Local Government: Finance

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, first, perhaps I may remind the noble Lord, the former Minister, that I sat on that Front Bench all the way through the previous Government and I always complained about the lack of time that one was given for dealing with a Statement. Never ever did I receive a Statement more than about 40 minutes before I was due to answer it. So there will be no lessons from across there with that complaint.

The necessary reductions come about because of the deficit. I cannot keep on saying that—we must all deal with the deficit and deal with it we will. We will reduce the deficit more quickly than the party opposite ever indicated it would do.

As regards the reductions in grant for Tower Hamlets, Kensington and Chelsea or wherever, their spending power, which is how the Local Government Association wanted to present it, means that reserves and council tax are taken into account. The reductions of 8.9 per cent will depend on how much they can contribute to that, how much council tax they get, how much revenue can come from elsewhere and how much comes from government. The reductions would have been higher all round if extra money had not been made available for the transitional period. However, now no council will lose more than 8.9 per cent. It has been done on a very fair and measured formula to ensure that people do not have big swings within their council tax settlements across the country. They should not be too great.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the next Statement not yet having started in the other place, I beg to move that we adjourn during pleasure for 10 minutes.