13 years have been like. As hon. Members will know, the last Prime Minister was previously the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I had the experience of listening to 10 of his Budgets, which he greatly enjoyed delivering. He used to come to the Dispatch Box and two thirds of the way through his speech he would wind Conservative Members up. Then he would make what he thought would be the headline-grabbing news item that would cheer everyone up. But then we would all go away and people would read the Red Book and within a few weeks we would find out that what he had told us was not in any sense accurate. So I congratulate the Chancellor on the new Red Book, because unlike the previous one it is not big enough to use as a doorstop, which is all that one was fit for.

Labour Members seem to think that Government Members relish making cuts.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

You do!

[Mr Amess]

We do not, and I find it hypocritical that although Labour Members used to speak about cuts before the general election—I can only talk about those who were here before the election—we no longer hear about the cuts they were going to make. It is as though the Conservatives and Liberals rejoice in making cuts. If anyone wants to know why the country is in a mess, I can tell them it is because the Labour party took away regulation from the Bank of England and gave it to an organisation that was not fit for purpose. Also, as one of my colleagues said during Prime Minister’s questions, Labour stupidly sold off our gold reserves.

I will go further: in all his Budgets the then Chancellor of the Exchequer would make announcements about spending in terms not of millions but billions, and we in opposition used to wonder how it could be funded. We now know that it could not be funded and that we were spending money we never had. I will never forgive Tony Blair—[Interruption.] Hon. Members might huff and puff, but I am entitled to say this because it was Tony Blair who got me to vote for the war in Iraq and I will never forgive him for having told us a pack of lies at the Dispatch Box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Amess]

I hope that Tony Blair will correct what I have said when he again gives evidence, but I blame him for the way he completely misled the country on any number of issues. Not the least part of his lasting legacy is the fact that he destroyed the House of Commons, because this is certainly not the place that I entered in 1983. I further blame the last Prime Minister, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer. New Labour Members come into the Chamber and castigate Government Members for what is going on; what on earth were they standing for in the general election campaign in May?

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Having listened to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, I wish he was in an aeroplane so that we could push him out. He feels that he has been duped on Iraq and on spending, but why, then, did he and the leader of his party say right up to 2008, including in a speech by the leader of his party in July 2008 to the CBI conference, that the Conservatives would match the Labour Government’s spending?

[Mr Amess]

I believe that the only commitment that we gave was to match spending on the health service.

Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and David Amess

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that neither partner in the coalition Government went into the general election telling pensioners that they would change the definition of indexation from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index, either?

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

Order. I hope that before the hon. Gentleman responds, he will reflect on the fact that the point that has just been made is not really relevant to the matter being discussed.

[Mr Jones]

I would not want to go against your judgment, Mr Amess, but may I say that my hon. Friend’s point is another example of how hard-working pensioners in my constituency will be affected by the Budget? However, I defer to your wise counsel and would not want to get on the wrong side of you.

Distributional analysis is needed before anything is done. We also need to know, if the relief charge is not going to go ahead, where the money is going to come from. It will affect pensioners lower down the income scale. Many on quite small incomes, who have saved all their lives for their pensions, will basically be paying for a give-away to the richest 2% in the country.

I hope that we can get the message out loud and clear from today’s debate that we have a Government who are clearly taking care of their friends, the top 2%. They have to start being honest with the British people—this Budget is not about deficit reduction. It is about an ideological approach to where the burden of taxation should fall and to the size of the state, and it will not help many of my constituents in North Durham.