Local Government and Social Care Funding

Debate between Emma Hardy and Andrew Gwynne

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We used to have something called Total Place, which was all the public sector bodies working together towards a single strategy for a local area. What we have seen as a consequence of the austerity since 2010 is a complete breakdown of that collaborative working. It is worse than that, however, because rather than public bodies working together collaboratively, pooling resources and getting the best possible levels of services for communities, we have seen cost-shunting. For the sake of saving money on youth services, we are seeing a rise in crime that is pushing up costs for the police. Because of the cuts to police budgets, those costs are shunted on to other public bodies. That is not a common-sense approach to dealing with people’s needs and services, to building stronger communities or to spending public money wisely.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

On cost-shunting, just this morning we heard from representatives of families with children with special educational needs and disabilities. They were talking about their needs not being met through the education budget, the high needs block from local government or the health needs budget, because each is trying to get the other to pay the bill. Children with special needs and disabilities are falling through the gap and remaining unsupported.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are too many instances across the public sector where cost-shunting is resulting in precisely what my hon. Friend says: vulnerable people falling through gaps that should not exist. I think that in their heart of hearts, Conservative Members, who clearly deal with casework that is similar to ours, will know that that is happening in their areas too.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to Labour councillors like those in his constituency who are making incredibly difficult decisions. They are the last line of defence for many of our communities, and they are doing what they can, but with both hands tied behind their backs by a Government who simply do not understand the basic economics of the areas that we represent.

[Emma Hardy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will give way shortly, but I want to deal briefly with the issue of social care before I begin my concluding remarks.

The largest of the pressures on services remains the pressure on adult and children’s social care. According to the Local Government Association, adult social care services face a £1.5 billion funding gap next year, and £2 billion is needed for children’s services.

Given that the Cabinet are too interested in internal machinations, and given the absence of any leadership from the Prime Minister, we have yet to see the much promised social care Green Paper. In fact, this year’s April Fool revealed himself to be the Health Secretary after he missed his own new deadline of 1 April for the Green Paper—but no one was laughing, because that was the fifth missed deadline, following the summer of 2017, the end of 2017, the summer of 2018, and the autumn of 2018. Despite those delays, it seems that little progress has been made.

There is so much concern in the sector that last month 15 key organisations—including the LGA, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, and NHS organisations and charities—were forced to write to the Government expressing their concern that Brexit was becoming a distraction from any action to deal with the real crisis that is affecting the services on which people rely.

Local Government Funding

Debate between Emma Hardy and Andrew Gwynne

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

As I say, I was a councillor for 12 years, 11 of which were under a Labour Government, and we had 11 years of growth in our local authority. That was something to be proud of. However, the Government’s record gets worse—

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will.

[Emma Hardy]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for his excellent speech—[Interruption.] No, I feel that the atmosphere in here ignores the very real consequences of what we are talking about. I have mentioned before that in my constituency there are 140 more looked-after children who have been taken into care because they have not had that early intervention and early support. Government Members can laugh and joke and make this into some sort of comedy show, but I am sorry; we are talking about the impacts on real people’s lives. Real people’s lives are being changed forever because of this Government’s actions, and I do not think that it is a laughing matter!

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is right to be angry. When the public watching this debate see Tory MPs laughing, sneering and smirking at our public services in crisis, they will know what side the Tories are on, and it is not theirs.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) again.

[Emma Hardy]

One of the issues facing our schools is the number of children attending who are not classified as school-ready. There are increased numbers of children with oracy problems and children starting school who are not toilet trained, which increases the impact on our schools’ resources.

[Emma Hardy]

That is because of the lack of support for children from health visitors and Sure Start services. Does my hon. Friend not think it is time for the Government to reverse those cuts if they are genuinely committed to giving every child the best possible start? Or can only children from families with the money to pay for it have the best possible start?

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is the short-term approach of this Government and their predecessor, the coalition. However, making short-term savings in a particular year has resulted in massive cost and demand increases further down.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I think that people listening to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention will find it hard to believe that he protected the NHS, for a start. However, I am glad that he has intervened on the issue of transport. It is rather ironic that he has come here and said that we would want to protect local government. He is damn right we want to protect local government, but so does his Defence Secretary. His Defence Secretary took to Twitter a couple of weeks ago decrying the fact that Conservative-controlled Staffordshire County Council was removing bus services from his constituency—the same Defence Secretary who voted for the cuts in this place.

[Emma Hardy]

One of the impacts of the transport cuts is the declining number of apprentices, who find it difficult to travel to college to complete their apprenticeships because of the cost of local transport. In their manifesto, the Conservatives promised to give apprentices subsidised local travel. This is another instance in which their promises have failed and they have failed to deliver, because they are apparently incapable of any joined-up thinking.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but this does not just apply to transport. It applies to food safety, and to day-to-day services such as street cleaning and the emptying of bins. It applies to our museums, our heritage, our cultural services and our libraries: the glue that holds together the fabric of our local communities. I do not support the Government’s notion that they can go on cutting vital day-to-day services without those cuts having an impact.

Local Authority Financial Sustainability: NAO Report

Debate between Emma Hardy and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on securing this absolutely crucial debate today. I thank the many Labour Members who have contributed, particularly those who made speeches: my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) and for Leigh (Jo Platt). They speak up on behalf of their communities, who are really struggling in the face of eight years of Tory austerity.

I find it bitterly surprising that there is not a single member of the parliamentary Conservative party here, save for the Minister and her Parliamentary Private Secretary. I cannot believe that after eight years of cuts and the destruction and decimation of our public services, there is not a single member of the Conservative party willing to stand up for their communities and to say to the Minister and the Government, “Enough is enough!”

[Emma Hardy]

I have already spoken about the cuts facing the East Riding of Yorkshire Council. My constituency represents a very small part of that council, but the Conservative Members of Parliament that represent the council, such as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), are not here. Why is it left to Labour MPs to give the Government the message about what is happening in their own Conservative-controlled councils?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. As I said, I find it bitterly surprising. When we talk to Conservative Members in private, they are as concerned about what is going on in their own communities as Labour Members are. When we look at what is happening across local government, it is not just the Opposition raising concerns.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I will let the Minister speak for herself. We know that local authorities have to provide social care and that it is not the social care services that necessarily get squeezed, but all the other services that many of our residents access on a day-to-day basis. Most of our constituents do not access adult social care unless they have an elderly relative who needs it and they do not access children’s social care unless they have a child in the system, but they expect their parks to be well maintained, their streets to be adequately surfaced, street lighting to be fixed, and litter to be picked up. They expect basic decent services, and it is those services that are being cut.

[Emma Hardy]

Exactly. There are cuts to the local library service, for example. Local libraries have had to reduce their opening times, and yet the move towards universal credit means that everybody is expected to apply online. They were told, “Go to your library and use the computers there,” but there are not enough computers in the local library and it is not open as much as it used to be. That is another consequence of the cuts and it shows a lack of joined-up thinking, a lack of forward planning and a lack of consideration and regard for the people in the poorer parts of this country.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. Those are the pressures facing our communities. We talk about local services as though they are isolated from one another, but they are the life blood of many towns, villages and communities. Library services, welfare support and advice, and housing services are crucial elements of what makes communities tick and brings them together.

I speak not only in my role as shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government but as someone with a fundamental belief in local government’s power to make a difference. I spent 12 mainly happy years, and my wife is nearing her 18th year, as a Tameside councillor. I want to add to the thanks that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale expressed in his speech. We do not thank nearly often enough those, of all political parties and none, who serve as councillors and elected Mayors, or the staff and officers who implement councillors’ decisions. I offer thanks and appreciation to all those who work in our communities as elected members and local authority staff and officers. They are on the frontline of defending public services. Not only that, but they are the last line of defence when it comes to making the tough decisions that the Government have forced on them. I recognise the way many of them value and take pride in their position as councillors.

The National Audit Office’s assessment of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government makes for rather uncomfortable reading. Fundamental to the argument presented by the NAO is the failure of the Ministry to present a long-term strategy for the sector. As a result, even the four-year settlement that we were told was intended to offer some financial stability just kicked the can down the road. Authorities face major funding uncertainties beyond 2019-20.

Even within those four years of supposed certainty, local government has had to deal with rapidly shifting priorities from central Government—often announced at relatively short notice. It is reported by the NAO that the majority of case study authorities with social care responsibilities that it spoke to said that central Government funding outside the settlement had changed a number of times. An example was the new homes bonus being repurposed to fund adult social care.

We are told that

“The Department’s view is that these changes reflect considered responses to new pressures and risks”.

Anyone who has been following the issue would know that those pressures and risks have been growing since the beginning of the decade. As will ring true for many of my hon. Friends who have spoken today, over the decade from 2010 to 2020 Tameside will have lost close to £200 million in funding. Stockport will have lost well over £100 million. We can, as I have said, never fill those gaps with council tax alone. Although Stockport has a slightly better and more advantageous council tax base than the Tameside part of my constituency, this year it will have to find a further £18 million of savings—or cuts, as I like to call them—which is leading to consultation of residents about some drastic changes to the delivery of social care.

Tameside has said that demand for its services is at unprecedented levels. That is because of the wider impact of austerity on the public purse. If we operate in silos, there should be no surprise when cost-shunting presents itself as a problem on the town hall doorstep. Whether it is the closure of Sure Start centres or early intervention and family support, or the reduction in the number of domestic violence officers who used to be employed by the police, resulting in children being presented as safeguarding cases to the local authority, everything moves one way—from one part of the public sector to another. It may be councils pushing on to the NHS or police pushing on to councils, but it is a merry-go-round of self-defeating prophecy. We must stop that, and fund services properly.

Elsewhere in the report, we were told that the Government are working towards implementing the fair funding review. However, the implications of that are not yet clear. I must be honest with the Minister: anything that comes from a Minister’s mouth and that includes the words “fair”, “funding” and “local government settlement” sends shivers down my spine. We sure know what that means: that the Tamesides, Stockports, Liverpools, Durhams, Leighs, Wigans and Hulls—I could rattle through all the areas—will almost certainly end up with less money. As sure as night follows day, that is what happens when the Tory Government instigate funding changes to local government. Yet we have real social need, and are not able to raise money directly. What we see is the culmination of a crisis facing local government across England. What certainty can the Minister give our councils that they will get a fair funding settlement reflecting the areas’ needs and their inability to make up funding gaps through other sources? So far that has been badly lacking.

I want to end by discussing today’s crisis. Tory Northamptonshire is the first council effectively to declare bankruptcy, but it will almost certainly not be the last. The NAO reckons that in the next few years, unless the funding settlement improves considerably, one in 10 councils with social care responsibilities will have exhausted their reserves and, almost certainly, be in a similar predicament.

How did Northamptonshire, which by any standard is a wealthy part of the country, with a good council tax base, end up with an overspend at this year end of about £21 million, and reserves depleted to about £17 million? I will tell the House how it happened: it took the advice of the former Secretary of State, Sir Eric Pickles, who said that rather than complaining about cuts councils should spend their reserves. Once reserves are spent the money is gone; once the assets are sold, the asset base is gone. Once the money is gone, councils have to make cuts and take difficult decisions.

[Andrew Gwynne]

It absolutely is, but if it was compounded by Tory mismanagement at local level in Northamptonshire, the root cause of the problem undoubtedly came from the Tory Government. They have, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale and the National Audit Office, presided over cuts of almost 50% in central Government funding to councils. That is unsustainable. If we want councils and councillors to facilitate services of such a quality as to provide dignity to the elderly and the best start for the young, and to provide the general population with quality public services, that must be funded.

[Emma Hardy]

We have talked a lot about percentages and money, but I want to mention something a little more individual: the incredible increase in the number of looked-after children in my constituency, which has gone up by 140. We have one of the highest numbers in the country, and that is a consequence of the cuts. That is what happens when cuts take place.

Councils do not have the money for early intervention or the other services that used to provide that extra family support. Such support does not exist anymore, because all that is left is the statutory service. Sure Start used to be available for wider family participation; groups that anybody could take their child to are now open only to a small number of people who have a particular identified need. That all contributes to the increasing number of looked-after children. We cannot just sit here and ignore it: 140 children’s lives have been changed forever.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, it is worse than that because we need to rebuild these services, yet over the past eight years we have lost thousands of dedicated council workers and staff. We have lost the corporate knowledge and history that was embedded in our local authorities. This is not just a question of money; it is difficult to rebuild overnight that capacity in our local councils.

The reality of Government cuts is laid bare in the National Audit Office report. Planning and development has been cut by 52.8%. If we are to meet the Government’s targets for new homes, who will be the strategic planners of the future to identify the land? Who will be the planning officers who implement planning applications? Who will be the planning enforcement officers and ensure that homes and buildings are built in accordance with the plans? Transport funding has been cut by 37.1%. These are our bus routes and the vital links between communities; these are our roads, pavements and cycleways. These cuts are unsustainable.

[Emma Hardy]

The Government talk the good talk on social mobility and say how important that is, but at the moment there are young apprentices who live in rural areas and cannot afford to do an apprenticeship or attend college, or they cannot get there because there are no local transport services for them to use.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. This is about our museums, heritage, and cultural services—the glue that makes our communities tick. It is about who we are and that sense of place, yet funding has been cut by 34.9%. Housing services are not just about ensuring that people have roofs over their head. They are about support for the homeless and ensuring that our housing market works correctly. They are about tackling the scourge of rough sleeping, yet funding has been cut by 45.6%.

When a Government have created a £5.8 billion gap in local government funding, when everyone is saying that social care is on its knees, and when children’s services need an additional £2 billion, this Secretary of State, this Minister and this Tory Government stick their heads in the sand. They fail to give our services the money they need, and they ignore the crisis that is happening on their watch to our services and communities. We need a Government who are committed to our local councils and to rebuilding our communities. We need a Labour Government for the many, not the few.