Britain's Place in the World

Debate between Lord Beamish and Robert Syms

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Syms]

I sat for 13 years under a Labour Government who did nothing for nuclear test veterans.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Yes we did.

[Sir Robert Syms]

No you didn’t.

[Emily Thornberry]

We announced at party conference what we would do. The challenge for the current Government is to meet that commitment. We challenge the Government to do the right thing on the test veterans. It is all very well for the Conservatives after 10 years to say, “Oh you didn’t do it during 13 years.” They are in government now. This injustice exists now. Do something about it right now.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Robert Syms

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I do not support amendment 79, but think it a useful vehicle for debate on an important subject. In my experience, local government is good at adapting to change, provided that it is given sufficient time to do so. I am sure that local authorities will be able to adapt to the Government’s timetable, but there are many pressures in different areas. First, most authorities are cutting spending; secondly, they will have to grapple with the 10% reduction; and thirdly, the Government have stated clearly that that should not affect pensioners. In an area such as Poole, with a heavy preponderance of pensioners, the burden will fall on a small minority of those claiming that benefit. Fourthly, as most local authorities will have to freeze their council tax, or will freeze it anyway, and have limited balances, they may well err on the side of trying to ensure that they get their figures correct and that there is no cross-subsidy in terms of the benefit falling on the council tax payer. A perverse incentive may arise to make larger reductions in support for the vulnerable than the figures necessarily entail, because authorities do not want to take the risk.

The current system is predictable in the sense that it is running and the Department for Work and Pensions can transfer money equally on a monthly basis. The direction of travel in localisation is fine and I am sure that many local authorities can draw up good schemes, but in year one the new arrangements will not be as predictable. Some authorities will draw up schemes that turn out to be more generous than they thought, and others will draw up schemes that are less generous than expected. Ministers have to consider what will happen when a scheme is got wrong, because as sure as eggs are eggs, there will be one authority that gets its figures substantially wrong and has a problem.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The problem for authorities such as mine in County Durham, where a large number of people receive council tax benefit, will perhaps be bigger than for some of the smaller authorities, where there are relatively few council tax benefit recipients.

[Mr Syms]

I am certain that the measure will have a different effect on different authorities. We need a little bit more clarity from Ministers: will there be emergency funds that can be drawn on if there is a difficulty in the short term?

Of course, what makes it complicated is the fact that the Government are looking for savings because of the overall economic situation. We have to make savings; we are looking to make savings of £420 million, and that makes things much more difficult. Again, speaking from my experience of local government, it is sometimes in a position to deliver savings, given a chance, but as we have heard in this debate, if there is pressure on council tax and council tax benefits, something will have to give. I therefore have concerns about the Government’s direction of travel, and I hope that the Minister can reassure us that they have thought about what would happen in an emergency.

Clearly, if a local authority has to deal with a reduction and is given maximum flexibility to do so, sometimes it can deal with it, but if it is initially told, “You must protect pensioners,” the impact of the reductions may fall on a smaller number of people. We recently heard exchanges across the Chamber about universal credit; that credit may offset some of that, but that might mean that the non-working faced the worst situations. The issue needs careful thought. I am sure that the Government’s timetable can be kept to, but we have to think very carefully; if lots of new schemes are invented following consultation, some people will get them right, some will get them wrong, and some will over-egg the savings, and that may well have an impact on our communities.

The Library briefing says that the reduction might partly be an incentive for local authorities to create jobs, but I am not sure that local authorities can wave a magic wand and create jobs in six months, a year or two years. Over a period of time, if authorities have active economic development departments, build capacity on industrial estates and try to attract firms, they might be able to have some impact. However, from a practical point of view, when it comes to dealing with the problems that arise when the measures are implemented—and perhaps in the year or two after that, in what we all know will be quite difficult economic circumstances—I do not think that councils have the ability to change the number of people in or out of work in their area. That is a long-term thing, not a short-term change that can be made in months, so I have some concerns.

Poole borough council, my authority, is having to deal manfully with the need for a number of savings; dealing with the measure, on top of that, will be difficult. I hope that we get the scheme right in Poole, but if we do not, I hope that the Government have thought about how they will deal with the consequences.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. We have heard hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House express real concerns about how the scheme will work in practice, and particularly about what will happen in authorities with a large number of pensioners. Hon. Friends have spoken about the need to start the scheme on the right basis—a neutral basis—and to ensure that councils are adequately funded for the scheme that they are being asked to bring in.

I want to speak about new clause 11 in particular, which seeks to address some of the real financial risks that are being transferred to local authorities. Many hon. Members will remember that last week we debated clause 3, which changed the requirement to pay a grant to a power to do so. In that debate, as in all our debates so far on the Bill, the Government refused to clarify how they would distribute money, fund local authorities and meet the costs of the duties that they seek to impose on them. That is exactly what the Government are trying to do with the localisation of council tax benefit. We are back to the old game of ensuring that the blame for their cuts is taken elsewhere. New clause 11 attempts to ensure that local authorities are reimbursed for expenses incurred as part of the council tax reduction scheme.

The 10% cut in funding that many hon. Members have referred to, along with protection for pensioners, which the Government rightly want to ensure, means that others will face much larger cuts in their benefit. We will debate many of those issues under the next group of amendments.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Robert Syms

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Syms]

I, too, have been an Opposition politician. Opposition politicians often argue that Bills taken on the Floor of the House really ought to be taken in a Public Bill Committee; and when there is a Public Bill Committee, they argue as eloquently as possible that the Bill ought to be taken on the Floor of the House. When Opposition politicians are not sure what to do about a Bill, one thing they say is that it has not been considered for long enough. They then try, as amendment 20 does, to delay the commencement date, because that is a good substitute for hearing their views on such reforms. If they can press an amendment, such as amendment 20, to a Division after a debate, that is very good, because in that way they cannot discuss some of the important issues in, say, schedules 1, 2 and 3. Perhaps we will end today not quite knowing where the Opposition are on some of those issues.

The reality is that we probably have the most centralised system of local government in the western world. The Bill is a step in the right direction for devolving power. Perhaps it does not go far enough, but we will doubtless see as the Committee progresses over its three days what assurances we get from the Minister on the pace at which the Government are going.

I am confident that the Government’s instincts are right. My experience of local government officials is that they must always second-guess central Government. Some are pretty good at it. Rather than prevaricating, if we are to change the system, the sooner we do so, the better. I therefore support my hon. Friend the Minister.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The reason the Bill is being taken on the Floor of the House is that there is no business—the business is in a logjam up in the other place.

It is important that the Bill gets detailed scrutiny. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said, in a Public Bill Committee, we would have been allowed not only to scrutinise the Bill, but to take evidence from councils, professionals and others with such expertise. We will not have that opportunity. As one who sat on one of the very first pre-legislative scrutiny Committees back in 2001—it was on the Civil Contingencies Act 2004—I was converted and became a great fan of such pre-legislative scrutiny. That Committee was given the chance to look at the proposals in detail, and as my hon. Friend said earlier, the Bill will bring about a radical change in local government finance in this country.

We had just over three hours last week on Second Reading.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Beamish and Robert Syms

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I should like to draw Members’ attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in case I stray into the subject of property or something similar.

The situation at the end of the previous Government’s time in office was unprecedented in international terms. The way that they handled things in their last 18 months was not too bad. They went down to 0.5% interest rates, allowed the automatic stabilisers to come in, and allowed the pound to devalue, as we could because we still control our own monetary policy. Everything possible was done to adjust to the dire situation in the banking system.

To be less complimentary, the regulatory regime that allowed the banks to do some of the things that they did was set by the former Prime Minister when he was Chancellor by taking powers away from the Bank of England. That was a retrograde step, and I am glad that the current Government are reviewing it. Before we hit trouble, the deficit was 3%, whereas the German economy had a surplus of 3%. The difference that we can see today is that the Germans have a deficit of 5% or 6%, while we have one of nearer to 10%. That means that the adjustments we will have to make over the next four or five years will be much more difficult, and it will take longer to get there.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about bank regulation, but he has a very short memory, because I remember being in this House when the current Chancellor and Prime Minister were calling for more light-touch regulation of the financial industry, not for more regulation, as they seem to be doing now.

[Mr Syms]

It was nothing to do with light-touch regulation; in fact, we needed more competent regulation. The Financial Services Authority was not up to the job, and the Bank of England would have done a better one.

The key thing is that we now have a great imbalance in our economy. Over the long term, Britain has always tended to have public spending of about 40% of GDP, taxation of about 40% of GDP, and a national debt of about 40% of GDP. We have always managed to grow and export, and to be a fairly successful economy. We now have to yank public spending and the deficit back to those sorts of levels. As was pointed out earlier in the debate, even after five or six years, we will only be back down to where we were towards the end of the Labour Government when we had to go into deficit to deal with the difficult economic situation.

I think that the Government’s response is sensible. It is planned over five or six years, and is gradual. For all the talk of expenditure cuts, the expenditure cuts will be gradual over that period. The plan, as the Chancellor set out today, is for the economy to grow. That should generate more tax revenue. The difficulty, of course, is that we will have to raise taxation, as can be seen in the plans, to help balance the budget. I hope that that is more of a short term, rather than a medium to long term thing, because we need to build incentives back into the British economy.