Local Government Financing
Debate between Clive Betts and John Denham
Mr Betts
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend’s analysis of Total Place. It is a way forward; it is not going to deliver immediate savings, but with proper planning it could deliver. However, it cannot be delivered properly through central diktat from the Secretary of State. If improvements are to be delivered, there has to be a real transfer and devolution of power not merely from the Department for Communities and Local Government, but from the Department for Transport, the Home Office and all other Departments, to allow local authorities to take the lead at local level.
Mr Denham
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I welcome him to his position as Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, to which he will bring considerable experience and knowledge. That is exactly what we offered local government and local services in our last Budget, which offered a wide range and scope for local services to pool their money and use it in new ways. That is why I was confident that we could both deliver our deficit reduction programme and protect front-line services, but as my hon. Friend says, it can work only when it is backed from the top. There is no mention of it in the Budget or in the Red Book, and every Government policy works against that sensible, coherent approach. The Government are not just slashing local spending: they are fragmenting it. There is no point in giving councils more and more control over disappearing funds if, at the same time, school spending is disappearing into academies and free schools, if the chance to work with health money disappears into hundreds of GP budgets or if police funding rides off into the sunset with an elected sheriff. [Interruption.] I am sure that the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) is right. I shall come to him in due course.
I do not know whether the Secretary of State simply lost all those arguments or whether he never made them, but he has not done well. I shall give way now to the hon. Member for Meon Valley and later to the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford).