Andrew Percy
Main Page: Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
In response to the point put by the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), my hon. Friend was entirely right to say that it is all about the choices councils make. I commend to him North Lincolnshire council. It inherited from Labour in 2011 a council that was committed to reducing library services and to closing tourist information centres. In fact, it has done the opposite—built new libraries, extended library opening hours and saved the tourist information centres, as well as replacing mobile classrooms.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend highlights exactly the point I was making—that good councils with good leadership making the right decisions are good for their local residents.
Andrew Percy
What is incredible about this debate is the lack of understanding among Opposition Members of rural areas. I represent the most deprived part of the rural East Riding, which is as deprived as much of Hull, with a life expectancy of 73. However, local pupils and elderly people receive much less in care and services than they would in areas such as Hull or Doncaster, which are as deprived as Goole.
Dan Rogerson
The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to make sure that we get the formula right so that it captures all those factors.
Another factor that is particularly acute for health, but also for social care and the provision of other services, is the ageing demographic. There is an inward migration of older people and an outward migration of younger people, who go to live in urban areas. What particularly dismayed us was the idea that the large element of damping would be frozen for a number of years. The best message that I have taken away from today is that that is not set in stone, and that we will have an opportunity to review it. I can assure the Minister that rural Members will continue to campaign for a fairer settlement for rural areas in years to come, and we look forward to hearing just what can be done to put this injustice right.
Mr Stuart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who led the Back-Bench business debate on Monday. He is absolutely right. The test for the rural fair share campaign, which I chair with my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and the hon. Member for Workington, is to have an urban-based Labour MP, moderate and reasonable—quite a number are—if not exactly getting out the bunting and cheering at the prospect, then recognising the strength of the argument in favour of fairness and meeting the needs in rural areas.
It is not some sort of grab. I think that it was perhaps too easy under the previous Government, with a Labour majority, to use deprivation and the cry from the big urban areas to keep skewing the funding more and more. It was both politically convenient and the deprivation provided a kind of moral veil. The position we are in now, with a rural penalty of 50%, is indefensible. If it is defensible, will someone please stand up and make the case?
Age is also a key driver of cost. In rural areas such as the one I represent, we have both an elderly population and a great number of people on low incomes. That combination needs to be addressed, as does the cost of service delivery, because it is more expensive to deliver many services, although not all, in the rural East Riding than it is to deliver them in north Hull. The last thing I want to do is talk down the residents of north Hull or of any other part of the country, urban or otherwise, but we need to have another look at need and ensure that we, preferably with a broad consensus across the House, can have a settlement that is fair to all, even at a time of reductions in public spending, as we are seeing now.
Andrew Percy
I agree with what my hon. Friend has just said. Will he confirm that what we have actually heard today from Opposition Members is that they do not understand the argument about deprived communities, such as mine in Goole and across north Lincolnshire? They are continuing to defend a system that works against the interests of people in rural communities such as mine.
Mr Stuart
My hon. Friend is right. The Opposition have made it absolutely clear that they wish to maintain the unfairness that impacts on the services provided to his constituents day in, day out. That is their message. Further to that, every single Opposition Member who says that they do not want this level of reduction in the overall amount spent on local government is calling for that money to come from cuts to the NHS. That is the truth. The Labour party has made it clear that it will not protect the NHS. It is only the Government who are committed to doing so and Labour Members, in every impassioned speech they make, are calling for reductions in spending on the NHS—real-terms cuts in health—so that councillors’ pensions can be protected alongside services.
Diana Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for providing that figure. As I said, that compares with the cumulative figure over four years of £228.36 for Hull residents, and that is just not fair. The case that I am putting to the Government is that they need to think again if they want to rebalance the economies of the north and the south. This is just another hammer blow to economic regeneration in the north, and to cities standing up and paying their own way. It will not help my city of Hull, which is struggling at the moment. Just before Christmas we saw 1,200 job losses in the local area from the private sector.
I pay tribute to the work of Hull city councillors who are trying to work with the budget they have been given by the Government. They have been put in a very difficult position. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, set out clearly the important work that local councils do on environmental health and trading standards, and in looking after some of the most vulnerable and damaged young people in our society—looked-after children, and elderly and disabled people who need social care. The councillors in Hull are doing their best to make sure that they can cover as much of those services as possible, but the Government are making it completely impossible to provide the kind of services we need in an area with such disadvantage.
Diana Johnson
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. As a former Conservative councillor in the city —just one of two—he often spoke up for his constituents, but I am surprised that he now feels that the cuts being imposed on his former constituents are fair.
Andrew Percy
What I clearly remember from my time as a Hull councillor is that, at the end of the last Labour Government, we had fewer jobs in the city than we had at the beginning. I also remember Labour frittering away the KC money. Public health funding in Goole will be £27 per ahead, but in Hull that figure is four times greater. Is the hon. Lady defending the fact that people in Hull, which has a similar demographic profile to Goole, have four times as much spent on their public health as somebody in my constituency?
Diana Johnson
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not argue that people in Hull should lose the money they need to deal with health inequalities and that that money be given to the people of Goole. Surely, he should fight his corner for the people of Goole and ensure that the Government provide the necessary funding.
I am reminded of the 1920s and the dispute involving Poplar borough council. We had a Liberal-Tory coalition then, and the good councillors of Poplar had to fight their corner then, because of the nature of the cuts being imposed on poorer areas of the country. It was generally accepted after a High Court ruling that richer areas should subsidise poorer areas, but of course the Government are rowing back completely on that and reverting to the idea that everywhere has to cope on their own, as a result of which the wealthy areas do well and the poorer areas sink without trace.
The new homes bonus will not help areas such as Hull. It is the wealthier areas that benefit from new homes being built. The Liberal Democrats like to talk about the pupil premium, but in 2011-12, Hull city council had £6,516 per pupil to spend on education and support services, whereas Kensington and Chelsea could afford to spend £8,920 per pupil. My constituents know jolly well what the Government are doing to the funding available to them and other northern cities.
This is a time for people in Hull to come together, and that includes the Liberal Democrats. There was a brief flirtation with the Liberal Democrats in Hull, but I think that most people there now recognise what they really are—Tories. People in Hull now recognise that this is not a fair settlement from the Government. We need to stand united in Hull, just as people in Newcastle and other parts of the country are standing united, and say, “Enough is enough.” The bedroom tax, council tax benefit—they cannot keep doing this to cities that are already struggling. I call upon the Minister to address the inequality in the cut given to Hull in particular and to explain it to my constituents, because they do not understand why they are being so penalised. They are doing their very best, living on limited incomes, working as hard as possible and looking for extra work when possible, yet the Government, time after time, seem hellbent on making the poorest pay the most. It is not fair.
Julie Hilling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The changes are creating real concern among local authorities. They are wondering how on earth they are going to collect extra money from people who already have incredibly squeezed budgets.
I will continue with my list. The council has already closed all the cash offices except the central one. It shares buildings and is centralising its staff, who already hot-desk. The canteen breaks even. The council stopped using posh hotels and holding glitzy award ceremonies years ago. It opened a coffee shop in the library, but it did not work. It has got rid of more than half the senior posts in the authority. It considered sharing the chief exec post, but realised that that simply would not be feasible for a local authority the size of Bolton.
The people I spoke to laughed at the suggestion of a recruitment freeze, because they have not been recruiting for four years. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), they thought that getting rid of councillors’ pensions was a disgrace and that it would work against fulfilling the need for younger councillors, as well as the need for cabinet members to have real oversight of their departments. The council does not have consultants, and it uses agency staff only to cover the changes that it is being forced to make.
Andrew Percy
I declare an interest, in that when I was officially Hull’s most popular councillor, I did not take a pension. I was the only one on the council who would not take one. Is the hon. Lady saying that councillors should not make any savings at this time in the cycle? My councillors in North Lincolnshire took a cut in their expenses so that they could employ apprentices. Does she not think that councillors should lead by example?
Julie Hilling
I do not think the hon. Gentleman has been listening. I am saying that Bolton council is already looking at every one of the points on that list. On pensions, it is a disgrace to say that councillors should not be able to pay into the pension scheme—[Interruption.]