Christopher Pincher
Main Page: Christopher Pincher (Independent - Tamworth)
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman is indeed a neighbour of mine in Yorkshire. Correct me if I am wrong, but I cannot remember that there were many Tory-controlled councils that did not want free swimming when it was being offered or that did not want a number of other benefits for their communities. However, I would have to say to the hon. Gentleman, in the nicest possible way, that if people thought it was not rosy then, they must now be in despair about what is ahead.
We are hearing from councillors of all parties that if councils are not given enough time to plan which cuts to make, they will be forced into making rushed decisions with no time to plan for the consequences, which could end up costing more than they save.
Caroline Flint
I have been very generous in taking interventions, and I am conscious of the number of Members who wish to speak in the debate. [Interruption.] I do not think that hon. Members can accuse me of not being generous in giving way. I will take more interventions later, but I should like to make a bit of progress.
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman heard what I had to say—I am going to make a bit of progress, but I may take more interventions later.
People will pay the price with their jobs. The Secretary of State likes to give the impression that savings can be made without causing job losses, as though simply by freezing recruitment, natural wastage, redeploying people and scrapping or sharing back-room functions, local councils will find the savings they need to make without hitting front-line services. Local councils cannot deliver such savings so quickly on top of the £1 billion of savings they have already made this year without cutting jobs or reducing services. Paul Carter, the Tory Kent council leader, said:
“There is only one way of bringing budgets into line. One is to employ less people and the other is to do fewer things.”
In fact that is two, but I take his point. Up and down the country, local authorities are already cutting vital front-line services and shedding staff.
Caroline Flint
No, I will not give way.
Councils are cutting not just staff in back-room functions but teaching assistants, social workers and street cleaners—hundreds of thousands of people delivering essential front-line services. There will be 140,000 of them this year alone, according to the Local Government Association, which has upped its prediction from 100,000. In Birmingham, 26,000 staff have been warned that they could lose their jobs, and in Bradford the figure is 10,000. They, along with the people who depend on the services they provide, will pay the price for the coalition Government’s choices.
It is no good the Government trying to use last week’s Office for Budget Responsibility forecast to obscure the heavy job losses that will be inflicted on local government. The OBR forecast shows that Whitehall Departments will lose fewer staff than had been feared, because the cuts were slightly less than had been predicted in the Budget. However, the cuts to local government are deeper and faster than had been expected, and, as a result, the LGA says that more workers, not fewer, will lose their jobs this year—40,000 more of them, all because the Government chose to impose such heavy front-loaded cuts on local councils.
Caroline Flint
No, I will not.
It is unclear how local councils will meet the costs of laying off so many staff. The LGA believes that redundancy costs alone could be as high as £2 billion, but the Government’s capitalisation arrangements, which were set up to help councils with the cost of cutting jobs, come to only £200 million. That could be as little as one tenth of what is needed. If councils are not given more support and more flexibility to cover the costs of redundancy payments, it will simply mean more cuts elsewhere and ever deeper cuts to vital front-line services.
Local councils cannot deliver the savings they need simply by trimming a few salaries at the top, scrapping council newspapers or encouraging councils to dip into their reserves. Local councils have a duty to find the best deal for council tax payers, which includes ensuring that councils’ executives are not paid over the odds. Labour introduced more transparency in chief executive pay, and restraint is vital, particularly in the current economic climate. It is absolutely fanciful, however, to suggest that reducing a handful of executive salaries across the country will solve the problem of huge front-loaded cuts, and the Secretary of State knows it.
Caroline Flint
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I will not do so again.
How is it fair that the communities most reliant on public sector employment will lose the greatest number of jobs? How is it fair that the areas most in need will find their services most cut? How is it fair that the communities least able to shoulder the brunt of cuts to local councils will bear the heaviest burden? Yet that is exactly what will happen, as the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) let slip earlier in the year, when he said:
“Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt”.—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 450.]
The same is true of the Government’s plans for a council tax freeze. It might sound fair, but it is not, because it gives the most to the wealthier councils with the biggest council tax yield—the councils with the broadest base of middle and high band properties—and the least to poorer councils with more modest properties. This involves money that has been top-sliced from local councils’ funding, resulting in a double whammy for our poorest areas.
It is not just people who work in local government who will lose out. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country who work in the private sector—plumbers, builders, electricians, IT companies and office suppliers—depend on local council contracts. Local councils spend nearly £35 billion every year procuring services and supplies from the private sector, with more than £20 billion going to small and medium-sized businesses. Some of those firms rely on public sector contracts for 50% or 60% of their business, and if local council contracts dry up, some of them will have to lose staff and might even go out of business altogether. PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that for every job lost in the public sector, another will be lost in the private sector, so cuts in local government funding will hit not just those who work in local government and those who rely on its services, but the wider local economy.
What of the Government’s suggestion that if local councils do less, voluntary groups will miraculously emerge and seamlessly fill the gap left by local authorities? The week before last, the Secretary of State warned the House that local councils would “rue the day” they cut funding to voluntary organisations, but what choice will they have? When nearly a third of voluntary organisations rely on funding from local authorities, and local authorities are losing nearly a third of their funding—much of it this year—voluntary groups will lose out. Local councils and voluntary groups are not adversaries—they work together and rely on each other. Voluntary groups reach parts of the community and fulfil certain roles that local councils sometimes cannot, and local councils have the resources and support at their disposal that voluntary groups do not always have. Without each other, they are both weakened.
Christopher Pincher
I am indebted to the right hon. Lady for giving way. It is nice to hear her support for the big society and voluntary groups, but she seems to have rather a selective memory. May I remind her of the BBC report published on 1 March this year, when her party was still in government? It stated that very significant cuts in local government would have to be made, whichever party was in power, to deal with the depth and scale of the recession that her Government had created. The right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) also said that there would have to be economies. With friends like those, does she need enemies?
John Woodcock
Members from all parts of the House will have noticed that, and the Minister has an opportunity now or later in his winding-up speech to share that information.
The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who resumes his seat as I speak, gave an eloquent speech in which he took issue with a number of his Government’s key policies, but he fell into the trap that even the Secretary of State has fallen into. The hon. Gentleman said, “Wouldn’t it be outrageous if any local council were to cut the budget of the voluntary sector to try and balance the books?” I say to him and the Minister, however, that local authorities are looking at the dire situation they face and the appalling decisions they have to make, and from the feedback, I have they do not welcome Ministers telling them what they ought not to do.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman says that local authorities are worried. Perhaps Barrow and Furness is worried, but a cabinet member on the borough council in Tamworth, which is not a rich place or wealthy borough, says:
“We have been planning for a long time to cope with the spending round. The previous government gave with one hand and then took twice as much back with the other. So local government is accustomed to saving money. I am confident the councils services will grow despite reduction in grants, partly thanks to the new homes onus, removal of ring fenced budgets and less red tape. It is a careful balancing act but not one that will lead to massive service cuts. It is business as usual in Tamworth.”
If it is business as usual in Tamworth, why not in Barrow and Furness—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions are supposed to be short—I have said that a number of times—and if the hon. Gentleman reads a very long quotation on to the record he is going to tend to get cut off before he makes his final point.