Bill Esterson
Main Page: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The Budget is bad news for Birmingham, a proud city, which suffered grievously in the 1980s and now faces unprecedented cuts in public investment. Why? The Con-Dem alliance says that it is Labour’s legacy, but it is nothing of the kind. The Greek defence that it prays in aid is but an excuse for the modern Tory party—modern-day Leninists—to cut back the role of the state nationally and locally. As for the Liberal Democrats—a hollow shell of the once great, progressive party of Lloyd George, Beveridge and Keynes—never have so few let down so many for so little: a handful of ministerial cars and Red Boxes.
Birmingham was the birthplace of municipal government and municipal enterprise. It is Europe’s biggest council, which employs more than 40,000 and funds thousands of community projects and voluntary initiatives. It is a key purchaser of goods and services from the midlands economy. It is also, historically, a champion of the people of Birmingham. In the best traditions of Chamberlain on the one hand and Dick Knowles on the other, next Tuesday, Sir Albert Bore and the Labour group on Birmingham city council will table a motion for debate that calls on all councillors to stand up and be counted in opposition to what the Tories said they would not do and the Liberals said they should not do: put up VAT. The motion calls on councillors to speak out against a broken promise—an unfair tax that will hit pensioners, the unemployed and the poor hardest, and a jobs tax, which will hit the economy of the midlands, from house building to retail.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend’s comments about the motion that the Labour group in Birmingham will table remind me of what happened at a Sefton council meeting last week. The Labour group there tabled a similar motion, and I hope that the same result does not occur in Birmingham, because the Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors in Sefton decided not to turn up to debate how to deal with the Budget crisis and the Government’s national cuts.
Jack Dromey
It would appear that, in your local authority, they have found Lord Lucan, and they are now looking for the Liberal Democrat and Tory councillors. In Birmingham, they are going to have to stand up and be counted.
There is a grotesque contrast between the £2 billion levy on the banks—not on the bankers, by the way—on the one hand, and £11 billion off welfare and £12 billion on VAT on the other. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the leadership shown last night by the truly honourable Members for Colchester (Bob Russell) and for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) when they voted against their own Government in opposition to the VAT increase.
The shadow Secretary of State was absolutely right to point out earlier that the areas with the greatest needs should not bear the brunt of the cuts. Birmingham has great problems of multiple deprivation and high unemployment, yet, as a consequence of the Budget, it will see the biggest cash reduction—more than £12 million. It will have the largest cut in area-based grant in any local authority in Britain, at £8 million, and the seventh largest cut to the school development fund, at £633,000. That money was designed to help struggling schools to succeed.
Birmingham will have the second largest cut to Connexions, at £2.7 million. This will harm the ability of our city to help the young into work and to get apprenticeships. It will also have the largest cut to the children’s fund, at £1.14 million. That will damage the capacity of our city to reach out to disabled, disadvantaged, troubled and sometimes abandoned children. It will also see the largest cut to the working neighbourhoods fund—a highly successful programme of concentrated, co-ordinated, community-led action to get Birmingham’s citizens off benefit and into work.
I have seen these programmes at first hand, in the form of the remarkable Employment Needs Training Agency in my constituency, and three excellent employment Connexions contracts focusing on the long-term unemployed, lone parents, ex-offenders, those who have engaged in alcohol abuse, and those who lost their jobs under Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s and never worked again. Those programmes have an outstanding track record of reaching out to those people, giving them hope, and helping them to rebuild their lives and get back into work.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I keep hearing from Tory MPs claiming that these are Labour cuts. Well, it is quite simple: if you do not like the cuts or do not agree with them—if you think they are Labour cuts—vote against them; do not impose them. It is a very simple point, but it is an opportunity open to all Members on the Government Benches, both Tories and Lib Dems.
Of course, the reality is very different. The truth is that these are Tory and Lib Dem cuts, and they are enjoying making them. The face of the Secretary of State says it all: he is looking forward to them, and he has form on this, as other Members have said. If it is not the ideological passion of the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) to make these cuts, then what is it? Economists have shown us that if we make these cuts now, they will be far too deep and far too early for the economic recovery to be sustained.
Cuts in-year in local government are unheard of. They are unplanned, and they undermine what councils and local people want to achieve in their communities. I spent 15 years as a local councillor, and I remember when the then Secretary of State was first getting started on this issue. I remember the leaky school buildings, the outside toilets, the teachers buying equipment out of their own pockets. I am proud that Labour fixed the roof while the sun was shining. I am proud that we built new schools, bought the textbooks, employed the support staff who freed teachers to teach, and provided free nursery places.
My friends’ children have older brothers and sisters who went through the nursery system and went to school before there were free nursery places—before Sure Start was available to them. Their parents tell me the difference that the younger children have seen as a result of that Labour investment, of which I am very proud, and I will fight hard to protect it, as will other Labour Members.
While I was a local government children’s services spokesman, I saw at first hand how many essential services are provided by education departments and social services, and the difference they make to the children and families who depend on those services. Sure Start children’s centres are among a number of such examples. However, under threat from these cuts is the extended schools grant. It makes a huge difference to children who otherwise would not have breakfast to be able to go to breakfast clubs. It makes a huge difference that children can go to after-school clubs, and that working families are able to get by. The cuts to those grants will make a profound difference. They will cause real hardship for many children, young people and their families.
Thanks to the services now available, vulnerable children have a much better chance in life and an opportunity to get out of the cycle of deprivation, neglect and poor health that was previously the lot they faced in life. So the cuts in those services really will hurt those who can least afford to suffer them.
In Sefton we are facing £2.1 million in education service cuts. Cuts in local education services mean not the money that is going straight to schools, but the money that is there to support schools. So it is smoke and mirrors to claim that these cuts will not affect schools: they will, and badly.
The Labour group called a meeting in Sefton, and the Tory and Lib Dem councillors refused to turn up to take part in a debate about where the cuts should fall and how the budget should be managed. That was an abdication by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Sefton, and the same tactic is clearly being tried by the Government, because they are asking councils to make cuts with no guidance, in-year, and yet the worst is still to come. A further £504 million of cuts have yet to be specified, so the worst is yet to come in this year. What the right-wing Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government in Parliament are doing is the same as what the right-wing coalition in Sefton is doing: they are abdicating their responsibility and they are going to hit the poorest hardest.