Local Government Finance

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can give my right hon. Friend some reassurance on that matter. I will come to it in more detail in a moment, and I hope that he will be genuinely reassured.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

When the fairer funding formula comes into being, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will work with other Ministers to really understand the huge gulf that is starting to appear between city metropolitan areas and rural shire counties. We are becoming second-class citizens in rural areas because of the lack of funding in comparison to socialist metropolitan areas.

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about ensuring full co-operation throughout all Government Departments working jointly with our local authorities on fairness and distribution. One way we have tried to make the settlement fair is by recognising the special factors that affect rural areas, including Shropshire. My hon. Friend’s council in Shropshire will benefit from £6.6 million in rural services delivery grant.

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[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Shrewsbury is one of the most popular places to which to retire in the whole United Kingdom. The beauty of our historic town and the Shropshire countryside attracts a lot of senior citizens to come to live in our community. We celebrate their contribution to our constituencies and to the county, but with that increase in the number of senior citizens comes, of course, additional adult social care costs. I have become interested in the local government finance settlement because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) said, our local council has faced increases of £10 million per annum in its attempt to grapple with the spiralling costs of adult social care.

When previously the Labour party ran the local council, it increased council tax by 16.6% in one year. That caused a great deal of distress and concern to people on fixed incomes, especially senior citizens, which is why we have encouraged the council to freeze council tax and do everything possible to limit the increases that local people will have to pay. I am proud that the council has managed to do that.

Shropshire Council has reduced some of the operating costs, as we have asked it to do since we came into office, and a lot of the fat has been cut away. In fact, the council is one of the most efficient in the whole United Kingdom. However, having made the efficiency savings, it is now really struggling to meet additional costs, which is why my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow and I have spent so much time in discussions with the council leader, Peter Nutting, and the chief executive, Clive Wright, to hear at first hand about some of the difficulties they face.

As a result of those discussions, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow and I, along with other Conservative MPs from rural shire counties, decided to meet the Secretary of State and the Chancellor over the past few weeks to highlight the difficulties that rural shire counties face. I wish to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson). My right hon. Friend is not able to join us today because unfortunately he is in hospital after an accident but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow will acknowledge, my right hon. Friend has played an important part in the campaign for funding for Shropshire Council.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

May I reciprocate by thanking my hon. Friend for the leadership he has shown in those meetings and for his determination, which has meant that rural counties have got a better deal? Equally, I thank the Front-Bench team for listening to us and being so helpful to people who need their help so badly.

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course, we almost think of Herefordshire as part of our area.

[Bill Wiggin]

Love thy neighbour.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend is not quite Salopian, but he is certainly our neighbour, and I thank him.

Whether we look at funding for local government, education or, indeed, health, we can see, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) will acknowledge, large gaps in funding—a disparity between rural and inner-city areas.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that rural sparsity and above-average ageing populations, such as Wiltshire’s, do increase costs. Does he agree that deprivation is not confined to urban areas, as the Opposition believe, but can actually be found in rural areas such as our constituencies?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend makes a critical point. When Labour were in government, I brought Labour Ministers to parts of Shrewsbury, including Harlescott, Ditherington and Sundorne, where there are some of the highest levels of deprivation throughout our county and the region. They were amazed. The Opposition just think of Shrewsbury as a quiet, sleepy, beautiful little historic town. They do not understand that there are significant levels of deprivation in rural shire counties.

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, and to his colleagues in the Department for treating us with a great deal of civility and decency and for listening so attentively to our representations. I thank him for the additional £166 million, as a result of which Shropshire gets an additional £2.3 million. However, the taskforce that we have created will continue its work until we get a fairer funding settlement. I am very grateful to him for taking the first step in ensuring that the fair funding settlement is implemented. He has announced the start of a public consultation process, which is something that none of his predecessors did, so we can now acknowledge that he is taking our concerns seriously and is putting forward the mechanics to ensure that we finally have a fairer funding settlement between rural and inner city areas.

When the dust settles on this local finance settlement, I will continue to lobby my right hon. Friend, as will my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, to ask for Shropshire to be considered for the next tranche of business rate retention pilot schemes, because that is a very good initiative and something from which our county could benefit significantly.

I will end by inviting the Secretary of State to Shropshire. He has been there before—he represents a constituency not far from us—and we have been very grateful for those visits. None the less, I invite him again to come to spend a day looking at how services are provided across a rural county, and how there are huge additional costs in providing those services. I say to the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) that, in contrast to what he attempted to say in his contribution, those additional costs do exist. In dealing with a lot of very small schools in rural villages, meals on wheels and getting support to remote rural villages, there are, of course, additional costs, and until they are taken into consideration, we, in the shire counties, will continue to lobby strenuously on this matter.