Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I echo your lovely words of condolence to the family of Michael Martin, Mr Speaker.

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s reappointment to Cabinet. He has two shadow Secretaries of State to contend with, and I look forward to working with him and holding him and his Ministers to account on all things communities and local government. His appointment should bring a fresh approach to the crisis engulfing local government. He will know that Tory Northamptonshire is effectively insolvent and that Tory Worcestershire is now also experiencing financial pressure, with its chief executive saying last week that

“there comes a point where cost-cutting can’t go any further—there has to be a solution, and I think it has to be a national solution.”

Given that the pressures on children’s services and adult social care, alongside a 50% cut in their Government grant funding, are exacerbating these problems, will he now do what his predecessor failed to do and demand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer the funding that our councils—all of them—so desperately need?

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. In some ways, local government is in my blood: my father was the chief executive of a council, and some of the current debates about councils are ones that I had as a boy, believe it or not.