Local Government Funding

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

And I remind the hon. Gentleman that council spending has been less in real terms since 2010. In the decade to 2020, my own local authority of Tameside will have lost close to £200 million of Government funding. That is unsustainable and he has some responsibility for that because of his votes.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that particularly perturbing are the cuts to children’s services? Every single local authority leader, regardless of party, is screaming out for more money for children. Cuts to children’s services, particularly those for very young children, have such a long-term impact. We must give every single child the best start in life.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: if ever cuts had consequences, they manifest themselves in the problems faced by our children’s services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it cannot be said often enough. When the Gordon Brown Government ended, the economy was growing again. That is a statement of fact. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State chunters again about “the deepest recession”. I think he will find that the global crash started in the United States of America—something that even his former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, now acknowledges.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is making some great points. Does he agree that the children’s services crisis has been worsened by the 1% pay freeze over the last eight years? I hope we hear good news at the end of this debate from the Minister about pay increases for those workers being brought in line with the NHS pay increases.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I will come to some of those issues later, but her point is very well made, because we have not only seen the hollowing out of our local services. We have also seen the impact of that on local government as a whole.

I know that is an inconvenient truth for Ministers, and I am sure that when the Secretary of State responds, with his pre-prepared speech, he will say that I am making overtly political points. That seems to be his stock answer. He seems to forget that it is the job of the Opposition to point out the Government’s failings, of which there are many in local government policy. However, it is not just the Labour party saying this; it is the National Audit Office. Surely the Government recognise the National Audit Office as a reputable organisation that knows what it is talking about. The NAO has told us what the Government’s policies mean. They mean that one in 10 councils with social care obligations will have exhausted their reserves within the next three years. They mean that the Government’s short-term fixes are not working and that local government still has no idea how its finances will work after 2020. It is about the cost of negligence being paid for by communities across the country. Vital services are cut, and because the Government shift the blame on to local councils, giving them so-called flexibility but then criticising them when they use it, council tax bills are increasing.

Planning and development, the National Audit Office has shown, has been cut by 52.8%. If we are to meet the Government’s ambitious targets for new homes, who will be the planners of the future? Who will identify the land to be built on? Who will process the planning applications? Who will be the enforcement officers to ensure that the homes and other buildings are built in accordance with the plans?

Funding for transport has been cut by 37.1%. These are our bus routes. These are the vital links between our communities. These are our roads, our pavements, our cycleways. I note that Conservative Members are now silent about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend, who brings me to precisely the point I was about to make, which will help explain exactly why the last Labour Chief Secretary left that note for his successor.

In considering how this climate was created, we need to step back and remember what the Government inherited in 2010: the biggest budget deficit in peacetime, of £150 billion, and Labour’s great recession—the deepest in almost 100 years. If that was not enough, there was also the biggest banking bail-out ever: just one bank bailed out to the tune of £50 billion.

[Catherine West]

rose—

[Sajid Javid]

If the hon. Lady is going to apologise for what Labour did, I will give way.

[Catherine West]

I thank the Secretary of State for his joke. It is not down to Members who were not in the House to apologise.

What is the right hon. Gentleman’s Department’s estimate about how many more Northamptonshires we are going to see in the next four years? Will 10, 20 or 30 local authorities crumble? How many chief execs will have to write their own notes about there being no money left because of the Tory cuts?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady says that it is not for her to apologise, but she stands there supporting the party that brought this country to its knees economically. It was responsible for the largest, deepest recession that this country has seen for 100 years—a recession, by the way, that led to an increase in unemployment of half a million people. Go and tell them that it is a joke.

The Labour party fails to recognise the gravity of the situation that it created in this country and the legacy that it left behind. It is no exaggeration to say that thanks to Labour, our country was on the brink of bankruptcy. Had it been allowed to continue in office, had we continued down that road, all public services, including local government, would have been decimated.