Local Government Financing
Debate between Claire Perry and Grant Shapps
Grant Shapps
I shall give way in a moment after making a little progress.
So the £6.2 billion immediate savings this year are the priority to tackle the inherited £156 billion deficit. It is worth saying it again—£156 billion. [Interruption.] They do not want to hear it, because the figures were in danger of bankrupting this country—of putting us into a Greek-style crash. But to hear the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen today from the Dispatch Box, one would not believe that he was speaking for the same party that sat on the Government Benches and took this country to the edge of that fiscal position.
Now with this fiscal challenge we also have an opportunity. Our actions to rebalance the public finances give us a chance to decentralise power, to weaken the command-and-control apparatus of the central state. Devolution is the solution; the centralised state the problem. We need to cut wasteful spending, but let us put local councillors and local people back in the driving seat.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
On that very point, we hear a lot about how we could have saved money from efficiency savings, and that is a laudable thing to talk about, but the Lyons report in 2007 said that targets and inspections inhibited councils’ ability to serve their locality. We know that targets and inspections cost more than £2.5 million a year, so if Opposition Members were so anxious to find efficiencies why did they not start by stopping that ridiculous top-down inspection regime?
Grant Shapps
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning some of the top-down inspection regimes, such as the comprehensive area assessment, a £39 million programme responsible for—get this—wasting 151,000 days of local government officers’ time each year, and for what purpose, what advantage, what great body of knowledge that could somehow be used? The answer is that the previous Government did not know when the money had run out and carried on spending it ad infinitum.
Grant Shapps
Yes, that is the same fund, and it was mentioned to the House verbally, at the Dispatch Box, by the Chancellor on the day. No, I cannot confirm how it will be divided up. Members would quite properly expect that to be announced in a statement to the House from the Dispatch Box, and they would not expect me to do that today, because today’s debate—[Interruption.] It is a bit rich of Labour Members to express surprise. We had 13 years of spin and statements on every breakfast TV sofa in the country but, now that they have now switched sides and gone into opposition, they are making a big deal of this. I can assure the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) that that statement will be made to the House from the Dispatch Box in due course.
Claire Perry
I am fascinated by the disclosure about the tranquillity room. I have had many people coming into my surgery recently who have been really struggling with their household budgets and housing problems. The idea of a tranquillity room is quite entertaining, but it is also deeply insulting to hard-working British people. How will the Minister use the tranquillity room? What does he intend to do with it?
Grant Shapps
I think that it would be only right to invite people to come and try out the tranquillity room. It was paid for with the hard-earned money of the people outside the House, when the previous Government seemed to think that it was a good idea to spend hard-earned taxpayers’ money on building tranquillity rooms and putting in expensive sofas. This is an indication of how they talked about helping the poor when they were really helping themselves by refurbishing their offices with bizarre and extraordinary furniture.