Local Government Finance

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

Sadly, when it comes to the Liberal Democrats, not much has changed at all. That is a pattern of behaviour with which many of us in the House are all too familiar.

We have discussed the figures, now let us turn to the consequences of all this. Before the election, the Prime Minister promised that he would protect Sure Start. Members may recall that he took the former Prime Minister to task for suggesting that that might not happen. What has actually happened? A reply given by Ministers just before Christmas shows that there are now 124 fewer Sure Start centres than there were when the coalition was formed. So much for the Prime Minister’s pledge.

DCLG figures show that last year 93 out of 152 councils —61% of them—cut spending on providing meals on wheels for the elderly compared with their spend in 2009-10, and 55 authorities cut spending on adult social care, although all of us know our authorities face increasing pressures in that area. Also, 75 councils reduced spending on equipment and adaptations for disabled and elderly adults, and according to another survey, 88% of councils were increasing their care charges.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned Sure Start. Conservative Hammersmith and Fulham council has cut the Sure Start budget by more than 45% in one year. Perhaps its councillors did not hear the Minister saying there should be no cuts in front-line services. I thought that all Members recognised that Sure Start is an initiative that in the long run will improve educational achievement and cut youth offending, and that it is therefore a good and efficient investment, yet almost 50% of its budget has been cut in one year by this authority.

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend makes that point very forcefully. I wonder whether Hammersmith and Fulham will still be the Secretary of State’s favourite council once he becomes aware of what it has been doing, in marked contrast to what the Prime Minister of the party it supports said at the time of the election—but then that is sadly familiar, too.

We cannot get much more front line than making sure old people have a hot meal every day or get their shopping done, or helping people to remain in their own home by building a ramp or putting a shower on the ground floor, so whatever the Minister of State was thinking when he answered an earlier question, or whatever the Secretary of State was thinking in December when he described the draft settlement as

“enough to safeguard the most vulnerable, protect taxpayers’ interests and the front-line services they rely on”,

I would gently say to them that they must recognise the damage that such comments do to the credibility of DCLG Ministers. Every time they say such things councillors, officers and people in local communities look at each other and ask, “Don’t they have any idea of what is actually going on in the world we have to live in?”