Local Government Funding
Debate between Lord Pickles and Gordon Marsden
Mr Pickles
I want to make some progress first, but I will give way to the right hon. Lady in due course.
It is reasonable for us to have expected to hear in the speech of the right hon. Member for Don Valley how much she would cut from the budget. What percentage reduction does she want from each tier of local government? If she does not like the phasing, which other Department should be cut more next April?
The Opposition have simply lost touch with financial reality. They have got their head in the sand in respect of the urgent need to tackle the nation’s record overdraft and the slide towards a national debt of over £1 trillion. We need to reduce the deficit to keep long-term interest rates down, thereby directly helping families and businesses through the lower cost of loans and mortgages. By reducing spending and restoring the nation’s fiscal credibility, we avoid the massive debt interest bills—over £42 billion a year—which is sucking taxpayers’ money from front-line services.
We had a choice in the most recent spending review: we could face up to the legacy left by Labour—the crippling public debt, the black hole in the nation’s finances—or we could simply let Britain fall into the economic abyss. Looking around Europe, the situation that some of our neighbours continue to face reminds us just how dire the challenges remain.
Mr Pickles
In a moment.
The financial mess that the coalition has inherited is not just because of big banks; it is because of the irresponsible behaviour of big Government.
Mr Pickles
I do indeed. From what I can understand from what the right hon. Member for Don Valley was saying, it seems that she is in favour of cuts but not specific cuts. She is in favour of financial prudence, but not if it involves cuts to local authority spending.
The key argument about the forthcoming grant reductions is that the right hon. Lady seems to think that they will be unfair. How she can assert that when she does not know what the settlement will be is a mystery to us all. Opposition Front Benchers point to briefing figures from the pressure group SIGOMA—special interest group of municipal authorities—without realising that they are being played. SIGOMA understandably wants to paint a dire picture for its members as part of a lobbying exercise ahead of the settlement. It is playing metropolitan areas off against shire counties.
Mr Marsden
The Secretary of State asks why these points are being raised by the Opposition, but he and his colleagues have a record on this issue. The figures and cuts that the Government Front-Bench team produced in June, with the abolition of area-based grants and various other measures, disproportionately hit the parts of the country that we have been talking about.
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman is well aware that in the emergency Budget we had to prevent money that had not been paid out from being paid—it is difficult to take money from areas that have not received any at all. He seems to think that we live in a vacuum. Has he seen what has gone on in other parts of the continent and the problems that other Governments face? Had we not taken these decisions we could have found ourselves in precisely the same position.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Gordon Marsden
Mr Pickles
The Government offices for the regions are about the Government imposing their will on the regions. We will be giving power back to local councils, local community groups and local entrepreneurs.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
Would not scrapping the Government office for the north-west mean north-west local authorities having to go cap in hand to each Whitehall Department? Would not such a diktat be of a piece with the Secretary of State bludgeoning the Business Secretary over scrapping regional development agencies? What has he to say to the former Tory leader from Trafford, Councillor Susan Williams, who asked:
“Where is the voice of the NW to government?”
and then said that it was in “a void”? Would he not leave north-west local authorities swinging in limbo, with their economies disrupted by his cuts and no north-west body promoting major regenerational transport projects? Is not his localism just a fraudulent—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. That is now five questions. It is an abuse of the procedures of the House when Members, on both sides, ask questions that are simply too long. I want a short answer from the Secretary of State please.