Business of the House

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Tempting though it would be to spring a great surprise on the hon. Gentleman and others, the date of Dissolution is set down in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 as 30 March, so there is no doubt at all about that date. Of course, it is possible for people to speculate about a date for Prorogation in advance of Dissolution. The Chancellor has announced that he will present his Budget on 18 March, however, and I am sure that it will be necessary for the House to debate that Budget at some considerable length, so clearly the date of Prorogation will not be very much in advance of the date of Dissolution.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Local authorities throughout the country are finalising their budgets for the coming year. Tonight, Labour-run Harrow council will consider proposals from its administration to impose a garden tax on the collection of garden waste and to increase the council tax by 1.99%, thereby avoiding a referendum, while it is closing down popular libraries, including the Bob Lawrence library in my constituency. May we have a debate in Government time so that we can consider what local authorities throughout the country are doing to decimate local services and increase taxes?

[Mr Hague]

The people of Harrow are fortunate to have my hon. Friend to speak up for them when their local authority is behaving in that way. Rather than cutting front-line services and hiking council tax, councils should be making sensible savings, such as through more joint working, better procurement, cutting fraud and using transparency to drive out waste. It is disappointing that Labour-run councils such as Harrow are taking the lazy option of making cuts to the front line, rather than adopting many other local authorities’ best practice of making sensible savings.