Local Government Finance

Debate between Alison McGovern and Tim Farron

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend is extremely experienced in these matters and remembers, as I do, the impossible situation that councils, particularly in the poorest areas, were put in under the Tory Government. He is right to point out that the Lib Dems did play a small role in that, too. On his questions, I always read in detail the Select Committee’s reports, and I will do that with the ones he mentions. The Government have set out the pathway, making the immediate change that I said on social care and asking Baroness Casey to drive us towards that long-term vision that he points out. That is exactly what we need to do; we need to fix this for the long term.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Westmorland and Furness is an extremely well-run council and an extremely unusual one as well. It is England’s most rural council. It is the council that accepts the highest number of visitors—non-resident population—as we support everybody else’s constituents, who make up the 15 million who come to our district every year. The council has some of the poorest wards in the country. It is the host of Barrow, which is the centre of the UK’s defence industry, and it has the highest percentage of people in social care. This formula will leave us unusually crippled. We think it will mean a 13% cut to our budgets over the next three years. Given that we are so unusual, will the Minister unusually agree to meet me, her hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham) and local council leaders, so we can work out an unusual solution to this wonderful but unusual council’s problems?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and his description of his unusual and wonderful area. I do not recognise the figures he mentioned just then, but I will happily meet him and any colleagues he wants to bring, and we will go through the numbers together in detail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison McGovern and Tim Farron

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for setting out that, aside from the fact that we care about temporary accommodation because every child deserves the space to play and do their homework, this problem is putting local councils under a financial pressure that is not bearable. We have to get a grip of this situation. We will have more to say about this crucial issue in the homelessness strategy, and I look forward to engaging with the Chair and the whole Committee on it.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Westmorland has 3,500 empty properties—the fifth highest number of any local authority in the country. The council has invested in three additional staff to make sure we bring some of those properties back into permanent use to house homeless people, but what powers could the Minister give the local authority that would bolster its existing powers to requisition homes that have been empty for a long period of time to be used as temporary and emergency accommodation for people in communities like ours?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his important question. We all want to see empty homes brought into use, and councils already have extensive powers in this area. My job as the Local Government Minister is to make sure that we stabilise councils’ funding so that they are able to invest in that action, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to engage with the Department on the powers he would like to see, our door is very much open.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison McGovern and Tim Farron

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to what I just said to the Chair of the Select Committee, but let me confirm again that any child in temporary accommodation, particularly B&B accommodation, who has not got enough space to do their homework pays the price—not just through what they are going through today, but in the future. We cannot accept that. We cannot stand for it, and we should work together across this House to bring this to an end.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Thanks to the action of the previous Government and councils up and down the country, 90% of rough sleepers were got off the streets at the beginning of the pandemic, five and half years ago. Tragically, since then, most of those people—young and old—have returned to rough sleeping. In constituencies like mine, street homelessness is not so obvious—people are living and sleeping in woods, ruins and so on—yet the tragedy is still there. What lessons can the Minister and the Government learn from that rapid removal of homeless people from the streets in 2020, so that they can implement it again?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. Homelessness can be about rough sleeping, but there is also hidden homelessness. Our forthcoming strategy needs to consider all that in the round. He asks me what lesson I take from what happened a few years ago—and, I would argue, from how we reduced rough sleeping in the past. I would say that politics is about choices. We took the choice last week to invest, in-year, an extra £84 million in preventing and addressing homelessness. That is the right thing to ensure that everybody in this country is safe and has a roof over their head.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison McGovern and Tim Farron

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Employment (Alison McGovern)]

As my hon. Friend knows well, improved employment is at the heart of our approach to child poverty, and that is why reductions in economic inactivity and improvements in employment will be part of our child poverty strategy that is to be published very soon.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does the Minister accept that the Government’s increase in national insurance contributions has had a negative impact on employment in communities such as ours? Cumbria Tourism assesses that 37% of its businesses have cut staff as a consequence and 33% are freezing recruitment. Is it possible that the Government will get less from this tax rise than they expect, and that in doing this they are doing grave harm to the Cumbrian tourism economy and many other parts of our economy?

[Alison McGovern]

I speak to many businesses, and since coming into office, the Secretary of State and I have totally changed our approach with employers. That new approach includes a partnership with UK Hospitality, providing specific employment support to get into hospitality, and a hospitality passport so that people can evidence their qualifications, which we and UK Hospitality believe can help those people who really need a chance in life to get a good start in the hospitality sector.