Andrew Gwynne
Main Page: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)Local Government Finance (England)
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is of course better for councils to face in the direction of bringing successful businesses into their area and benefiting from that, rather than passing all such benefits up to the Exchequer.
A few moments ago, I mentioned the increasing elderly population, but, as I said to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), we have had a decade of significant demographic change without the needs-based formula—it determines how much a well-run council requires to deliver its services efficiently—being revised to reflect that change.
Mr Reed
My hon. Friend is right, and devolving the blame for their cuts is part of what the Government are up to with this settlement.
Some funding for social care has been handed over to councils, which certainly sounds welcome. According to the Tory-led Local Government Association, however, the Government have handed over a £1 billion funding black hole. They have told councils to impose a 2% council tax rise every year for four years to plug that gap, but even that does not raise anywhere near enough to pay for the care that older people need. That increase raises the least money in the poorest areas that most need the funding. The Government have cut the funding then handed it over to councils to take the blame.
Andrew Gwynne
That is exactly the problem Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council finds itself with. This year, it has a £16 million social care deficit. Raising 2% on council tax—based on 100% collection, which is not going to happen—will bring in £1.4 million. The sums do not add up.
Mr Reed
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making a very graphic illustration of the point I was making.
What this all means is denying vulnerable older and disabled people the home care they need. It means turning away frail, older people who cannot clean their own homes or cook their own food. It means closing down day care centres. It means cutting back on home care visits. It means leaving people stuck in hospital beds because they have no support to go to at home, with the knock-on effect of lengthening hospital waiting times for other patients.
Mr Reed
Barracking will not stop me saying what needs to be said.
I have a copy of the letter the Minister sent to councils with the provisional settlement. The spreadsheets it links to, which were sent to every town hall, include figures setting out the Government’s expectation that councils will put up council tax by 1.75% every year for four years and, on top of that, impose a further 2% rise to help plug the gap arising from the Government’s failure to fund social care properly. That is 3.75% a year more every year for four years. By 2020, it adds up to a council tax hike of well over 20%. That will cost the average band E council tax payer about £300 more a year. It is very hard indeed to square that massive Tory tax hike with the Tory manifesto pledge to keep council tax as low as possible. The Tories are breaking their promises—they are hiking council tax up.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a very important point about council tax. During his statement earlier this week, the Secretary of State failed to understand that different councils have different council tax bases, and he told me to go away and speak to Trafford Council about how it is managing its affairs. There is a 27.4% difference between the council tax bases of Tameside and Trafford. Does my hon. Friend agree that such a difference is inherent in the unfairness under discussion?
Barbara Keeley
I do not think that anybody on the Opposition Benches is saying that. It is surprising, however, to find that in devolved Greater Manchester, only one council, Trafford, is benefiting from the transitional funds—
Barbara Keeley
Indeed; Tory Trafford. I was a councillor in Trafford, by the way, and I have to tell the Secretary of State that the council leader is not called Stephen Anstee; he is called Sean Anstee. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to him twice this week as Stephen—
Barbara Keeley
My point is that picking out one local authority among the 10 and giving it such largesse hardly helps the devolution plans.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is pleasure to contribute to this debate. First, I wish to pay tribute to all local councillors, of all political parties and none, for the work that they do in the world of local government, making sure that local services are provided to the people we represent in Parliament. They do an incredible job in difficult circumstances. I say that having been a councillor on Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council for 12 years. My wife has been a Tameside councillor for 16 years, and I know the very difficult decisions she and her colleagues are having to make at the moment.
My constituency is served by two borough councils. They are very different in their socioeconomic and demographic, and political make-ups, but both are having to deal with tough—although different—spending decisions. Stockport contains the two Reddish wards in my constituency. Tameside would love to have Stockport’s settlement and its council tax base. Nevertheless, the cuts are biting hard in Stockport and I wish to make a few comments on behalf of the borough council. It says it is:
“Surprised at extent to which council tax growth is assumed in the government’s figures which…fail to acknowledge the spending pressures arising from government induced changes (e.g national living wage, NI increases and apprenticeship levy).”
It would be good if the Minister could respond to some of those points. Although Stockport Council welcomes
“certain aspects of the settlement, insofar as it is not as bad as it might have been”
it is
“under no illusions as to the scale of the financial challenges that face the Council”.
It says that it will have to
“take full advantage of the newly granted flexibility to increase council tax.”
I wish to make the point again that Tameside’s council has a £16 million social care deficit this year. It is now restricted to providing just critical and substantial care, which is statutory. That means the council still has to find the money to close that £16 million gap. Given that social care amounts to 60% of the council’s overall budget yet it serves only 4% of the residents of the borough, that money has to be found from the services everybody else takes for granted. I do not wish to repeat many of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), but Tameside’s council is in a pretty similar position, in that its grounds maintenance, parks, road repairs and street cleaning are what is being literally—
Barbara Keeley
Today, I have been downstairs to meet people from the Malnutrition Task Force, which is doing some brilliant work in Salford. We have more than 2,000 cases of malnutrition—we are talking about people over 65 here. This sort of thing is developing now. Cynical comments are made by Conservative Members about the real concern Labour Members have. We used not to need a malnutrition taskforce, and 193 out of 2,000 cases of malnourished older people were found in Salford. I know that Tameside has now launched a food bank to deal with this issue.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. Of course these cuts to local government budgets must also be set alongside the £200 million in-year reduction to the public health budget, which of course local government controls—it is a point she makes very well.
In areas such as Darlington and Tameside, local residents are not going to receive the basic services they expect to receive because the social care gap has to be filled by the general fund. I am glad the Secretary of State is back in his place, because he keeps telling Tameside Members to speak to the leader of Trafford Council. I tell him that Tameside would love to have Trafford Council’s council tax base. Band D properties in Trafford bring in £84.9 million of income to Trafford, whereas the same band in Tameside brings in £74.3 million. That is because Trafford has many more band D properties, and it also has many more in bands E, F and G. That is the real unfairness.
In my closing few seconds, I will touch briefly on the better care fund, which is of course backloaded. We need that money today, because the crisis in social care is here, it is now and it is literally killing the council financially. I say to the Secretary of State that it is all very well giving money through the better care fund, but the council is losing a similar amount from the new homes bonus. We need a fairer settlement for the metropolitan areas, and a needs-based assessment, because Tameside and Stockport are being clobbered.