Local Authority Financial Sustainability: NAO Report
Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Lilian Greenwood(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. One of the two local authorities that I represent, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council in Greater Manchester, has a £16 million social care funding gap this year. A 1% increase on the council tax brings in about £700,000. The Tamesides of this world will never be able to fill the gap in the cuts from central Government, so the point my hon. Friend makes is absolutely crucial. The authorities that we represent are grant-dependent for a reason, because no amount of business rates retention and increases in local taxation through the council tax within the referendum framework will ever make up the difference between the cuts that have been made centrally.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The situation is similar in my own local authority of Nottingham City where the amount required for adult social care in the year ahead is £12 million, and the social care precept raises around £3 million. Does he think that the Minister expects us to provide each elderly or disabled person with just a quarter of the care that they need, or should we simply pick a quarter of them and show that they have the care, leaving the other three quarters without the care that they require? What does he think the Minister’s advice would be?
Andrew Gwynne
I will let the Minister speak for herself. We know that local authorities have to provide social care and that it is not the social care services that necessarily get squeezed, but all the other services that many of our residents access on a day-to-day basis. Most of our constituents do not access adult social care unless they have an elderly relative who needs it and they do not access children’s social care unless they have a child in the system, but they expect their parks to be well maintained, their streets to be adequately surfaced, street lighting to be fixed, and litter to be picked up. They expect basic decent services, and it is those services that are being cut.