Local Government Finance

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jake Berry

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

Well, we are having fun.

As I was saying, the hon. Member for St Helens North approached me outside the Division Lobby, fizzing with excitement. He is embedded on his town board, and is putting aside political differences to work closely with this Government, challenging us on our towns fund and ensuring that he can deliver real benefits for his community.

It is only because this Government had the determination to deliver the will of the British people and we have now left the European Union that we can seize the opportunities that lie ahead. We will drive devolution, and level up our communities and nations, while at the same time beginning an era of new investment in public services. Back in 2010 we were forced to make some difficult decisions, but we had inherited the highest deficit in the nation’s history and an economy struggling to recover from the worst recession in 70 years. The public purse was overstretched, the overdraft limit had been reached and the credit card was maxed out. In truth, there was no money left and the economy was on the brink. It is exactly because we took those difficult decisions that we can now bring forward our ambitious plans and aims for local government finance for the months and years ahead. I am determined that local government will receive the resources it needs to support its communities, and continue to innovate and deliver cost-effective services for its residents. This year will see a spending review in which we will move forward with a longer-term settlement, providing the sector with the certainty and confidence it needs to properly plan for the future.

As the shadow Secretary of State mentioned, we also plan to review the formula used to distribute money between local authorities in order to ensure that we can use the resources in the most efficient and effective way. I will say more about that later. However, I briefly want to address why the Government brought forward a one-year funding settlement for local government. In advance of leaving the European Union, it was right that we sought rapidly and urgently to bring stability and certainty to our local government sector. This meant carrying out a one-year spending review at record pace, followed by a post-election local government finance settlement, which we published as soon as we could after the election. Building on that settlement, we now have a series of bold and ambitious plans for a local government finance settlement in the financial year 2020-21 that has been devised in close collaboration with colleagues across the local government sector.

Under these proposals, core spending power for local authorities in England will increase from £46.2 billion to £49.1 billion in 2020-21. This equates to a 6.3% increase in cash terms, or a 4.4% increase in real terms—the largest increase for a decade. The shadow Secretary of State spoke at some length about adult social care, and this Government are steadfast in our commitment to protecting the millions of people who rely upon those essential services. That is why we propose to inject an additional £1 billion of new funding into the social care grant, with £150 million used to equalise the distributional impact of the adult social care precept, and continue the £410 million of the previous year’s allocations. Overall, that means that local authorities will have access to £6 billion across adult and children’s social care next year. However, our commitment to boosting social care and investment spans much further than just that one-year settlement, which is why we pledged to maintain the £1 billion of new funding to the social care grant for the duration of this Parliament, enabling local authorities to continue with long-term planning and driving improvements in the essential core services.

It was deeply irresponsible for the shadow Secretary of State to scaremonger about the figures from the LGA. He knows that those figures are at best an estimate and that they are based on old formulas, including the old area cost adjustment, which we are changing. If we thought it worked, we would not be doing the fairer funding review, so he should think on before he scares some of the most vulnerable people in society with stories about cuts and figures that are not based on the true formula.

The shadow Secretary of State claims to be a great champion of local government, so I will give him the opportunity to intervene on me in a moment. I wonder whether he can recall what he was doing on the evening of 10 February 2016—would he like to intervene? He cannot remember. I can remember. I was in the Aye Lobby with my colleagues, voting for the social care precept, enabling local councils to prioritise social care. He was in the No Lobby, voting against more money going to councils to finance social care. That one measure alone has raised an estimated £7 billion for adult social care since it was introduced. Perhaps when he is lecturing Government Members about support for adult social care, he should recall what he was doing when local authorities and the vulnerable in society needed him; he was pursuing narrow, party political lines and voting against the social care precept.

[Andrew Gwynne]

If we are throwing accusations about, perhaps the Minister can tell me what the social care funding gap in Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council is this year, and how much the social care levy raises.

[Jake Berry]

I am not throwing accusations around. I suggest the hon. Gentleman checks Hansard because whatever the funding gap may be, it would have been much bigger if he and his colleagues had got their way. He voted against more funding for social care, and I suggest he remembers that when he is giving out the lectures.

In addition to helping councils address the complexity around the delivery of social care, I recognise that councils in rural communities face some unique challenges. The services they provide are often delivered over a long distance, to disparate communities. That is why we are proposing to continue the rural services delivery grant at £81 million—the highest ever to date. This funding will continue to support residents in rural counties— including Labour-controlled Cumbria, which is a beneficiary of it and which I am sure welcomes the funding, given the challenges it faces around rurality—and people who live far from local services so rely on them being delivered by their council.

We have consulted widely on negative revenue support grant, and have concluded that eliminating negative RSG through business rates income, at a cost of £152.9 million, is the right thing to do. This will deliver on the Government’s long-term commitment to the principle of sustainable growth incentives in the funding settlement.

The new homes bonus is a very important part of how we fund local councils. It rewards councils that do the right thing by building new houses to help tackle our housing crisis. We want to ensure that they continue to be incentivised, which is why we will provide £907 million of new homes bonus allocations this year.

Council tax for the average dwelling went up by 112% under the last Labour Government. That’s right—Labour doubled people’s local council tax. Of course, in Wales they have managed to triple it, but they only doubled it here in England. That is why this Government have made a commitment to give local residents the final say on excessive council tax increases. We are determined, in a way that no Labour Government ever were, to protect the interests of hard-working taxpayers while granting local authorities the flexibility they need to raise resources to meet their needs. For this reason, we propose to continue with the council tax referendum limits.

[Andrew Gwynne]

You can’t have it both ways, Jake.

[Jake Berry]

If we double the council tax that is paid by local people, then I will start to take lectures from the hon. Gentleman about what we should do. He should remember his own record. He entered Parliament in 2005 and was here when all this was happening; perhaps he would like to recall that.

Taken as a whole, this protection will mean that we see the lowest average council tax rise since 2016, ensuring that taxpayers continue to receive the breadth and quality of services that they enjoy today without, as they had under former Labour Administrations, the imposition of crippling tax hikes and rocketing monthly bills.

As we look towards future settlements, the Government intend to conduct a full multi-year spending review. We are already putting more money in this year, but the spending review will give us the opportunity once again to look at pressures in the round and provide councils with the certainty they need. We have committed to a fundamental review of business rates. As part of that work, we will need to consider carefully the link between the review and retention by local councils. We will of course continue to discuss that and the future direction with our partners in local authorities.

Everyone in this House wants to refresh the way we allocate funding, so that it reflects the most up-to-date needs and resources of local areas. That is key work to achieve the agenda set out by the Prime Minister, because dealing with local government finance is part of levelling up our entire country. We have made good progress with the review of relative needs and resources—or the fair funding review, as it is known—and I want to take this opportunity to thank Members on both sides of the House, some of whom have made constructive contributions to the process. The direction of the review has been welcomed by many, including many in local government, but now we have to deliver a sustainable approach, and we look forward to continuing to work with the whole sector.

The review is a large and complex project. Expectations are high on all sides, which is why we are committed to sharing emerging results with local government as soon as possible. We plan to share significant elements for technical discussions in the coming weeks and months. That will include formulas in the review that represent a majority of local government spending. However, I should remind Members that needs formulas represent only a small aspect of the review. As the LGA pointed out, it is simply not possible to predict the overall outcome for individual local authorities or groups of authorities and therefore the extent to which funding may move between authorities. Of course, we will need to consider the review in the context of the outcome of the planned spending review. We look forward to working with colleagues and sharing those results with the sector and the House shortly. I also look forward to updating the House once we have finalised proposals for our new and exciting settlement for local government. Finally—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jake Berry

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

In particular for Leicestershire but for all councils, there could be no better champion than my hon. Friend of fairer funding for the many councils, not the few. This evidence-based review will provide an opportunity for more accurate funding allocations for Leicestershire and other councils.

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

On 4 December, the Secretary of State told the House that

“the local government finance settlement is coming along shortly, and he can look to see what happens with that.”—[Official Report, 4 December 2017; Vol. 632, c. 684.]

Apart from our finding out that the Secretary of State is bad at maths and does not know what is happening in his Department, the settlement came and went with no help for children’s services. Since then, Tory Northamptonshire Council has effectively gone bust, citing children’s services as one of the main cost pressures, and only last week the National Audit Office published a damning report showing the worst crisis in the local government sector’s 170-year history. That is happening on these Ministers’ watch. With the spring statement tomorrow, what will the Minister do to ensure that our children’s services get the £2 billion that even the Tory-controlled Local Government Association says they so desperately need?

[Jake Berry]

We have increased funding in real terms, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, like mine, will welcome. With the fairer funding review coming up, rather than trying to score political points across the Chamber, why does he not get involved with it so that local authorities can concentrate on delivery?

The Economy and Work

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jake Berry

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

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

That phenomenon is not just happening in London; we now have tents in the streets of Manchester. Is that not a shocking indictment of this Government’s housing policy?

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

It is a shocking indictment of a Labour council.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jake Berry

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the role that special constables play in our police force. They are vital to policing throughout the United Kingdom. Will he join me in calling on the Government, when the Bill goes to the other place, to consider extending the protection of the Police Federation to special constables, who cannot join the federation unless there is a change in primary legislation? I think that that would be a good way of ensuring that when special constables go out there and take risks, they benefit from the protection of a proper trade union.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I entirely agree. I am very proud that the headquarters of the Greater Manchester Police Federation are in the Reddish part of my constituency, in Stockport. The work that the federation does in supporting police officers is absolutely brilliant, and, as the hon. Gentleman says, it is crucial that we extend that support and protection to special constables. After all, they are doing the job of a police constable. When we talk about the role of volunteers, it is important for us to do so in the context of what we expect volunteers operating in the police service to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington, who spoke passionately about these issues, was right to draw attention to the important role of the home watch. In all our constituencies there will be home watch schemes led by dedicated members of the public and volunteers, working alongside the police and police community support officers. They provide a vital connectivity between the community and the police service, which, even following the introduction of neighbourhood policing, is still considered by too many of our constituents to be fairly remote from public concerns. So I support volunteers being the eyes and ears of the police on the ground and in schemes such as home watch.

Also, in my constituency, we have some very dedicated volunteers manning the front desks at the few police stations that are still open. They are playing an important role in ensuring that continuity of service is provided to members of the public. We often hear Ministers talking about protecting the police frontline, but to a number of my constituents who have experienced police station closures and front desk closures, that actually was their frontline. That was where they could get face-to-face access to the police service when they needed it. Were it not for police volunteers in Dukinfield in my constituency, for example, that police front desk would have closed in the same way that ones at the Denton and Reddish police stations have done. Those closures are a retrograde step for the communities that I represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that Parliament is not seeking to extend the power to volunteers? It is seeking to extend the power to chief constables to make the decision on whether volunteers should have CS or PAVA spray. How long does he think that a chief constable would be in office if someone—perhaps an accountant—came in to volunteer on a complicated fraud case and he said, “While you’re in here, take this CS gas spray.”? I think the hon. Gentleman is being unduly alarmist.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I would sooner be unduly alarmist than face a situation in the future where somebody may have been approved inappropriately to have this facility. It is the duty of Parliament to legislate well. We need to be much clearer in the Bill about what we intend so that there can be no ambiguity in respect of a chief constable in future. It should be perfectly clear what Ministers intend with regard to the use and the extent of this power.

All it would take is for the Minister slightly to amend and to clarify those points, and we might then have a different view. Unless the legislation that we pass is completely clear, and the intention is completely clear, we run the risk at some stage in the future of somebody who is inappropriate having that power extended to them.

[Jake Berry]

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that Parliament should sit until the recess and come up with an exhaustive list of circumstances in which chief constables could use this power? Surely the appropriate thing to do is to trust our chief officers to use the power responsibly, which is exactly what this Bill does.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I hope that we would not have to face a situation in which chief constables inappropriately use the powers that the Government are seeking to extend to them, but it is our duty to legislate for a situation where that might be the case. I do not want, at some stage in the future, a chief constable to be all over the headlines of the national press because they have done something that they should not have done but to get out of that because the intention of the Act was not clear. All I am asking for is some clarity from the Minister. If we have to wait to get this right, the Government have the power to carry over legislation. Bills do not fall at prorogation if the Government want to carry them over. Actually, the Government could easily amend the Bill and clarify the point during the remaining stages.

Armed Forces

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Jake Berry

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Francois]

I shall give way first to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne).