Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Blunkett and Robert Neill
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
1. What estimate he has made of the likely amount local authorities will incur in redundancy costs in the next 18 months.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
It is for individual councils locally to determine redundancy policies based on their own circumstances. Decisions about when and how to make and manage work force reductions, including policies on redundancy payments, are rightly for individual councils to make as the employers.
Mr Blunkett
Ministers do not have the first idea what the cost will be to local taxpayers. Is this not a triple whammy, whereby families and individuals lose their services, communities find that provision is taken from them and individuals lose their jobs? Is it not correct that instead of paying for services, council tax payers will have to pay for redundancies for services that are being withdrawn? Is it not a scandal that the Government do not know what the impact will be?
Robert Neill
The Government have endeavoured to assist the most vulnerable local councils by increasing the amount of money available in the formula grant that is not ring-fenced, moving more money into formula grant, reducing the amount of ring-fencing and rolling more grants into one. I imagine that when his Government were in office, the right hon. Gentleman would have complained greatly about their removal of working neighbourhoods funding for his city of Sheffield, which will cost the city some £38 million. We will endeavour to find the means to cushion that—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Blunkett and Robert Neill
Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman, who is experienced in these matters, well knows the dire financial straits the country is in and the need for all sectors to save money. However, he ought to put that in the context of what we have had to do because of the legacy of his party’s Government. We have taken steps to protect formula grant, to un-ring-fence a good deal of grant to give local authorities more financial flexibility and to remove burdens such as the expensive comprehensive area assessment inspection regime.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
If the Government cut external funding based specifically on local authorities’ levels of deprivation—external funding available to Witney in Oxfordshire at 1.7% but to the city of Sheffield at 18.5%, for example—is it not inevitable that those in greatest need will take the biggest cuts?
Robert Neill
Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt which this country has been left—[Interruption.]