Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Member without a tie, Ben Bradley.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

5. If he will bring forward measures in his autumn statement to increase financial support for local councils.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The Government are committed to ensuring that local authorities are able to deliver vital public services. At the spending review last year, we provided councils with the largest annual increases in core funding in over a decade, and the Chancellor will set out further information on the Government’s fiscal approach at the autumn statement on Thursday.

[Ben Bradley]

If we are ever to have a sustainable set of council services, we have to move money upstream into services that can help us tackle rising demand. That is the non-statutory stuff—prevention services in communities, such as children’s services or youth centres, for example—but when budgets are tight, those non-statutory services are often the first to go, which removes councils’ ability to intervene and manage demand. With that in mind, what can my right hon. Friend do to support councils by ensuring that we take a long-term approach to managing those public services rather than adopting counter-productive plans based only on short-term budget pressures?