Budget Resolutions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I have to say in the nicest possible way that it is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman to make that point. Labour’s spending plans would cost £1,000 billion. It is an extraordinary sum of money, and all the people up and down the country would bear the cost of the debt for borrowing.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

My right hon. Friend is making a typically powerful speech. Will he tell the House how the measures in this Budget will help young people on to the housing ladder, particularly as since 2001 home ownership levels have halved for people aged between 16 and 35?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The steps under this Government have led to an increase in home ownership, and the first time buyer rate has started to increase under this Government. This has been a challenge and initiatives such as Help to Buy have been important in realising that ambition and the aspiration for people to be able to own their own home. There is also the investment in social and affordable housing through our specific £9 billion programme, which is firmly focused on that.

I want to come back to my point about local government and the pressures we recognise have been growing especially around social care. That is why I am delighted that the Chancellor committed around £1 billion of extra funding for local services, with a strong focus on supporting some of our most vulnerable groups. That includes £650 million for adult and children’s social care; £240 million of that will go towards easing winter pressures next year, with the flexibility to use the remainder where it is most needed for either adult or children’s services. That is on top of the £240 million announced last month to address winter pressures this year.

In addition, the Budget pledged an extra £84 million over the next five years to expand our successful children’s social care programmes to more councils with high or rising numbers of children in care, and an extra £55 million is being made available for the disabled facilities grant in England in 2018-19. This new funding will allow councils to take immediate action to deliver the services their residents need while protecting them from excessive council tax bills.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because all this does is shunt costs on to other parts of the public sector. That is not a sustainable way of continuing. Sadly, I could give many more examples, yet the Government’s answer to these problems is not to drop the £1.3 billion cut to funding next year, nor to properly address the crises in social care and children’s services, but to offer mere crumbs from the table, which will do little to fix the problem that has been created.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech with great interest, but he has not answered the question put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty). The shadow Chancellor says that he supports the tax cut and the Leader of the Opposition says that he does not. Where does the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) stand?

[Andrew Gwynne]

Let me make it very clear. In case the hon. Gentleman has not realised, this is not a Labour Budget. A Labour Budget would look very different. We will not vote today to restrict extra money for the lowest paid in our country, and when we have a Labour Government offering hope for the future, a Labour Budget will rectify the giveaways to the top.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury believes that the Government have not cut local government budgets, but the fact is that, since 2010, spending power—the Government’s preferred measure—has fallen by 28.6%, which includes the 49.1% cut to central Government grants for local authorities. Yes, local authorities have been given new powers to raise funds, but the reality is that a 1% council tax increase in her area raises significantly more than a 1% council tax increase in mine. She can shake her head, but if she does not understand that areas whose properties are predominantly in bands A and B do not raise the same amount as areas with properties in higher council tax bands, perhaps she should not be Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

I will make the position clear, because Treasury Ministers appear to have found these calculations very difficult. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury told “Newsnight”:

“We are not making cuts to local authorities. What we have done is give them more revenue raising powers so that decisions can be taken locally.”

I am happy to give Government Front Benchers the calculations provided by the Tory-led Local Government Association and by the National Audit Office. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has gone further and provided an analysis of how the cuts have fallen across the country:

“the most deprived authorities, including Barking & Dagenham, Birmingham and Salford, made an average cut to spending per person of 32%, compared to 17% in the least deprived areas, including Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Dorset.”

These hardest-hit councils have been dealt a second blow by the Government’s reliance on council tax to fund the struggling social care sector, as they are unable to raise anything like enough through the social care precept compared with councils in wealthier areas.

The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government can shake his head, but this year Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, one of the two authorities that make up my constituency, has a £16 million social care funding gap. One per cent. on council tax in Tameside brings in £750,000. The Tamesides of this world are never able to fill that social care gap from council tax, and that is what is so unfair.



Instead of providing the much-needed reform of social care, this Budget has once again shown a Government committed to sticking-plaster solutions. There is no Green paper and no long-term plan. Just as the £1.3 billion cut hits next year, the Government will need to find £1.5 billion just to keep social care running. Behind these figures are real people who need help, and the Government sit idly by.

Sadly, the Government’s small contribution to alleviating this crisis will for many people be far too little, and, for many councils, far too late. One of the most sacred values and duties of any Government is to ensure that the most vulnerable in society are protected. With overspending on children’s services hitting a new high of £800 million a year, the Chancellor’s pledge of £84 million for just 20 councils—I am interested to know which 20 councils they are—comes nowhere close to addressing the national crisis. Both crime and the fear of crime are rising in our neighbourhoods, yet this week’s Budget offers not a single extra penny for neighbourhood policing. The National Audit Office and the Select Committee on Home Affairs are warning that, without funding, our police service is teetering on the edge of collapse. The number of police officers has already fallen by 21,000 since 2010, and the independent police watchdog is warning that

“the lives of vulnerable people could be at risk.”

But instead of fixing the problem, the Treasury sees fit to play fast and loose with public safety with a £165 million raid on pensions. We are now in an unprecedented situation where police chiefs are threatening legal action against this Government.

The chief constable of Greater Manchester police has warned that upcoming budget cuts could take officer numbers back to levels last seen in 1975, wiping out the 50 additional officers funded by this year’s council tax precept. Another 600 officers need to be cut, on top of the 2,000 we have already lost, because of this Government’s mess on pensions.

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[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

The test of any Budget is: does it take us closer to where we want to get to in 10 years’ time? It seems to me that one of the most important things to do over the next few years, and one of the dreams that so many Conservative Members have had for so many years, is the dream of a balanced budget. Once again, this appears to be a little bit like the apple of Tantalus. I am concerned about that because I believe, as the fiscal conservative I have always been, that we need to head towards a balanced budget.

Achieving a balanced budget has been delayed, but I am glad that we are still heading in that direction. The OBR says of the Budget policy decisions:

“Taken together they turn the £3.5 billion surplus…forecast for 2023-24 into a £19.8 billion deficit.”

It also says of the balanced budget objective:

“Had there been no fiscal loosening in the Budget, the objective would have been achieved in 2023-24.”

As it is, achieving that objective by 2025-26, it says, “looks challenging”. That is still an important aim. We must bear in mind that debt interest payments each year are about £52 billion and measures in the Budget will increase those payments by about £1 billion in future years. Opposition Members argue for ever more increases in spending, but I argue that it is better to ensure restraint, continue on our current track and aim for a balanced budget sooner rather than later.

We must also think about the kind of country we want to build. We want to build an enterprise powerhouse and a country that supports enterprise, small businesses and the self-employed. That is why it is important to make things easier for small business people and not to sandbag the self-employed with extra taxes and regulations, instead supporting them and ensuring that their enterprise is backed.

We must be the party of home ownership. Home ownership matters. As I said in an intervention, since about 2001, home ownership among people aged 16 to 34 has halved. We need to increase it. Meanwhile, the number of those renting has gone from about 10% to 20%. We must offer our young people better than a life of renting, and give them the chance to get on the home ownership ladder and build up a stock of wealth in a lower-tax country that ensures that hard work is rewarded.

[Giles Watling]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the recent reduction in corporation tax oxymoronically produced more tax in the coffers? It is worth reducing the tax.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend is right: if we cut the rate we up the take. We must support small businesses most of all because, since about 2000, small enterprises and businesses have created 4 million new business jobs. Big business has created just 800,000 jobs, so small businesses are the enterprisers and job creators that take our country forward and turbocharge our economy.

If we are to have more public spending, it is important to ensure we have public service reform. We must look at how public services are delivered and ask ourselves whether they can be delivered more efficiently. Are there activities that Government should do more of? Are there activities they should do less of? Why do we not have, alongside the Office for Budget Responsibility, an office of spending responsibility, or even a Budget committee so that the House can consider such matters and press individual Departments to embrace reform and fiscal rectitude?

We also need higher investment. It is all very well having a culture in which we get lots of people with low skills to do low-value-added jobs that lead to no productivity. Why are we not encouraging more investment in more equipment that can be operated by fewer, more highly skilled people who are better paid and drive our productivity forward?

I must take issue with the comments of the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) about how it is all indebted and about the corporate sector—that is absolute rubbish. Some £750 billion on corporate balance sheets has not been spent. There is a conundrum as to why that money is not being invested. We must consider the possibility of time-limited, perhaps very generous, investment allowances to get those corporates to invest in our economy, and to drive the investment and productivity gains that we need.

We need more competition in this country. Why do we put up with Openreach and its appalling service? Why has it not been unbuckled from BT with a strong investment target? Why do we have an oligopoly of banks and of big energy providers, and why have we not taken action on that? We need a bit more trust-busting from the Government and a bit more backing for the consumer interest over the corporate interest.

The Conservative party should be the party of small enterprise and investment. It should be the party that champions the consumer interest and is tough on corporatism and tough on the causes of corporatism. We also need to be the green and environmental party, which is why in the spending review we need a step change in investment in electric car charging points because it is not good enough. Only when we get that straight will big corporate car fleet buyers start to buy the cars that would then go into the second-hand market, so that this country can have the electric future on our roads that it should have.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

This is dangerously close to becoming a debate with great interaction. I look forward to more comments from my right hon. Friend, because my understanding is that there was previously a tool that allowed compulsory purchase of properties that had been left empty for an extended period. Some might think that this Government would not apply such rules, which perhaps seem draconian.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

My hon. Friend is making an impassioned, powerful and thoughtful speech. In October 2010, there were about 300,000 homes that had been empty for a long time. That number has come down to about 200,000. That is good progress, but does he agree that more needs to be done?

[Eddie Hughes]

I think that there are stats available for everybody in the Chamber. Perhaps they could celebrate, as I have, not only St George’s day, and not only the birth of a new member of the royal family, but a 40% decrease in the number of empty properties in Walsall. Those are, I suggest, three very good reasons for a party, or possibly another bank holiday—for St George’s day, I mean. I am not for one minute suggesting that we have a bank holiday just because the people of Walsall have reduced the number of empty homes by 40%.

Local Government Finance

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I want to lay out the case, and then there will be a long time for debate—but only if I rush through this to allow time for people to speak.

Central Government funding of local services has reduced by 40%—less money when demand is increasing—and we all know that it has not been distributed evenly. The overall reduction has hit local authorities with lower tax bases hardest because they are more dependent on central Government grant. The UK Government’s total spending on local government, as a share of the economy, has fallen sharply. In 2010, it accounted for 8.4% of the economy; by 2022, the figure will be down to 5.7%, which constitutes a 60-year low. Yet councils in England still have 1,200 statutory obligations. They have less money, but the same is required of them. That has had an impact on people, in that 811 fewer people now work in local government. The local government workforce today is the lowest since comparable records began, when the central Government workforce is the highest that it has been since comparable records began. Moreover, the figures are not fairly distributed across government, let alone geographically.

If austerity had not kicked in and affected our local council base, councils today would have £14 billion more than they have. That would be sufficient to deal with the crisis in social care and the crisis in children’s services.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has been saying, and it seems to me that his answer to every question is, “Send more money.” My question to him is: where is the money going to come from?

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[Mr Bone]

In this particular case, the budget was passed on the assurances that were given by the cabinet, and those assurances were given to the local MPs. We said, “Are you sure you’ve got the money to do this? We’re worried,” and they said, “Oh no, everything’s rosy. The budget is fine.” They produced a budget and passed it. In year, it was clear that the savings they had suggested were not happening, and they had to take emergency measures. The budget will have to be set in February or not, and that is a dilemma for the council at this very moment.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend hits on a key concern that I have about the cabinet system in local government. When I was a councillor, we had committee chairs, and we had all parties round the table, having to justify what action they were going to take. There was immediate accountability. The cabinet system has taken that away too much.

[Mr Bone]

I could not agree more. I was a councillor for seven years, and there was a committee system. It was a Conservative-controlled council, and I have to say, I was as much of a pain then as I am now. I remember persuading the leader of the council to take back the proposed budget because it was wrong. Nothing has changed there, I suppose.

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[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

It is great to have you in the Chair, once again, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The contributions to this debate on both sides of the House have been interesting and wide-ranging. On one level there is the political aspect, and I challenged the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), the shadow Minister, to say whether there was any question to which his answer was not more money. I also asked him where the money is going to come from. That provoked the most interesting discussion in the debate; it is not always just about more money, it is also about how we organise the fundamentals of government. I sometimes wish that we were not shackled in this place by constant debates where the Opposition say that we should spend more money and we say we have to generate it first. We should look at how we organise government best and most effectively.

Let us examine the case of social care. We all know that the health service sits in one place and social services sit in another, and that, broadly, the overlap is huge and the potential efficiency savings are massive if we are able to bring them together successfully. We should all be working on that together, on a cross-party basis, to the extent that it is possible to do so within our partisan political system. We should be working on how to get the best deal for an ageing population and we should rework our public services. We need to navigate the Scylla of the trade unions and the Charybdis of public spending restraints and pressures in order to come up with ways of reworking the systems—the NHS, social services and county council systems—to make sure that we can deliver, particularly for older people where we are facing challenges.

I welcome the fact that more money was found for social care in Kent. Kent MPs were deeply concerned at the situation and the leader of the county council was concerned about the funding settlement. As a team we all worked together and met the Minister to make a strong case for Kent. I welcome the extra £166 million for social care, some £3.9 million of which will go to Kent. The increase in core spending power is also really welcome.

When we talk about local government finance, we tend just to look at core funding or the amount of money for social care, but we need to look at it in the round, because a whole load of it comes from, say, the Department for Education. I am concerned about Home Office funding. In terms of the local government finance settlement, the Home Office does a fantastic job for Calais. Over the years it has handed out £200 million, but it does not give quite the level of funding we need at the frontline in Kent and in Dover, where we take a lot of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The county council has been making a powerful case that it does not get the kind of funding compensation from the Home Office that it should get for the fact that Kent is bearing the brunt in terms of the number of unaccompanied asylum seekers.

Let me set out the issues and challenges. The total cost of net funding from the Home Office is £25.4 million. In the current year, the shortfall is £4.6 million. If there are no changes to the financing arrangements, the coming year will see a further deficit of £3.9 million. That affects public services for the residents of Kent, because services have to be provided to people who have come to this country who are not from Kent or normal residents of Kent. That is challenging.

There is a challenge with care leavers, with a funding gap of £3.1 million. If someone turns 18, the amount of money given to the county council falls dramatically, yet the costs on the council stay very high indeed. We should remember the cost of the Millbank reception centre near Ashford in Kent. For unaccompanied asylum-seeking children there is a gap of £0.6 million, because the regulations entitle all children living in foster care at their 16th birthday to remain living with their carers, if they so choose. There is also £300,000 of ineligible costs.

There is a large funding gap. I know that there is always pressure to hand out another cheque to Calais and to France—the amount over the past two years now totals £200 million—but I put it to the Home Office that we also need to fund the frontline in Kent and Dover. We need to make sure that we get a decent and fair settlement for the residents of Kent to cover the costs of the county having stepped up to the plate by caring for and doing the right thing by vulnerable unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, many of whom are children fleeing war zones who are in fear for their lives. They are not fakes—children who are really economic refugees—as has been a concern.

We need to make sure that proper funding is in place for the county council so that there is not an impact on public services that means others lose out. I very much hope that the Home Office will take those points on board and recalibrate the funding to ensure that Kent does not lose out.