Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Steve Reed and Baroness Keeley

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

I will do my best to keep my remarks brief.

It is always a pleasure to listen to the Secretary of State’s engaging manner, but it is not so pleasant listening to what he has to say. He repeated his claims to have protected funding for councils over the next four years, but there can be no one left who believes that anymore—judging from what we have heard over recent weeks, not even his own MPs believe it. That is no wonder, because the settlement funding assessment takes away £1 in every £3 given to councils for funding core services, and that is on top of cuts in excess of 40%—indeed, in many councils, in excess of 50%—that have already been imposed.

[Barbara Keeley]

I tried to intervene on the Secretary of State and he would not take my intervention, but I cannot leave what he said about social care because it is just wrong. There is no injection of cash into social care; there is only a maximum of £400 million this year. That funding is uncertain, risky and back-loaded, and the LGA has asked him if he will inject £700 million over the next two years because it is so concerned. There was not even funding for its own policy of national living wage increases, so let us not hear such things about social care.

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will pick up on those points later in my contribution. Returning to the settlement funding assessment, because increases elsewhere do not plug the gap that those cuts create, it will result in cuts to front-line services, including cuts to youth services, fixing potholes, cleaning the streets, emptying the bins, looking after parks, keeping the street lights on at night, Sure Start centres, libraries, museums and rural bus services. The Secretary of State has not protected any of those; he has sharpened the knife.