Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Debate between David Simmonds and Nusrat Ghani

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It has been a wide-ranging debate. I add my congratulations to the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for securing it and introducing it so well. I pay tribute to my Conservative colleagues—my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and my hon. Friends the Members for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) and for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking)—for sharing both their views, brought from their long experience in local government, and their great passion for their constituencies.

I will start with the striking speech by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), who set out many of the challenges around local government finance in her constituency. I came away from that speech thinking, “Just wait until she finds out which party in government slashed the £8.8 million of rural delivery grant from her local authority, which has led it to say it is having to consult on reducing bin collections further—to just once every three weeks—and to literally turning the lights off in Shrewsbury to save the money necessary to balance the books following this local government finance settlement.”

When we come to the Chamber to debate the resource departmental expenditure limit and the capital departmental expenditure limit, it is really important, as hon. Members have done, that we set out the story behind that: what it means in our constituencies for our local authorities. When we started the debate, we knew that it was against a backdrop of a Budget last year that left councils net £1.5 billion worse off because of the rise in national insurance contributions. That alone took £1.5 billion out of local authorities’ capacity. Since then, we have seen a developing backdrop of rising inflation, which is now pushing 3.5%, and deteriorating economic conditions —in particular, rising Government borrowing—which may be one of the reasons why the Government are seeking to push back borrowing the capital that funds the housing programme in the hope that costs will come down in due course. But all these things are imposing rising costs on our local authorities.

I have enormous sympathy for the Minister, who I know has huge experience in local government. However, as Members from across the House have demonstrated in their contributions, the impact of the Department for Education’s decisions on SEND, the impact of the Home Office’s decisions on asylum funding—for Hillingdon, which serves about two-thirds of my constituency, that is, on its own, an additional £5 million per annum cost pressure—and the impact of Department of Health and Social Care decisions on public health, which have a significant impact on the costs local authorities face, are all accumulating.

That leaves the Minister and the Government with a series of difficult questions that they need to address. Having set out the existence of that substantial black hole in council budgets, and the black hole that a number of Members on all sides have referred to in housing delivery, the fact that the visible symptoms of council services, such as rough sleeping, are racing up—according to St Mungo’s charity, rough sleeping has risen by 27% in London alone—means we know that our local authorities face a significant challenge.

The questions that I hope the Minister will begin to address in his summing up are around the underlying financial assumptions behind the figures that are set out in the report. We know that there is always a tendency in Whitehall to see local government finance as an opportunity to centralise credit by announcing the positive things that we want to see money spent on and localising the blame by forcing councils to fund that through rising fees and charges or increases to council tax. When it comes to ensuring that the 1.5 million homes in our country that already have planning permission are delivered, there needs to be a relentless focus on getting that money out of the door and into the hands of local authorities and others to ensure that those homes can be delivered. The Opposition will scrutinise relentlessly, in search of the evidence that that is happening.

Our councils face this challenge against the backdrop of a potentially costly and disruptive reorganisation. We know that many councils have come forward with their own proposals for local government reorganisation. [Interruption.] The Minister says “All councils” from a sedentary position. All councils were asked, invited or, perhaps, required to put forward their proposals for reorganisation. However, we know that asking, for example, all the planning officers in the country to reapply for their jobs is unlikely to aid that focus on housing delivery.

Will the Minister clarify the following points in his response? First, will he set out the Department’s underlying assumptions on council tax rises, fees and charges, and discounts? It seems clear from the analysis being done by local authority finance officers that the underlying assumption is that all those things will rise in every council to the maximum possible extent, simply in order to stand still. What are the Government’s underlying assumptions about business rate rises, discounts and redistribution? I note, for example, that North West Leicestershire district council, because of the business rates reset, expects to lose 67% of its spending power in one go as a result of the Budget. What are the underlying assumptions about the housing revenue account, parking revenue account and other ringfenced council budgets, so our constituents know what is coming, not just in their council tax bill but in what they may pay for parking, permits, waste services and other essential day-to-day services?

Let us consider the individual cases coming in. I made reference to the impact on Shropshire of the loss of £8.8 million in rural services delivery grant, and South Holland, West Lindsey and Staffordshire Moorlands will see a 40% cut in their funding needs assessment as a result of the Budget. There are also authorities, such as Boston, that are seeing more than 40% of their budget driven to cover the costs of drainage boards. East Cambridgeshire district council sees a cut of £125,000 a year, and Fylde district council sees a rise of nil despite a headline announcement by the Government of 6.8%, once those calculations are taken into account. I know the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) was here earlier on, and Harlow reports that as a consequence, the core funding—the revenue support grant—is cut by 25% this year alone. All that has a huge impact on local Government funding and what our constituents will see.

I know that there are many in this Chamber with experience in local government. Our councils remain the most efficient part of our public sector, but it is clear from the many constituency-level issues and the insights we have gained in this debate that they deserve better from this Government in a much more transparent and open funding settlement, so that we know the underlying assumptions of Government and our constituents can understand what will happen to their council tax bills and their household budgets.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Minister.

Point of Order

Debate between David Simmonds and Nusrat Ghani

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I seek your guidance? My constituent, Ms Safiya Ismail is without an income because her pension credit application, which was made in July 2024, remains outstanding. I seek your guidance as to what further steps I can take to secure a response from the Department for Work and Pensions for my constituent. My diligent caseworker, Fatema Karim, has chased the matter on numerous occasions. We have been advised that it has been escalated to management, but as yet, no response has been received. Can you suggest any further steps I can take to place my concerns on behalf of my constituent on the record?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I am grateful for advance warning of the hon. Member’s point of order. Ministerial correspondence is not a matter for the Chair, but all hon. Members should be entitled to expect a timely reply, especially when they are contacting Government Departments on behalf of their constituents. I am sure that those on the Treasury Front Bench will have noted the hon. Member’s comments, and no doubt he will receive a response in due course.

Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill

Debate between David Simmonds and Nusrat Ghani

Report stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

It appears that the attraction of business rates has not been sufficient to draw as many speakers to the Chamber as some debates, but I am none the less grateful to all Members for their contributions to today’s debate.

Just a few months ago, we exposed a £2.4 billion black hole in the local government budget: £3.7 billion of additional spending was announced, with only £1.3 billion of funding to pay for it. Over the weeks since the Budget, we have seen pensioners, businesses of all sizes and types, schools, landlords and tenants all facing additional costs to begin to backfill the consequences of those political choices. With the Bill before the House tonight, those tax hikes are heading for the business rates bill of companies and organisations, large and small, on high streets the length and breadth of the country.

We should not pretend that this is an essential step. Our councils are acknowledged as the most efficient part of the public sector. They responded magnificently to the consequences of the financial crash in the late 2000s, with rising resident satisfaction against a backdrop of increasingly challenged budgets, but the decisions made by this new Government, in particular loading an additional £1.66 billion of national insurance costs on to local authorities, with less than a third of that covered by the promised additional funding, has consequences in our town halls. The Bill begins to make a small step towards bridging that colossal gap, but the Government need to own these political choices. The consequences of the Bill for our businesses and schools are stark.

First, let me address the changes in the multiplier, and in particular the consequences for larger premises. Under the changes to the business rate system introduced by the Government overall, increased costs loaded on to larger premises will provide the source for any reductions for smaller businesses, unlike under the previous Government, when it was covered from general grants. As a result, these businesses, often small and medium-sized enterprises—important employers and vital sources of growth for our economy—will face higher bills.

Such businesses have been characterised by the Government as warehouses, often owned by online giants, but when we look at the detail from the Government’s own data, we see firms such as Banner, which supplies the offices of Members of Parliament with all kinds of stationery products, Tygavac Advanced Materials Ltd, and Zetex Semiconductors plc, which is an American-owned business that trades on the London stock exchange, producing products that are vital for our security and growth. Those are just examples of businesses in the Minister’s own constituency that will be hit by the changes. Scapa Group Ltd, a major healthcare provider in the constituency of the Secretary of State, will also face significantly higher bills.

We have heard Members wax lyrical about how much they value the opportunities for growth in this country, and how they value in particular different types of community assets, but 28 of the data centres that the Prime Minister speaks of as being vital to the AI agenda will be hit by the Bill, and 16 of the breweries that have supposedly benefited from a penny off the pint, including Fuller’s, Bulmers, John Smith’s and Greene King, all face significant increases in their bills. Eight zoos and safari parks, including Colchester, Bristol and Chester zoos, face significantly increased business rates bills, and 48 stadiums across the country, including Wimbledon, Twickenham and both the Manchester stadiums, all expect to see big rises as a consequence. All Labour Members who love to champion their local pub and talk about taking a penny off the pint need to remember that the consequence of the Bill is to put business rates up by, on average, £5,500 a year per pub. The list is available from Government data. It is very clear that this will be a difficult Bill for retail, hospitality and leisure to swallow, after a period of direct and specific support from the previous Government.

This change does not come from a Government that came to office saying that this was their intention or plan; it comes from a Government whose Chancellor—Rachel from accounts—went so far as to promise in 2021 that she would abolish business rates. Business owners and workers who thought they were voting for a Labour Government that would come in and abolish business rates are facing significant increases today.