Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Tope]

I agree with the noble Lord, and frankly I was surprised when I saw it in the committee papers back at the beginning of June. However, the way in which my authority worked—and I played no direct part in this—was on the basis that the scheme had to be finalised by the end of January. Therefore, working back from that date, given the committee system that we have now adopted thanks to the Localism Act, it was necessary for the draft consultation to be agreed in committee in June. I am not arguing that it is desirable, and I accept that in the course of the consultation there may well be changes. I am quite sure that at the end of the consultation there will be changes as a result of the consultation, never mind any other changes, but unless local authorities start to get on with it now, they will get into difficulties with the timing. I say to the noble Lord that he may need to look at the timing in Wigan as well.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

The phrase keeps going through my mind, “More haste, less speed”. It is no criticism of local authorities, but we have to remember that devising a means-tested benefit scheme is very complicated. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, councils face a difficult task in squaring a number of circles in devising schemes—and my noble friend Lord McKenzie outlined some of those circles and squares earlier. They have little experience or expertise in designing means-tested support schemes, and very little time to do it. It worries me that we are requiring local authorities to rush this process when they have to take account of so many factors in working out their means test, balancing all the different vulnerable groups that they are supposed to take into account while having their latitude squeezed by having to protect pensioners.

My noble friend Lord McKenzie pointed out that councils will have to take account of their child poverty needs assessments because they have a duty under the Child Poverty Act. A recent survey by 4Children found that fewer than half of English local authorities have a child poverty strategy in place, and 35 of those without a strategy do not even have a needs assessment, so presumably before they can work out their council tax benefit scheme they will have to do a child poverty needs assessment, which will slow things down as well. We will go on to talk about some of the other factors that they need to take into account—disabled people, carers and so forth. It really worries me that, all right, they may have schemes in place, but they will then have a year in which local people will be finding all sorts of holes in those schemes. It will not be us who suffer but local people in need.

[Baroness Sherlock]

I want to add one brief comment. If I understood correctly, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, suggested that the Committee should not try to press amendments that would delay the scheme because local authorities have already begun to consult on it. I do not want to overly stress the importance of Parliament, but surely the point of this exercise is for us to get the Bill right. If the Government have placed local authorities in a position where they are asking them to start the scheme so early that they are required to consult before Parliament has finished scrutiny of the Bill, surely that is a problem for us, not for them.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Baroness Lister of Burtersett

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I had not planned to speak to the amendment, but my noble friend Lady Sherlock raised a question about whether universal credit would be treated as income or not for the means test for local schemes. I am one of those sad people who has spent some of my weekend reading House of Commons Hansard Written Answers, and I have the answer for her. Stephen Timms asked the same question, and the answer was:

“Local authorities will be free to design their own scheme for localised support for working age people in their area. This includes being able to design any means test they wish to include, and deciding on what that test should and should not take account of”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/12; col. 414W].

Going back to what my noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham said, what local factor could possibly make it fair for one area to include universal credit as income and fair for another not to do so? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Every local authority, unless it goes for the default scheme, will be reinventing the wheel over and over again, working out their own means test. People will see absolutely no fairness in it whatsoever. It makes no sense not to have a national scheme.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, there are a rather large number of people here who must have been council leaders during the period of the poll tax—as, indeed, I was. I do not want to rehearse much of what has been said about that period except to say that, in my local authority a few years before the poll tax was introduced, we had 47 Conservative councillors and three Liberal Democrat councillors. By the time we had moved to the council tax, we had 47 Liberal Democrat councillors and four Conservatives. The five remaining Labour councillors were astonished to find themselves the principal opposition. So some good did come from the poll tax.