Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Stephen Timms
Mr Pickles
In his previous existence, the hon. Gentleman would not have had the temerity to cite that set of figures, which can be achieved only by counting off-street parking, which means the more off-street parking a council provides—the friendlier it makes it for motorists—the worse those figures appear, so frankly I regard them as bogus. They reflect the anti-car policies of the Labour party, which consistently cut the number of parking spaces and instructed local authorities to increase car parking charges.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
5. What assessment he has made of local authorities’ use of article 4 directions to limit excessive occurrence of particular use types on high streets.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Lord Pickles and Stephen Timms(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
Authorities with elderly residents, of course, will be some of the relatively big gainers because of the provision of adult social care. We want to put extra money into authorities with social services departments, and thanks to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, we are looking at putting in serious money to deal with adult social care. I can recall standing at the Opposition Dispatch Box and asking for precisely the action that we have delivered today.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Given what the Secretary of State has said about fairness, why is it that from looking through the list of London borough grant changes, we see that the biggest losses in absolute and percentage terms are in the local authority areas where the level of disadvantage is the greatest?
Mr Pickles
I wish to make it absolutely clear that obviously, authorities that are more dependent on the grant will feel the effects of any reduction. We have moved the relative needs figure to 83%, and introduced the banded floors and the transitional grant, to protect those authorities. Had we not taken those decisions, and had we applied the system that the Labour party did, the effects on those communities would indeed have been great.