Local Government Finance

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Robert Neill

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson).

I welcome the many positive aspects of the funding settlement, including the assistance given to the elimination of the negative rate support grant and the additional moneys given through the better care fund, which will benefit local authorities such as mine. However, it also highlights the pressing need for us to move swiftly and radically to overhaul local government funding properly. An efficient authority, Bromley will balance its budget this year, but unless we have change, in four years’ time we will have a funding gap of between £20 million and £30 million, depending on the assumptions one makes. The current system is not sustainable in the long term, which is why it is critical that we press ahead with the fairer funding review and with a radical approach to the devolution of business rates, as well as with the other initiatives that the Government are looking at in this area. That must include a White Paper on adult social care, to follow the Green Paper that has been promised. It is critical that we have that early, in time for the 2021 finance review.

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Neill]

Of course I will give way to my borough neighbour.

[Joseph Johnson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time we had an adjustment to our local authority’s baseline, to reflect the fact that it has made enormous efficiencies in order to absorb a 50% real-terms cut over the past four years, and to reward it for being one of the most efficient local authorities in the country?

[Robert Neill]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend.

I will now deal with the specifics. Bromley has historically been a low-cost authority, and credit must go to the Conservative-led Bromley Council, which has made savings of around £97 million per annum since 2011-12. However, because it has been efficient historically, there is really no fat left for it to cut, and because of the way the system works at the moment, there is no reward for efficiency. There is no reward in the formula for being a historically low-cost and efficient authority. If anything, perversely, we tend to get penalised for this, and that needs to be put right in the spending review.

We also need to recognise that there are more nuances, even in an outer-London Borough such as Bromley, than people might expect. Deprivation is now moving across London, and the old distinction between inner and outer London does not work any more. Bromley has the fourth lowest level of settlement funding in the whole of London, despite having the sixth highest population. It is the largest borough in terms of geography, and it has the highest proportion of older people, with all the cost pressures that that places on adult social care. It also has the largest road network, but it’s funding settlement is the second lowest per head of population.

That does not make sense to the members and officers of Bromley Council, who are working hard to deliver services for our residents. They have a limited ability to make further savings while maintaining statutory services, and the scope for discretionary spend is more and more squeezed. There are pressures not only on adult social care but on the temporary accommodation budgets, not least because the operation of benefit caps in London is pushing people in private rented accommodation out from inner London to the outer-London boroughs such as Bromley. That means that we, in turn, are having to accommodate people out in Kent. This is leading to real difficulties for many London boroughs.

There are also real pressures on children’s services and social care. Bromley has behaved magnificently in turning around its social services, which were rated poor two years ago, but are now rated good and outstanding in terms of leadership, with a Minister describing the speed of turnaround as unprecedented. The council achieved that despite funding pressures, but those pressures still exist. More children are diagnosed or recognised as having complex needs that must be dealt with, for example. Again, the current settlement mechanism is too blunt and opaque an instrument to deal with the situation adequately.

We must also consider the full implications of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. I warmly welcomed the Act, but the truth is that, in practice, not all the costs are being picked up for local authorities such as Bromley, so we need to consider a revised formula. The same goes for the deprivation of liberty social care arrangements, because their costs must also be picked up. Such things can be achieved through a sensible revision of the formula.

Turning to the need for business rates reform, Bromley has gone into the London business rates pool and wants to work collaboratively with its neighbours. However, Bromley wants to become self-sufficient and does not want to be dependent on Government grants in the long term. Its ambitious approach to supporting development in the borough, particularly in the town centre in my constituency, underlines that desire, but it needs a proper slice of devolution as a reward in a way that is not currently available given how the pool operates.

Finally, if we are to give local government genuine flexibility, we must look again at the amount of ring fencing within some of the remaining grants. I would hope that we could move a situation whereby such a grant as there is simply comes as a block and then the local authority has the flexibility and leeway to move money around based on its priorities. A simple example from Bromley is that the council is unable to move money from the schools block into the higher-need blocks or into special educational needs transport. A suburban borough such as Bromley has larger distances compared with inner-London boroughs and so requires a greater level of flexibility than the formula currently permits.

While welcoming the settlement, which I shall support tonight, I hope that the Minister will take away my specific points and the broader cry for root-and-branch reform of local government funding.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Robert Neill

Thursday 19th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

That is an important subject, which we hope the new east coast partnership will help to address.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

14. What assessment he has made of the reliability of rail services on metro routes in south-east London.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)]

I echo your good wishes to my hon. Friend, Mr Speaker.

All train operators must deliver the performance benchmarks set out in the franchise agreements that cover all their passenger services. In respect of Southeastern’s metro service, its public performance measure has improved from 87% to nearly 89% over the past year.

[Robert Neill]

Is the Minister not concerned, first, that many of the regular commuters on our line do not regard the performance measures as reflecting reality, particularly in the rush hour, and, secondly, that Network Rail only a couple of days ago published a suggestion that performance will actually deteriorate over the next coming years and will not pick up again until 2024? I would like our wedding guests to come on the train, but I do not think I can advise them to do so at the moment; does the Minister agree that the situation is wholly unacceptable, and what will he do about it?

[Mr Speaker]

Before 27 July.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Yesterday, my hon. Friend—my very good friend—the Minister of State responded to an Adjournment debate on impacts of the timetable changes of the Thameslink programme. He said that Members were welcome to suggest changes where there had been negative impacts. May I suggest to him that the reduction in services from Orpington to Victoria via Bromley South is precisely such a negative change, which should be looked at urgently?

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Of course, that matter is close to my heart and I will be paying extraordinary attention to it in the coming months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Robert Neill

Thursday 1st March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

This week of all weeks, rail passengers want up-to-date information about delays and cancellations, but Southeastern’s website has failed to provide any live-time updates in any single rush hour this week, today included. Will Ministers bear that in mind when the franchise comes up for renewal?

[Joseph Johnson]

My hon. Friend is a powerful champion of his constituents, and he is right to expect Southeastern to provide prompt, accurate and timely information so that passengers can have journeys of the quality that they deserve.

South-eastern Rail Franchise

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Robert Neill

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I will happily write to the hon. Lady with those figures. I do not have them off the top of my head, but I commit to providing additional information on the money we are spending on Lewisham station.

To continue on the changes, Hayes line services will in future run to London Bridge, Charing Cross and Victoria. Again, a small minority of passengers will lose a direct service. Those who currently travel to Cannon Street will have to change at London Bridge. On the North Kent line, which is of particular interest to the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, services to Charing Cross via Lewisham, which serve his constituency, will run to Cannon Street, as he noted, to facilitate new Thameslink services to London Bridge, Blackfriars, Farringdon and London St Pancras along the route.

Sidcup services will continue to run to Charing Cross, with Cannon Street services moving to peak times reflecting that the principal demand for those services is commuter-driven. Outside peak hours, the small number of passengers for Cannon Street will change at the new London Bridge station.

I recognise, like all Members who have spoken, that Southeastern passengers have had a torrid time in recent years and that there is considerable room for improvement in the quality of service. A combination of major infrastructure problems such as the collapse of the Dover sea wall, the impact of major enhancement works such as Thameslink and crowding have seen the operator regrettably languish at the bottom of satisfaction league tables for too long. However, I believe we are turning the corner.

To help alleviate crowding, members will applaud the fact that 25 trains have transferred from Govia Thameslink Railway to Southeastern to add capacity to both metro and mainline services.

[Robert Neill]

The extra trains are welcome, but does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that it is utterly bizarre that, even with the extra trains and the fact that the stations on the line from Sevenoaks through Orpington and my constituency can take 10 and 12-car trains, rush-hour trains are still being run to Charing Cross with eight-car trains? That is just poor use of the assets that the Government have given to Southeastern.

[Joseph Johnson]

My hon. Friend is a tireless and brilliant champion for his constituents in Bromley and Chislehurst, and he makes important points that doubtless the operator has heard and would be well advised to take note of.

The new trains are providing 5,300 additional seats in the morning and 4,300 seats in the evening peak. All metro routes have now have longer trains, and the 13 most overcrowded Southeastern trains now have significant additional capacity. The past 12 months have also seen important performance improvements, with the official public performance measure moving up from 85.9% in February 2017 to almost 89% in the most recent figures. The positive impact of all that for passengers is clear and we want to see things continue to improve in the months ahead.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Robert Neill

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

That is why it is so important that trains are being extended and replaced. The crucial thing is that, where there are delays, passengers are more aware of, and have easier access to, compensation schemes, and overall across the system over £73 million was paid in compensation in 2016-17, an increase of over 64% over the previous year.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The compensation scheme works on the basis that the delays are an exception rather than the norm. Will the Minister sit down with me, or perhaps follow me on Twitter so that he can see the messages I have had every day since work was resumed after the holidays on south-east trains, with delays and disruption every day on every line?

[Joseph Johnson]

I share my hon. Friend’s concerns and sympathise greatly with the experience of his constituents and other constituents in that area. The Southeastern service is one of the most congested in the country, and it has been vulnerable to the impact of infrastructure failures. We are working closely to ensure closer working between the operator and Network Rail to secure a reduction of such problems in the future.