Local Government Finance

Chris Williamson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Secretary of State, on his excellent exposition, setting out Labour’s alternative to what the Government have put forward today.

We are meeting at an apposite time. Hon. Members have referred to the reports of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. I have with me a copy of the PAC report. To summarise it in respect of the Government’s record on local government, let me say that the Government have failed to provide leadership on local government finance; failed to understand the impact of the cuts they are making; failed to apply the cuts fairly, as we have heard today; and failed to recognise the effect that the cuts are having on councils’ ability to deliver their statutory services.

Many of us here will be familiar with the “graph of doom” produced by the Local Government Association, which has pointed out that in a very short time local authorities will be capable of delivering only their statutory services, and that if the funding arrangements continue on their present trajectory, many authorities will be struggling to deliver even their statutory obligations.

It was my privilege a couple of weeks ago to re-launch the “Fair Deal for Derby” campaign. Derby has been crucified by this Administration, and the Secretary of State is acting like a giant wrecking ball on local government services in the city. We have seen a reduction in funding for the local authority of some £379 per household in the city of Derby. The cuts that the council has already had to make amount to some £96 million with a further £69 million to find—unless the Government change tack or unless, as we hope, we see the election of a Labour Government on 7 May.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Is it the hon. Gentleman’s understanding, as it is mine, that the Labour party has not pledged to increase the overall funding envelope for local government? Will he spell out—in a way that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) failed to do—exactly who would be the losers in a process where there will be no winners except at the expense of others?

[Chris Williamson]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central was absolutely clear about the funding. He said there would be a fairer funding settlement. I cannot see how my right hon. Friend could have been any clearer than that. What we have seen over the past four and a half years is anything but a fair settlement. What we have seen is the neediest and most deprived parts of the country shouldering the biggest burden. What did we hear from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor? We heard that they would not balance the books on the backs of the poorest people, yet that is precisely what they have done, as we heard from my right hon. Friend.

My local authority in Derby will have lost half its budget. Just imagine the impact of that on council services for vulnerable children and elderly and disabled people in our city! Social care has been decimated, and facilities such as street cleaning, street lighting and leisure services are also under threat as a result of the Government’s cuts.

Last week saw the ridiculous scenario, the ridiculous spectacle, of the Secretary of State coming to Derby and suggesting that the council should use its reserves. “The council has £81 million in reserves,” said the Secretary of State. “Why does it not use that money?” Well, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, we can only use the reserves once, and, furthermore, they have already been earmarked. They have been earmarked for new schools, for instance, and for the cost of the redundancy payments that must be made to the public sector workers who have had to be sacked because of the unprecedented cuts that the Government have imposed on Derby. It is ludicrous for the Secretary of State to come to Derby and say that the council should simply use its £81 million worth of reserves, as if they were not earmarked, which they are, and as if it could keep on using them, which it cannot. It is crazy for him to do that.

To add insult to injury, not only did the Secretary of State turn up unannounced, but when the leader of the council, Ranjit Banwait, politely asked if the Secretary of State would meet him, the Secretary of State snubbed him. He said, “No, no, I haven’t got time to meet the leader of the council.” The leader wanted to report some of the concerns felt by councillors and some of the problems that the council was facing, and to put the case for a fair deal for Derby, but the Secretary of State was not interested. He was only interested in making political capital and in speaking to the leader’s political opponents, his own Conservative friends on Derby city council.

As if that were not bad enough, the Prime Minister then weighed in. He appeared on Radio Derby, and he too referred to the reserves. He then made the ludicrous assertion that West Oxfordshire district council, his local authority, had been worse affected than Derby. I do not know whether the Prime Minister has been paying a visit to planet Zog or has been living in cloud cuckoo land for the past four and a half years, but the suggestion that West Oxfordshire has been worse affected than Derby flies in the face of the facts. The facts are very clear. The cut in West Oxfordshire amounts to some £90-odd per household, whereas the cut in Derby is almost £400 per household, which is four times as much.

I know that the Prime Minister went to a very good school. He went to Eton, I understand. I left school at 15, and I was not great at arithmetic, but it seems to me that the Prime Minister could have done with spending some time in Labour’s former “numeracy hour” to work out basic arithmetic, because he clearly got that very badly wrong.

As Labour Members have already pointed out, the cuts have caused the economy to struggle and to go into a downturn. We have experienced the longest recession for more than 300 years, and the slowest recovery for more than 100. Why is that? When this Government came to power, they inherited a growing economy and falling unemployment, We had started to turn the corner, but what did the Government do? Owing to their ideological zeal, their determination to smash the state, and their obsession with neo-liberal economics, they sent the economy into a tailspin.

It is important to bear in mind the symbiotic relationship that exists between the public and private sectors. Where does the Minister think public sector workers spend their money? Where do the almost 1,500 redundant council workers in Derby spend their money? They spend it in the local economy; they spend it on goods and services provided by the private sector. That is why it is important to recognise this symbiotic relationship between the public and private sectors. Members on the Government Benches clearly do not understand that or why the economy has struggled so much and continues to struggle. They claim it is doing incredibly well now—well, you could have fooled me and many millions of people who are still struggling with the cost of living crisis. It is obvious that their obsession with austerity and market-led economics and their hostility to the public sector have been an utter disaster in terms of the impact on the people who rely on those services and on the economy.

What is desperately needed is a Labour Government on 7 May, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, because he has made it very clear that there will be a fairer funding settlement within the financial envelope. We have also made it very clear that a Labour Government would grow the economy, which this lot have been singularly unsuccessful in achieving. We would then be able to use the fruits of economic growth to sustain our public services, to continue to grow our economy and to create that economic virtuous circle.

Today we saw the ludicrous spectacle and the political stunt of the Prime Minister pleading with the captains industry: “Britain needs a pay rise.” I thought for a moment when I saw that that he had converted to the TUC because it has been calling for this for a long time. Yes, Britain does need a pay rise—a pay rise for ordinary people, not the oligarchs and the hedge fund managers who fund the Conservative party, and whom Conservative Members were hobnobbing with last night at their black-and-white ball. What we need is a Labour Government, and a Labour Secretary of State—my right hon. Friend—with a fairer funding settlement so we can get this country back on its feet, and get our public services delivering the services people in our country desperately need.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

The unemployment rate increased quite significantly under this Government, and it has now begun to come down, but in my constituency it is still above average. Is that okay for the hon. Gentleman? I concede that unemployment has come down, but in Leicester it is too high and we need to get it down further.

[Chris Williamson]

Would it not be true to point out also that many of my hon. Friend’s constituents are on zero-hours contracts, in part-time work and in low-paid occupations? As the Prime Minister himself has said, Britain needs a pay rise. We also need to get rid of those exploitative zero-hours contracts, which the Labour party is committed to doing.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

In his contribution a few moments ago, my hon. Friend spoke eloquently about the need for Britain to have a pay rise and poked fun at the Prime Minister’s late conversion to the need to deal with the fact that wages have been squeezed considerably under this Government. Indeed, by the end of this Parliament people will be worse off than they were at the start of the Parliament, which is unusual by historical standards.

I want to concentrate on Leicester where, like other cities, we are seeing increasing demands on our children’s services. Luckily, our local authority has managed to keep our Sure Start centres open, but some services have had to be cut. We are seeing growing demand on adult social care, like other cities, yet we are trying to cope with deep cuts. We are a city with a proud, vibrant voluntary sector. Perhaps it could be argued that the big society was invented in Leicester, yet all voluntary sector organisations are seeing their grants cut and they are struggling to provide the level of services to the community that they have been able to provide for the past few years. The Government’s rhetoric on the big society rather sticks in the throat when we see what is happening on the ground.

As to how the Government present the figures, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East did extremely well in exposing the fact that when the Government talk about spending power calculations, they are trying to disguise the cuts facing councils. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who is not in his place, made a brutal contribution referring to that as sophistry. The Government tell us that, on their spending power calculations, Leicester sees a 5.4% reduction. However, as many have pointed out, these figures are distorted by including the totality of the better care fund, a significant proportion of which is not available for local authorities to spend.

With that element removed, the year-on-year reduction in spending power for Leicester is 9.4%, so what we need is not sophistry, in the words of the hon. Member for Southport, but a fairer funding settlement for cities such as Leicester. We need a funding settlement that truly recognises the deprivation in cities such as Leicester. In Leicester—which, by the way, did what the Government want; we have a directly elected mayor—what the city mayor and the local authority need is a funding settlement that allows them to budget for the longer term. We need the devolution of genuine powers to our cities, because a city such as Leicester, with its vibrant, dynamic population, can take full advantage of those powers and make a real difference.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Williamson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

In a moment. This is not about Toxteth or areas of the most concentrated deprivation; it is about a broader picture in which it would be perfectly possible to protect the most deprived areas of, say, the hon. Gentleman’s constituency while seeking to address an imbalance in the funding formula.

[Chris Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the income profile of rural residents being somewhat lower. Would he therefore support me in encouraging those living in rural areas to join a trade union to try to improve their living standards and incomes?

[Mr Stuart]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point, but that would mean a further bill for a left-wing organisation and we know where that leads. He will be aware that in the past couple of years the wages of non-unionised workers have eclipsed those of unionised workers and that the TUC is, for the most part—as, indeed, is the hon. Gentleman’s party—a front organisation for those who receive money from the public purse. Trade union membership does not have a great deal of relevance to those who work in the private sector, which exports across the world and generates the wealth that pays for those of us, including MPs, who are paid from the public purse. However, I would always welcome and support anyone who wished to join a trade union, if they saw fit to do so.

Although there is a smaller gap of £73 per person between rural and urban spending power, it is smaller only because it takes into account the higher council tax that rural residents have to pay. Poorer rural residents are subsidising richer urban authorities. That is worth repeating, because anyone listening to the impassioned protestations of Labour Members would think that was not true: poorer rural residents are subsidising richer urban authorities. There is no acceptable justification for that status quo.

The fact that the Government have introduced the rural services delivery grant during this Parliament and increased it every year is welcome recognition of the rural penalty. This year its value has been set at £15.5 million, or £1.20 per head. At just 1% of the shortfall in the main central Government grant, that additional money does not by itself deliver a fair deal for rural areas.