Local Government Funding

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

We have already heard from many of my hon. Friends about the impact of local government cuts on their constituents and local authority workers. Let me begin by paying tribute to those workers, who deliver services not in return for salaries of more than £100,000 or more than £25,000 a year, but in return for salaries of less than £15,000—and, in the case of the many who are women, less than £10,000 a year.

Let us be clear about the fact that, despite what the Government say, these cuts will affect care for the elderly and children. They will affect schools and education, thus ensuring that our children do not have the best start in life. There will be safety reductions as funds for our fire brigades are devastated. There will be reductions in street cleaning, closures of swimming pools, art galleries and leisure centres. There will be cuts in the funds of voluntary organisations that support some of our most vulnerable people, cuts in the funds to support investment—including inward investment—in jobs, and cuts that will cause the gap in life expectancy between our most deprived and our most affluent areas to continue to widen, rather than continuing to close as it did under the Labour Government.

Let me say something about how the cuts will affect people in Teesside, and particularly in the borough of Stockton. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, I served as a councillor on Stockton borough council. I know from direct experience that Stockton has an excellent local authority that provides first-class services for local residents. I have seen the successes that it has achieved. I have seen improvements in education and care for the elderly and the young, improvements in housing, the development of Sure Start Centres supporting not just vulnerable families but working families throughout the borough, and the development of the arts with the international riverside festival and our celebrated ARC arts centre. The council has a “can do, will do” approach, and it is worthy of its “council of the year” title. I am confident that it will work hard to minimise cuts in front-line services and redundancies, but given cuts of this scale, even the best local authorities will struggle.

I am told that 50,000 people working for local authorities throughout the country have already been told that they could lose their jobs. That number will inevitably rise to the half million predicted by the Government, although I know that they are now trying to talk that number down. The Teesside Evening Gazette reports today that no fewer than 900 employees of Redcar and Cleveland borough council—a relatively small authority—have been given notice that their jobs are at risk, just 20 days before Christmas. Of course, the people who rely most on council services tend to be those on lower incomes. Why, then, are councils such as Hartlepool, in Teesside, and South Tyneside facing cuts of between 25% and 29% when South Cambridgeshire and West Oxfordshire councils are receiving increases of up to 37%?

In March this year, the Chancellor told the News of the World that he would not balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Now that his party is in government, he persists with the mantra “We are all in this together”. I do not think that many people, regardless of political persuasion, take that claim seriously.

It is not only the Conservatives who have back-tracked on their promises. The Liberal Democrat Manifesto said:

“Our core aim is to hard-wire fairness back into national life.”

I do not think that anyone working for a local authority who loses a job as a result of these cuts will think that there is anything fair about it, and the same applies to those who lose vital services.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

Even some of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have told us during the debate that they accept the necessity for cuts. We have seen the figures in the Labour party’s “pre-manifesto”, which revealed their own plans for the non-protected Departments: cuts of about 25%. Why does the hon. Gentleman persist in claiming that it is only the Government parties who propose cuts?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham]

We accepted that there would be the cuts outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). However, we believe that cuts must be fair, and that cuts as deep and as fast as those proposed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats must be questioned.

I hope to secure a Westminster Hall debate in the new year about the impact of cuts on the voluntary sector, 32% of which relies on local authority funding. I know that many excellent third-sector organisations fear that the cuts will severely limit their work. Stockton is trying hard to protect our third sector, but will face real challenges. I should be interested to know how cutting funds for those organisations will do anything to further the big society programme on which the Prime Minister is so keen. The third sector is the big society in action, and exposing those groups to possible cuts seems incoherent given the emphasis on big society and localism.

Of course, we must not consider local authority cuts in isolation. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that for every job lost in the public sector, another will be lost in the private sector. That means 1 million lost jobs. One industry that we know relies heavily on the public sector is the building industry, which has already lost out in Teesside as a result of the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme, as well as the scrapping of the new hospital to serve the North Tees and Hartlepool area. Spending by local authorities boosts the economy, and there is no doubt that the cuts will indirectly make life difficult for many local businesses.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Cunningham]

No, I will not.

Let me finally say something about the Cleveland fire service, which is critical to the safety of people in the area that I represent. I am told by the Fire Brigades Union that 68% of Cleveland’s funding comes from a central Government grant. Given that that grant is set to fall by 25%, the chief fire officer is seriously concerned about the possibility that lives will be put at risk by the cuts. The seriousness of the situation is exacerbated by the fact that our local area has large numbers of high-risk COMAH— control of major accident hazards—sites owing to chemical and other manufacturing in the area. The Minister responsible for the fire service has already refused my request for him to visit Teesside and see the problem for himself. I have written asking him to meet local MPs across the political spectrum, as well as representatives from Cleveland fire authority, to discuss the issue here in Westminster, and I hope that I shall receive a positive response.

These cuts place our communities at real risk, and I hope that the Government will think again.