Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Bob Blackman

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

9. What progress has been made on restoring devolved government in Northern Ireland.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

13. What progress has been made on the restoring devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Bob Blackman

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, extraordinarily, all that monitoring and inspection never seemed to include the over-inflated salaries of chief executives or the ridiculous pay-offs that occurred?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which refers to another thing that took place under the Labour Government. In all those organisations, pay is determined from the top, so as chief executive pay has rocketed, so has senior pay, while the large numbers of people who work for local authorities and do a brilliant job are paid relatively small amounts of money. There is no doubt, however, that the pay of middle management and senior management exploded, and I applaud the Secretary of State’s decision to publish the figures so that the public can see what type of jobs are involved.

We also saw an explosion in the creation of non-jobs, each of which required administrative support, departments and offices, all of which are costs to the taxpayer, specifically the council tax payer. We had a multitude of different grant regimes and ring-fencing so that if local authorities wanted to take decisions, they could not. I therefore welcome the merger of the different grant regimes and the removal of ring-fencing, which allows for local decision making at the right sort of level.

What Labour did was not all bad. The decision to tell local authorities what level of funding they were getting for three years was a good thing because it allowed them to plan ahead. I hope that in future times the settlement from the Front Bench will be offered not just for three years but for four or five years so that there is certainty for local government in planning ahead.