Women (Government Policies)

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Hollingbery

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I did not intend to touch on that, but wanted to take the opportunity to read out my constituent’s comments so that Ministers understand the worry and concern.

I want to focus more on women and jobs and social care. I share the concerns expressed by many organisations and individuals about the disproportionate and unfair impact of the Government’s policies on women. As we know, women make up 60% of the public sector work force. Nationally, 40% of women’s jobs are in the public sector compared with 15% of men’s jobs. In my constituency, women’s jobs in the public sector are in local government and the NHS—in the primary care trust and in local hospitals. Local councils are now having to manage the swingeing front-loaded budget cuts made by this Government and thousands of jobs are being lost. Salford council, my old council, will have to cut 500 jobs this year. Wigan council will lose more than 800 jobs and Manchester council 2,000. All the interventions made by Government Members have not made much mention of those swingeing front-loaded cuts to council budgets, but they are very important and they are affecting things.

[George Hollingbery]

Will the hon. Lady illuminate the House with how many of the job cuts to the various councils she identified are redundancies or post eliminations rather than straightforward compulsory redundancies? Can she tell us about the profile of those people? Are they at the top, middle or bottom level of the organisations?

[Barbara Keeley]

It hardly matters, I think. We are talking about three or four years of cuts and this year’s cuts will be followed by similar cuts next year and the year after. I am surprised that Government Members can look with such equanimity at something such as the 2,000 job cuts that are happening in Manchester.

The hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) talked about protecting the NHS, but in reality hundreds of jobs are being lost in the NHS, as they are in local councils. Jobs are being lost through the abolition of our primary care trust in Salford and that change is also causing turmoil to local services and decision making. At Salford Royal hospital, 720 jobs are being cut, including those of 146 nurses. The Christie, our regional county hospital, is to reduce its staffing by 213—one in 10 of the current work force—including 40 nurse-grade jobs and 50 health care support or assistant jobs. I am sure that none of us would look with equanimity at that level of job loss.

Local Government Funding

Debate between Barbara Keeley and George Hollingbery

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who spoke with real passion for the area he represents. None of us would expect anything less of hon. Members than to defend the areas that they represent. However, there is no doubt that some cuts had to be instituted, as those on the Opposition Front Bench admitted. There would have had to be cuts, whoever was in control.

In the comprehensive spending review, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor outlined a programme of cuts and spending changes that would allow us to put the country back on a firm footing, among which were changes to local government funding. I know that my saying this is likely to arouse groans from the Opposition Benches, but there is no doubt that, as the Secretary of State pointed out earlier, if changes are to be made to the amounts paid to local government, the period in which they are granted and the amounts in each period, Opposition Front Benchers will have to identify areas elsewhere in Government they would cut. It is no good saying that there are no consequences; there plainly are.

Government Members could talk eloquently about closing hospitals and about body armour for soldiers. I shall not use that ploy, but something will have to give somewhere if we change the numbers for local government.

I shall address one or two of the points made in the document from SIGOMA. I entirely understand why an organisation of local authorities should get together to try to defend their position. Clearly, that is the right and proper role of local authorities in the current circumstances, but one of the points made in the document is about the imposition of floors. I think I am right in saying that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), the former Local Government Minister, was responsible in 2002-03 for the imposition of the floors, which protected some local authorities from huge reductions in local government spending as a result of the formula having changed enormously. The floors have remained until the present day, so any disparity or inequality that might be felt across local government has been entrenched by that rule, which resulted from enormously complicated changes in local government funding rules. It is therefore very difficult at this stage to imagine that in one fell swoop we on the coalition Benches will even out the inequalities created over the past 10 years.

It is reasonable to question the funding formula itself. It has changed a great many times, as hon. Members will know, resulting in enormous confusion across many local authorities and, in my part of the world in particular, a real reduction in funding over a great many years. I have already mentioned some of these examples in the House, but East Hampshire district council saw a real-terms funding reduction of 25% from 2001 to 2010, while Havant borough council saw a 13% real-terms reduction. Havant council has almost no assets. It is not a Wandsworth or a Westminster, with a huge parking income or buildings it can rent out to third parties; it is a straightforward council that takes in council tax and receives grant from the Government, yet its funding has been reduced by 13%.

[Barbara Keeley]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to inform the House what the balance is between the formula grant and the council tax base for those councils? That is one of the big disparities, and it is not helpful to talk just about the formula grant, because many councils in places such as Surrey and Hampshire have a good, substantial council tax base.

[George Hollingbery]

I absolutely understand what the hon. Lady is saying. If I remember rightly, the SIGOMA report includes a table—I think on page 4 —of the differential rates of council tax between authorities. I cannot tell her exactly what the numbers are, but the overall band D council tax charged in East Hampshire, taking in the Hampshire county council precept and the local parish precepts, is higher than in the SIGOMA authorities. There is already a disparity in the amount that local citizens pay in my part of the world towards the funding of their councils, which is taken into account in the grant settlement, as I understand it. As I mentioned in my earlier intervention—I apologise again for making it overly long, Madam Deputy Speaker—the amount for Hampshire county council reduced by £45 million between 2003-04 and this year, and it is expected to reduce by a further £20 million over the next several years.

Those are not the only sources of funding for local government—there is the business rate and council tax. The UK Statistics Authority says that 56% of local council revenues comes from the council grant. If we apply the cut that the Government propose to that 56% and look at the totality of what local government takes in, we find that the cuts amount to about 14%, or 3.3% a year. The Government have been brave and transparent in talking about the totality of cuts to the revenue grant allocations, because the cut across local government is rather less.

Furthermore, an article in the Municipal Journal from 4 November last year said that studies of Total Place had suggested that only 5% of all spending in a local area comes through democratically accountable bodies, which leaves 95% to come from central Government—funding that can continue to be spent without the cuts applying, even though there may be cuts elsewhere. Therefore, a lot of the talk that we have heard—about fire and brimstone, a cleansing across local government, and local businesses going out of business because there is no longer any money—needs to be taken in that context. Plainly, a great deal of Government money is still spent locally.

One or two points have been made about the Government not doing anything to help local businesses. Indeed, the converse point—that the cuts will have a disproportionate impact on areas with high local government employment—has also been made. The Secretary of State did not mention it, but the Chancellor has provided for national insurance contributions holidays, which are granted to small business formations and are specifically targeted on areas with high levels of employment in local government—or, indeed, in government across the board. The Government have therefore taken into account the fact that, although there will be cuts in local government, new business formation will be important. Much as many of my colleagues in the south-east would like the NIC holiday to come to the south-east, we have at least some understanding of why it is not.

I do not for a moment misunderstand the fact that anybody who loses their job faces a difficult time, particularly in the current conditions. Therefore, I take seriously the loss of employment in local government. However, it is also worth pointing out—to use the cliché—that when it comes to innovation, necessity is the mother of invention. De-ring-fencing has allowed local councils a world of flexibility to find new ways of doing things: to work differently with partners, and to take budgets that were predicated on particular activities occurring in a certain way and use them differently.

Various representations have been made to the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, from people across the country and across many subjects, but I was particularly struck by one contribution—I think it was about Birmingham; it could have been about Manchester. [Interruption.] Opposition Members will have to forgive me—we have had many representations. Some 15 or 20 agencies were offering similar services to the local population. If we have such duplication of services in local councils—and I believe that in some of the large metropolitan boroughs we do—there are surely innovations to be made. There is money to be saved, and there are new, different ways of doing things. I commend that to local councils.