Baroness Primarolo
Main Page: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Steve Rotheram
I would love to ask the people of Great Yarmouth whether they would like some money with strings or no money at all. I think they would rather have money with strings than what you are proposing—cuts across the board. [Interruption.] That is about local authority spending, not how much money you get. You cannot have it both ways.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. If the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) wants to make a further intervention, he should stand and do so, not shout a conversation across the Floor of the House.
Steve Rotheram
I apologise, too, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am quite passionate about this. I do not normally just stand up and say things in the Chamber; I stand up when what you are trying to do affects the area that I represent. Believe me, this is one of the areas where we are going to be most affected.
Expert analysts up and down the country agree that the evidence is overwhelming that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer—so much for progressive politics. This might be far too grave and pressing an issue to exploit for party political reasons, but I cannot help but notice the findings of the House’s own researchers that
“the average proportion of grants cut is lower for Conservative controlled authorities than the average for authorities controlled by other parties.”
Tory-led West Oxfordshire district council, which is in the Prime Minister’s constituency and is one of the least deprived in the country, can look forward to a budget increase of up to 37% over the four-year spending review period, while Labour-run Liverpool city council is set to lose—[Interruption.] I would love you to come to Liverpool and laugh in the faces of those people who are going to be forced—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The Minister knows better: if he wants to make an intervention he can do so. Let me say to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) that although he feels very passionately about this issue, he must direct his comments to me in the Chair, preferably not blaming me for the Government’s policies—or the Opposition’s for that matter. He should not respond to any points unless they are made by way of an intervention.
Steve Rotheram
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Labour-run Liverpool city council is set to lose up to 38% of its funding. Clearly, some of us are more “in this together” than others. I mention Liverpool, as I always try to, because it is the very reason I am here in the first place. Let me focus briefly on precisely what the new funding regime means for my neck of the woods. I should point out that the very nature, speed and extent of the cuts represent a double whammy for Merseyside, which is home to two of the most deprived councils in the country—Liverpool and Knowsley. Indeed, Liverpool is the most deprived local authority area in the land according to all the key poverty indicators, despite the transformation of our city into a true international destination of choice.
George Hollingbery
I have huge admiration for the passion with which the hon. Gentleman defends his constituency. I freely admit that I have little idea how the cuts will impact on Liverpool. However, he probably has as little idea how they will impact on places such as Hampshire, which outwardly may appear to be leafy, rural and wealthy, but Hampshire has suffered a loss of £45 million of formula grant since 2003-04, and expects to lose another £20 million over the next few years. Furthermore—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Not “Furthermore”; it is an intervention. The hon. Gentleman can make a speech in a moment.
Steve Rotheram
I shall be interested to see whether the hon. Gentleman will allow me to intervene, as I have allowed him to do.
Liverpool city council has established that the in-year cuts announced by the Government in May will have a more than £20 million impact in its ongoing annual reductions. Almost half of this will come from the 2010-11 area-based grant programme, the very programme designed to support deprived communities according to their needs. Funding for a programme to reduce health inequalities by reducing smoking will be cut by 48%. The local enterprise growth initiative, which the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) spoke about, focuses on increasing entrepreneurial activity. It will lose 14% of its moneys.
The transitional employment programme, which supports the long-term unemployed back into employability and employment, will see a 13% cut in its funding. The working neighbourhood fund, which has been mentioned by other speakers, was introduced under the previous Government to tackle worklessness in deprived areas. It has been done away with altogether, depriving the city of £3.5 million this year alone; and another £3.5 million of cuts have been made in area-based grants which directly affect children and young people.
The Government have been consistently slick in their assurances that the delivery of key services need not be adversely impacted, that the vulnerable will be protected, and that the Government are serious about job creation, tackling the skills deficit and getting people back to work. That is starting to sound like a load of old guff.
Simon Hughes
The hon. Gentleman’s city, Liverpool, is a fantastic city. Whatever our differences, our two parties have run it over the years and they have both contributed to it being the great city that it is. I am not speaking for the Government, but I know that they are keen to try to pull together all the effects of spending changes from all Departments as they affect a city or a region, so that none ends up with an unfair or unnecessarily severe burden. That is a tall order. It has never been done before, but the Government are trying to do it, and I hope that people such as the hon. Gentleman and I will work together with the Government to ensure a fairer spread of funding decisions across the—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that interventions should be brief. It is not his role to mediate—not in the Chamber, at any rate.
Steve Rotheram
What a shame that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark is not speaking on behalf of the Government and in a more elevated position. If he were, the concerns that he highlights would be brought to the attention of those making the decisions.
Following extensive research and analysis of the impact on Liverpool of the unfair distribution regime, the TUC summed up its findings as follows:
“Experience on the ground suggests that even at this early stage of spending cuts it is simply not possible to make such steep reductions in spending, without hitting the worst off. The impact of cuts in the area based grant also shows that spending reductions so far have been about far more than reducing waste—front line services have been affected.”
I seriously begin to question at best the competence, and at worst the integrity, of the present Administration when programmes, services and initiatives which clearly contribute to the declared aspirations of the Government are held in such contempt.
I have not even touched on huge job losses, with the compounding impact of central Government cuts, or the longer-term prognosis, and there is much more that I would like to say, but I have been told by somebody not too far away that my time is almost up. I am desperately hoping to prevent the disproportionate effect on the area that I represent. I finish with a plea to the Government ahead of their local government finance settlement.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) tabled early-day motion 1088. In it, he succinctly outlines issues of particular concern affecting less affluent areas of the country, makes sensible and reasonable recommendations, and calls on the Government to take serious heed of the incontrovertible facts and to deliver on their promise to ensure fairness. It is future generations that will reap the social consequences of the Government’s unfair and pernicious policies, so I urge coalition Ministers to study carefully the points that my hon. Friend and many other right-thinking Members have made, and to think again before careering headlong into a finance settlement that will prove punitive, self-defeating and irrevocably damaging to those who need and deserve that the least.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman says that local authorities are worried. Perhaps Barrow and Furness is worried, but a cabinet member on the borough council in Tamworth, which is not a rich place or wealthy borough, says:
“We have been planning for a long time to cope with the spending round. The previous government gave with one hand and then took twice as much back with the other. So local government is accustomed to saving money. I am confident the councils services will grow despite reduction in grants, partly thanks to the new homes onus, removal of ring fenced budgets and less red tape. It is a careful balancing act but not one that will lead to massive service cuts. It is business as usual in Tamworth.”
If it is business as usual in Tamworth, why not in Barrow and Furness—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions are supposed to be short—I have said that a number of times—and if the hon. Gentleman reads a very long quotation on to the record he is going to tend to get cut off before he makes his final point.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. May I remind hon. Members that some 13 Members still wish to contribute to this debate, and that the wind-ups are due to start at 9.30 pm? Out of courtesy to their colleagues, I therefore ask hon. Members to pay a little bit of attention to the clock and do the maths themselves, to ensure that everybody can speak, otherwise we will have to have a time limit.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. There is still a large number of Members wishing to participate in the debate, so I am going to impose a time limit on Back-Bench speeches, to see whether we can manage to get everyone in. We still might not, and the time limit might need to be revised. I should like to inform each Member that there will be a nine-minute limit on each speech, and that will be reviewed if there are still a lot of Members waiting to speak.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
I am delighted to be able to take part in this important debate. I do so not only as the MP for St Helens North but as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the special interest group of municipal authorities. Several Members have referred to the SIGOMA document, and I would recommend reading it to anyone. I know that the Minister has already read it. I would also recommend that he read the document produced by the Alliance group entitled “Hard Times”, which will nail some of the lies we have heard over the past few hours. I know that the Minister has read it, but I doubt whether the Secretary of State has done so.
Before I move on to my main points, may I say to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) that it will not wash if he tries to take no responsibility for the cuts that are heading his constituents’ way? He said he did not want to see cuts in voluntary sector budgets, or in leisure and youth service budgets. He said that he did not want to sell the family silver or sell off any assets, but he is going to see cuts in all those areas because it will be impossible for his council to make the cuts that are heading its way without doing many of the things he does not want to do.
When the Minister responded to an Adjournment debate recently, he got very excited. I notice that he has also got very excited today. May I suggest that he keeps cooler than he did in the previous debate, because a number of us are worried about his health, and we do not want anything to happen to him before he has the chance to sum up the debate?
I should like to touch on the background to the cuts, the fairness of the last round of cuts, and the question of who will be affected by the cuts heading their way. I should also like to address the key issue of what the Government need to do to prove their own message that we are “all in this together”. I want to make it clear from the start that, like my own party, I accept the need for some cuts in public expenditure, and that local government had to make its contribution. There is no doubt that we had to reduce the deficit, and my party has been responsible for setting out how we would do that. The difference between us and the Government is the mix of tax increases and cuts. We also have a different view of the period over which the cuts packages should be spread. We would spread them over a much longer period than the Government propose, and we would not front-load them. We have heard a lot about front-loading today, and it has been suggested that the Secretary of State is going to review the position on that. The reason that most local authorities and communities are concerned is that the spending review made it quite clear that that is what the Government intend to do. I suspect that they are now trying to retreat from that position, knowing the implications of their proposals in their own areas as well is in ours.
My constituents accept that there has to be some pain and some cuts, but they do not like the fact that this same Government, while making dramatic cuts in public services, have allowed the banks to continue to pay massive bonuses to their staff and given the banks—the banks again!—a £1 billion tax cut. The Government have also now reneged on a promise to publish the details of those bankers who were being paid large bonuses. My constituents accept the need for cuts, but they do not think that the Government have been fair with them. They want to see a much fairer package of cuts and tax increases to address the plight we are in. My constituents—and, I suspect, those of the Minister—know who is at fault for the present financial crisis: it is not the previous Labour Government but the bankers, here and across the world, who turned the world economy upside down some months ago. It was only the straightforward action of the previous Labour Government that prevented the kind of recession that we saw under the last Tory Government.
What do my people want? They want a fair system of cuts. If there are to be cuts, they want to ensure that they are fair. They want to ensure that the most deprived communities and the most deprived people are protected, and that the cuts that have already been made in our communities are taken into account in any future round of cuts. They also want the cuts to be adjusted so that councils—not just ours but Liberal and Tory councils as well—will have the time to adjust their budgets. That means that we want to see more back-loading, rather than the front-loading that the Government are proposing.
It has been suggested that this is also about efficiency. The Secretary of State is quite good at putting out stories about the cost of plant pots in the Department for Communities and Local Government but, quite frankly, that is a smokescreen. These cuts will hit some of the most well run local authorities, including my own. My local authority, of which I was leader until I came into this place, is a five-star authority. It has excellent education and social services, and other council services. It has kept its council tax increases below the rate of inflation for the past 10 years, yet it faced massive cuts in its budget in May. It now faces cuts of up to £12.7 million in 2011-12, and £24 million worth of cuts in 2014-15. That nails the lie that it is only the wasteful councils that are being hit; some of the most efficient and effective are also being hit. My council will experience great difficulty because it is already efficient. Councils that are already efficient are going to have to cut services to the bone. Some of the comments from those on the Government Benches have suggested that their councils could make some savings, and I suspect that that is because they are very inefficient, compared with authorities such as my own.
I want to comment on the fairness of the proposals. I think that the Secretary of State has suggested that my contributions hark back to the 1970s and 1980s. The only good thing about being my age is that I have some experience of the previous Tory Government. I was the leader of the council when it lost £13 million and had to find a way of implementing that cut overnight.
I raised Westminster council with the Minister on last Tuesday’s Adjournment. It has been in contact with and written to me because it is upset about some of the things I said; I will respond in due course. Under the system that was in force under the previous Tory Government, if St Helens had received the same level of grant as Westminster, we would have had no cuts whatever, we would have had to pay no council tax whatever and we would have had enough money left over to send every one of my constituents to Spain for a week. That shows the level of fiddling that went on under the previous Tory Government, so we will take no lectures from this Government about fiddling the system.
The Minister said that we were going to cut the neighbourhood renewal fund—that is not true, and Government Members know it. The only argument they have relates to the three-year review, but all the grant systems were for three years. That did not mean that we were going to do away with the fund; it meant that we would reassess local government spending over the next three years. I am prepared to blame my own party for not introducing the changes as quickly as it should have, which meant that millions of pounds from our authorities went to some of the richest areas, including Westminster and many others. We did not move fast enough—