Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Grant Shapps
Grant Shapps
I had a lot of sympathy with the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question. He and I have discussed this matter before. If we introduce rent controls, which seems to be what he and other Opposition Members are calling for, we know exactly what will happen. Rent controls were introduced after the war and the private rented sector shrunk from 50% of the market to just 8%. When rent controls were removed, that doubled to 16%. The latest figures from the English housing survey show that it is on its way up from there. Rent controls would restrict the market and make it more expensive for exactly the constituents whom the hon. Gentleman is trying to protect.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
T8. As a result of poor contractual arrangements set up by the Labour Government, the East of England Development Agency has received bonuses of more than £250,000, despite it being scrapped. Does the Minister agree that local enterprise partnerships are already showing that not only are they less bureaucratic, but they give a much better return on public investment?
Local Government Finance
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Grant Shapps(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Grant Shapps
I will in a moment.
In this Chamber last year there was an awful lot of noise and heat on the question of why we were cutting up-front in order to ensure that the changes took place, but a year later we see that the vast majority of authorities have managed the process incredibly well. The National Audit Office and others recognise that, and we were right to ensure that we made those cuts up-front.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that we should do all what we can to dispel the myth, put about by the Opposition, regarding deprived areas? Great Yarmouth includes some of the most deprived areas in the country, but its borough council has dealt with the changes and cuts, which have come through thanks to the previous Government’s financial mess, without changing or losing any front-line services. Indeed, it is going further now and looking at tripartite deals on shared services in order to give residents the best deal and to protect front-line services.
Grant Shapps
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to point out that we went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the most vulnerable areas and councils, in particular, were protected.
Local Government Financing
Debate between Brandon Lewis and Grant Shapps
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The simple truth is that Labour Members still have not understood the depth of the problems that they have got us into. Until they acknowledge that and start to address it themselves with some real plans, and identify where some of the money is coming from, nobody will take seriously their complaining and calling of Opposition day debates about this subject.
We will continue to remove the ring fences from non-school revenue and capital funding. This year, we have de-ring-fenced £1.2 billion, and we intend to go a lot further. This gives councils the extra flexibility they need to concentrate on local priorities and to protect these front-line services. We are also reducing the management burden imposed on local authorities from the centre, cutting down on undemocratic and unaccountable quangos, and putting local government front and centre in meeting local residents’ needs. When we took over, there were 27 different quangos relating to the Department for Communities and Local Government. Again, I invite the shadow Secretary of State to come to the Dispatch Box and explain how he was going to hand power back to local people by removing even one of his 27 quangos.
As with every profession, local authorities will need to take some difficult decisions about how to prioritise their spending. Local authorities have already made great strides in achieving efficiencies, but they need to do more. There is still a lot more potential to gain through new practices—for example, shared services, joint working and smarter procurement. Perhaps most important, however, will be radical town hall transformation. We must be clear that councils will need to build in improved productivity as a matter of course. They need to learn from the best commercial practices. Sainsbury’s does not go out and tell people that good food costs more when it comes from Sainsbury’s, but that it costs less, and public services are going to have to do the same thing. In the public services, in future, we have to get more for less. I know that that is a concept that Labour Members struggle with, but it is the reality of the financial mess that they have left us in.
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)
I am proud that in Great Yarmouth our council, which faces a 2% cut, has reacted by saying, “We can deal with this. We realise the situation that the previous Government has left us with, and we’ve got to get more efficiencies.” That is a good and positive move forward. In my view, having spent many years as a councillor and council leader, the best thing for our councils is to get rid of some of the ring-fencing and the tick-box culture that wastes officers’ and members’ time and give them back the ability to make real decisions about real things locally, which means they are more accountable and that our residents will care more about what they do. Does the Minister agree?
Grant Shapps
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, who gives us an opportunity to talk about matters such as the comprehensive area assessments, which somehow, through ticking boxes and using—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) says from a sedentary position that we have done all that, but the truth is that £39 million was still being spent on that budget on the day we entered office.
Rather than having a tick-box culture, in which town halls are answerable to Ministers, there is a better way, and it is the one that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) has identified—local people being the ones to whom officers are answerable, through the ballot box. That is a radical concept that can be expanded much further by allowing councils, by the end of this year, to publish online details of all their spending, tenders and contracts over £500. That will be proper transparency and empower a new army of armchair auditors to go through local authorities’ books and help identify wasteful spending, helping to protect front-line services. [Interruption.] I hear Opposition Members calling out, “Well, that will help.” As a matter of fact, we really do think that it will help in a dramatic way, and I will explain why.
We are going to extend the idea to national Government with a higher limit of £25,000, and this is how it will work. In my Department alone, openness and publishing this stuff online would have avoided, for example, the scandal of £134,000 being spent on 28 luxury socialist-red sofas by a Parisian designer, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, which were bought as part of new Labour’s—get this—efficiency initiative. That pretty much sums up its approach.
Transparency would, I imagine, also have stopped the scandal of my Department spending £73,000 on a serene green tranquillity room for stressed-out staff and Ministers to
“relax and refuel in a natural ebb and flow.”
Proper accountability would surely have stopped the £6,000-apiece deluxe chrome coffee machines fitted at each of the white elephant regional fire control rooms, which are completely empty, by the way. Come hell or high water, we would at least have known in future that officials would have had a nice cup of cappuccino even as disaster struck and the phone system failed, as it famously does in those buildings. That is what transparency and openness will deliver—it will mean that people can see what is going on inside government, both nationally and locally.