Gareth Thomas
Main Page: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)Local Government Finance Bill (First sitting)
Gareth Thomas Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Chair
Q Thank you very much. Would you like to make a few opening remarks?
Mr Jones: Thank you, Chair, for allowing me the opportunity to address the Committee. First, I thank the many in local government and in business organisations for their substantial contribution to the development of the reforms. The Bill reflects the significant input to date and our collaboration will continue, certainly as we determine the detail of the implementation of the new system.
The key themes of the Bill are: reform of the local government finance system to move local authorities away from dependency on central Government; to provide strengthened incentives and flexibilities to local authorities to boost growth and to invest for growth; making the business rates system much more business-friendly; and to modernise the business rate billing arrangements to suit businesses in the 21st century.
A change to the relationship between local and central Government is long overdue. The Bill provides for farsighted reforms to the way in which local services are funded. By the end of the Parliament, local government will retain 100% of locally raised taxes and have taken a significant step towards self-sufficiency. We aim to implement the reforms in 2019-20, which means that local government will retain about an additional £12.5 billion in locally collected revenue.
To ensure that the reforms are fiscally neutral, some existing responsibilities will be funded by locally raised taxes instead of grant. Councils will also be given new responsibilities. The reforms will also provide greater stability for councils by moving away from annual discussions of funding to multi-year settlements, which is widely supported by local government and will continue to protect local authorities from the impact of sudden reductions in income.
This framework Bill enables us to deliver the measures through an ongoing process of engagement with local authorities and businesses over the coming months on the detail of the reforms. As I made clear on Second Reading, the Bill does not address issues of distribution or assessment of councils’ relative needs. We are considering those matters separately through a fair funding review that is on track to deliver a wholesale look at councils’ relative needs and resources. We will publish further details shortly.
At the heart of the reforms to local government finance is our aim to provide the right conditions to incentivise growth. A key function of the Bill is to provide local government with strengthened incentives to grow their business rates income and to encourage local businesses to set up and grow. The Bill provides for the levy on growth to be scrapped for good, which means that councils will keep 100% of growth in their business rates incomes between reset periods.
We are going even further and, for the first time since the establishment of the business rates system, councils will be able to reduce the national business rate multiplier for the whole of their authority, helping them to attract businesses and investment to their area. To support investment where it is needed to boost growth, the Bill enables mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority to raise a small supplement on the business rates, in full consultation with businesses, to enable them to develop their infrastructure to realise the area’s growth ambitions. Together the measures will provide local authorities with a real incentive and the tools to grow significantly their economies.
The Bill also contains a package of measures to make business rates much more business-friendly, including support for small businesses and local amenities that help communities to thrive. The Bill ensures that small businesses in rural areas receive the same level of business rate as those in urban areas. It provides a new discretionary relief for public toilets. We are also helping businesses up and down the country by legislating to change the business rate indexation from RPI to the significantly lower CPI measure, which will save businesses about £370 million a year, as announced in the autumn statement. We will also provide a five-year relief for the installation of new optical fibre.
We are using the Bill to modernise business rates billing. We are taking the power to make the business rate system more convenient, ensuring every business can access electronic and more consistent bills, no matter where they are in the country. We will also allow HMRC to carry out the design work to engage and to develop proposals on how more joined-up tax billing can be achieved in future.
The Bill provides an ambitious package of reforms to the funding and focus of local government that will fundamentally change the balance of power between central and local government. It will incentivise local leaders to focus on growth and will relieve the burden on hard-pressed businesses. I look forward to working with you, Mr Gapes, and with the Committee to deliberate the content of the Bill.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Q You will have seen overnight the concerns of the Local Government Association about the future funding of social care. Do you envisage that social care will be better funded or worse funded as a result of 100% retention of business rates by local authorities?
Mr Jones: I have been quite clear all along, during the preparation of the Bill and on Second Reading, that it delivers a framework to allow local authorities to retain the business rate. In doing that, we have been extremely clear that this is a fiscally neutral exercise and that new responsibilities will therefore be brought forward for local government as a quid pro quo for the additional £12.5 billion of business rate income to which local authorities do not at the moment have access.
In the consultation we conducted on the additional items that local government will take on, there was a question about whether the improved better care fund would be funded through the retention of business rates. That is not yet decided. It is something that we are still considering in connection with the consultation that we began last year and are due to make a response on shortly.
Mr Thomas
That was a very interesting answer, but it did not go anywhere close to answering what was a fairly simple question. I will ask it again to help the Minister, who may not have had a coffee or a glass of water to get him fully up to speed. Will social care be better or worse funded as a result of the measures in the Bill?
The Chair
Order. Can we avoid the personal remarks please? I would rather we concentrate on the Bill.
The Chair
I think it is important to set the tone now and that we do not change the nature of the Committee into something else. Please can we have questions that focus on the Bill?
The Chair
No, you are not allowed coffee. I said that earlier. If anybody has sneaked one in, I suggest you dispose of it quickly outside.
Mr Thomas
Q It was an interesting answer. I would be very grateful for an answer to the actual question I asked.
Mr Jones: The quantum of funding for adult social care is not part of the provisions of the Bill. My Department, along with other Departments in government, continually looks at the challenges and pressures around adult social care and the future sustainability of the system. I am therefore not sure that the Chairman will be keen for me to elaborate further on items that do not relate to the detail of the Bill.
The Chair
Can you dispose of it outside, please? Thank you very much. You cannot drink it inside. This was decided before you came here; it was very clear.
Mr Thomas
Q The deletion of the revenue support grant, which funds social care among other things, is one of the key aspects of the Bill. I gently ask again: does the Minister expect social care to be better funded as a result of the abolition of the revenue support grant and the 100% devolution of business rates, or not?
Mr Jones: Indeed, you are right, the revenue support grant will be rolled in to the quantum of the funding and the business rates retention. But I would also point out that the Bill puts in place a framework for the retention of business rates by local authorities. It does not go into the detail of what additional responsibilities local government will take on as a result of the additional funding. That is being brought forward alongside this through further work. We are also doing further work in relation to the fair funding review, which will certainly take into account the pressures of adult social care. We will be bringing forward that work, further consultation and a response to the initial consultation alongside work that is ongoing in relation to the Bill.
Justin Tomlinson
Q I spent 10 very happy years as a councillor and I get lobbied regularly by council leaders and experienced councillors. Minister, you are widely respected for having a good command of this area and for recognising that there is huge potential within local authorities.
I have a number of questions. The first is: the heart of the Bill is about encouraging and incentivising local authorities, but what more can we do to ensure that there is the capacity to take advantage of that? In Communities and Local Government questions, I raised the point about attracting more business-minded people. One of the challenges is that we will be expecting more of local authorities. When we go out, all of us, with our respective parties recruiting potential councillors, we will be asking more of their time. How can we attract sufficient numbers who have the expertise to be able to understand and deliver on what will be very large budgets? It is about looking at business-minded people and at councillors of all backgrounds to have that capacity.
Mr Jones: Thank you for your kind comments. You are absolutely right. The Bill is all about incentivising growth and incentivising local authorities to bring forward growth, so that a particular local authority area can benefit from the extension of its business rates base. Post-implementation of the system, it will be an exciting time to be a member of a local authority. We already have some excellent councillors up and down the country who are very focused on supporting business and growth in their areas, but you make a very good point about attracting new councillors who are business-savvy and entrepreneurial.
What we are doing here with the reforms will attract more business-savvy people in that sense, but we also have to help those people. My Department has to work with organisations such as the Local Government Association on councillor development and also on how councils work. One of the challenges when I was a local councillor and a council leader was that many council meetings were at times that were not appropriate for people who are running businesses. So councils will need to be mindful, if they want to attract high-quality people, about how that works and about how the officer team at the council works. For example, officers used to attend the council for briefings with me at six o’clock at night to reflect the fact that I had a full-time job. Those are things that certainly need to be considered, but I think that this will be a more attractive proposition for the type of people we all want to see in local government.
The Chair
We are time-limited: we have one minute left. If anybody on your side wishes to come in, we have time for one more question. That is all we are allowed.
Mr Thomas
Q How do you envisage the tariff and top-up system that you intend to retain differing under 100% business rates retention from the current system under 50% business rates retention?
Mr Jones: The tariff and top-up system will very much be used to deal with things like redistribution, as I am sure you are aware, Mr Thomas.
The Chair
Thank you very much. There are no introductory remarks; we will just ask questions. I call Gareth Thomas.
Mr Thomas
Q Two of the concerns about the Bill that have been raised with me relate to how redistribution might work—fairly or unfairly—when 100% of business rates are retained by local government, and whether responsibilities such as social care will be better funded under the new system than they are under the current system. I wonder whether you both might reflect on those two concerns.
Councillor Nick Forbes: The issue with redistribution is of concern to everyone across local government, because although collectively we sign up to the principle of localisation of business rates, we are concerned that the redistribution mechanism must be seen as fair by everyone. It would seem sensible to start with an assessment of current needs so that there is at least a level of clarity around the existing requirements to fund services in the system. One of the things that people say across the whole range of local government is that over time, because of the way that formulas have worked and settlements have been made, there has been a distancing of assessed need from funding. It would seem sensible to start with a baseline assessment.
On the point about whether social care would be better funded through this system, one of the challenges is getting right a system that is based entirely on local property taxes, but where eligibility for social care is determined through national criteria. There is a potential for the funding system not to accurately match needs, which is why, again, having some kind of national assessment of baseline needs would be a good place to start as we work through the detail of how that would operate.
Councillor Jon Collins: In terms of the effectiveness of redistribution of business rates as a way of funding local government, as Nick says that is very much going to rest on the redistribution formula on the one hand, but also on the way that the headroom generated by 100% business-rate retention is dealt with and the additional responsibilities that local government may or may not get to spend that effectively. Until we are clear about those two things, it is very difficult to make a judgment on whether the move to 100% business-rate retention is going to be fair and whether it will effectively better fund care. The nature of the funding formula, whether it relates to care or to the totality of how local government funding is passed through to local authorities, is very much the key.
If you look at how the additional funding for care at the moment has been distributed, we have two lots of clear criteria and one set of criteria that nobody can find out about. In terms of the improved better care fund, the criteria take into account the ability of local authorities to generate funding locally. The social care grant, which is £240 million, is allocated on a different formula, which does not take account of the ability to raise funding locally. Then there is transitional funding, which is in part a reflection of the additional costs of providing care, and nobody knows what the formula for distributing that is because it has not been disclosed to Parliament or to the Information Commissioner.
Mr Thomas
Q To follow on from that, there are clearly some in Whitehall who think that social care is now being properly funded and there is a package in place that will meet all the social care needs that have been identified. How would your two organisations respond to the idea that there is now a settled funding stream in place?
Councillor Nick Forbes: I do not know a single person in DCLG and I have not spoken to a single person in Whitehall who thinks that what we have for social care is anything other than a short-term temporary fix, which gets us through a few difficult months over this particular winter. There is clear acknowledgement—even the Secretary of State acknowledged this in the settlement—that there needs to be a longer-term solution for funding for social care. The LGA’s assessment is that there is a £2.6 billion shortfall in funding: £1.3 billion is required to stabilise the current system as it is at the moment and a further £1.3 billion is required by the end of the Parliament to deal with the cost pressures and demographic pressures that the system faces. It is very clear from the whole of local government—this is a cross-party view from within the LGA—that funding the social care problem is our top priority. So far, what we have had is something that gets us a few months further ahead but does not solve the problem into the long term.
Councillor Jon Collins: From the Core Cities’ point of view, every core city would take the view that funding for social care is very much in crisis and that the current arrangements just scratch the surface. If I may, I will just give you Nottingham as an example. Out of a net budget of about £260-odd million, something like £90 million is adult care. We have £11.2 million-worth of cost pressures, and that is wages, demography, additional inflation and charges from providers. The potential increase to council tax of 3% and the extra care funding we are to receive is about £5.8 million. So £5.6 million is unfunded pressures, which we will have to accommodate by making savings elsewhere in our budget, at a time when we are also seeing our revenue support grant going down from £56 million to £44 million. As you can see, the overall picture for an authority such as Nottingham—we are very typical of the core cities—is that this year’s approach helps a little bit, but that there is still massive pressure that is unfunded, and we expect the same next year. That is with an assumption that we will be increasing council tax by 5% overall.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q You have both mentioned that distribution, and assessment of need, are the keys to this. Your spending power for both your authorities is around 30% lower than some of the highest spending authorities in London, for example. Is the current system anywhere near fair?
Councillor Jon Collins: In a word, no. Spending power is an interesting way of looking at these things, but our spending power now, as a core city with major challenges in terms of deprivation, is lower than that of Rutland, which is another local authority in the east Midlands and largely covers a lake, a few sheep and a few large houses. It is a very unfair way of making judgments about relative impact of spending. Even for the next financial year, we are seeing a reduction in spending power of 1.5%, and Rutland is seeing a reduction of 0.6%. So there are major disparities—that is, if one assumes that spending power is a fair reflection of the spending needs of local authorities.
Four years ago, our revenue support grant was £126 million; next year it will be £44 million. That is the scale of funding reduction we are being faced with. We have had to make significant reductions in services in some areas. We have done other things, as most core cities have, to boost income, reconfigure services and work closely with others to make sure that we are commissioning in the most cost-effective and efficient way, which is a positive. Fundamentally, however, there has been a significant and dramatic effect on services.
Councillor Nick Forbes: One of the challenges is the currency that you use to describe the nature of the problem. It is easy to say that we have an unfair system if you look simply at a per capita rating—and that is one of the ways in which people compare different types of authorities. Spending power is another currency, and so is needs requirement. What there is not, across the system, is a settled view about which of those is the most appropriate to use. Inevitably, that gets you into the realm of which one is better for which political outcome. That is one of the reasons why there is concern about the way in which the business rates system works at the moment.
Mr Thomas
Q Is it fair that, under the Bill, only areas with a Mayor are going to be allowed to raise business rates up to a cap of 2p in the pound?
Councillor Nick Forbes: The LGA position is that we would welcome a conversation with the Government about how we can get maximum flexibility out of the system. The challenge is that areas that do not opt for an elected Mayor will, by default, lose out in terms of infrastructure investment. It would make sense for there to be some kind of system from which, through various routes, everybody feels that they can benefit.
Councillor Jon Collins: If devolution was an option for everybody, if there was a fair and transparent process for making bids for devolution deals, if there was a very clear understanding of the rules of the game, and if people chose not to go down that route, I think there would be an argument for making that differentiation. In the current climate, in which much of that is opaque and where there are no clear rules of engagement around devolution and the prospect of moving towards combined authorities and directly elected Mayors, it would seem very unfair.
The Chair
I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the allocated time for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for your evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Graham Soulsby, Councillor David Borrow and Guy Ware gave evidence.
Mr Thomas
Q The consultation document, which Ministers put out last year with a view to this legislation coming forward, very strongly hinted that the improved better care fund, the public health grant and the rural services delivery grant, among other pots of money, would be abolished as part of the package for devolving business rates. What impact do you think that will have on the groups of councils that you represent?
Guy Ware: I think the overall issue will be the degree to which local authorities—in my case, London boroughs and the Greater London Authority—are able to promote growth to increase the overall amount of money available and to flexibly spend the product of it. At the moment, we operate within a very centralised system where a number of individual policy issues are addressed through specific grant regimes, such as the improved better care fund. We would argue that that produces considerable perverse incentives and distortions, and that we would be better able to respond to the pressures in issues such as adult social care, which your previous witnesses talked about, if we were given the flexibility to raise and spend money in ways that are controlled locally.
Councillor David Borrow: From a County Councils Network point of view, I think we need to take one step back. Clearly, if councillors are going to be dependent on council tax and business rates, the key issue is the equalisation mechanism. That feeds back to something that is not in this Bill: the needs-based review. Fundamentally, we are looking for a fair, transparent needs-based review that is based on the cost drivers in each area. From our point of view, the bulk of our spending is now on adult social care and we clearly need to get that properly reflected in any needs-based review of funding.
The equalisation mechanism needs to go back to the theory of local government finance that I remember when I first got involved 40 years ago, which was that wherever you lived in England and Wales, the funding that was available at a fixed rate, as it was in those days, enabled the council to deliver a certain level of service. Councils may be bad or good, efficient or inefficient, and may have different priorities, such as low rates, high spending levels or high service levels. That is fundamental. What has happened is that bit by bit we have moved away from that and there is a lot of unfairness in the system, both between types of councils and due to historical accidents that have exaggerated difference.
The biggest danger we see—and this is obviously a Labour councillor speaking for a network that is overwhelmingly Conservative—is that we will not get what we want, which is something that fairly reflects the responsibilities that we have. We accept that there will be winners and losers, but we want a fair system that is moving away from the inequalities that have built up in the system. If the system is simply based on the existing spending patterns, that reinforces the unfairness. We need to get away completely from that.
Graham Soulsby: Without going over the same ground as colleagues, I would agree that one of the big things in the new system is the needs-based review and linking it to the fairer funding formula. That is a key thing in getting it right. If we move to a better position in how that works, it should give authorities a bit more power and flexibility. Obviously, the funding pot does not necessarily change, but it is about how that is distributed.
I would make the additional point that it is not just about the allocation of funding to do different things. It is also about how we can promote more prevention-based spending—moving it around and spending more at the earlier end of where the pressures are, which is cheaper than spending it at the end when the costs are a lot more.
Mr Thomas
Q The Minister painted a picture of 100% business rates retention leading to a new dawn of councils rushing out to encourage huge amounts of new economic growth. I wonder if that is a picture that you recognise. If not, what barriers to that economic growth can you think of? I ask that in the context of a rural area where the space for the type of warehouse facilities that you could imagine generating significant business rates will be much more limited.
Guy Ware: I think that “new dawn” is an interesting phrase. There are clearly incentives built into this. In our submissions to the consultation at the end of September, we identified a number of issues that prevent those incentives working clearly.
One of those, as we heard about a moment ago, is the appeals impact. Another is simply the frequency with which the system will take away the growth that is delivered by any activity in a given area. There is no straightforward answer to that. The new system has to address both the needs issues that my colleagues have mentioned and also, because it is the explicit intention of the Bill, a way of retaining a significant financial incentive while recognising those needs issues.
What are the barriers to growth? That is a very big question that it is perhaps beyond the scope of the Bill to resolve. From a London perspective, we have been very clear what we need. We think the greater local powers over these issues would enable the capital to respond better to the threats that we currently face, particularly the uncertainty arising from Brexit and also, less topically, the threat to the sustainability of growth within the capital, which to some extent is a victim of its own success.
The ability to house and transport people to keep working in London is a huge challenge. There are specific clauses in the Bill that we think would help that—for example the infrastructure supplement and designated areas—but there are others where we think it is unhelpful. For example, on the use of the infrastructure supplements, there is a broad definition of what they can be spent on, which is anything that will promote economic development, but unfortunately, two clauses later, there are specific exclusions, the first of which is housing. If you ask businesses in London, as we have repeatedly, what the biggest barrier is to continued and sustainable growth in London, they will say the lack of housing. So we want to see the Bill go further to free up local government to use some of the products of business rates in ways that are more suitable to their particular economies.
Councillor David Borrow: Given that the County Councils Network represents large rural areas and small towns, the issue around elected Mayors causes a lot of problems because elected Mayors are a prerequisite for being able to have greater control over business rates, including increased business rates to put infrastructure in. That is a real problem in shire counties. Conservative Members here know the debates they have had on that issue. The County Councils Network wants that power to be given to combined authorities without it requiring an elected mayor.
Secondly, if the Government are looking to give further responsibilities as a result of transferring 100% business rates, the LGA has clearly identified lots of areas currently delivered by Government that promote economic growth, and it seems logical and sensible for those responsibilities to be transferred to local government where they fit in with the policy of developing economic growth at the local level.
Thirdly, in many rural areas a lot of businesses are exempt from business rates as a result of the systems to promote business, and the mechanism affects the income that the council gets. You can promote small businesses, but it is different in rural areas and in more urban areas.
Graham Soulsby: The last answer I gave was about making sure we get the needs-based assessment right. The other side of that is making sure we get the incentive side of it right. Those are the two key things in terms of how the Bill might operate. The incentive side will be key in whether the changes actually promote more economic growth at local government level. From an incentive perspective, if local authorities and their communities can keep more of the additional money that comes from business growth, there is probably more of an incentive to promote economic growth.
There is an issue that we have tried to flag up through the various working groups that we have been sitting on, which have been very good, through the Department for Communities and Local Government. If a reset comes up in a five-year period, we have argued that we need to be really careful about how that works, because there could be a disincentive to economic growth as you move towards that reset. If you did it in year four of the five-year period, you would not keep much of the additional income that comes through because it would all get redistributed. We have tried to argue that for that to work properly, there needs to be some retention of incentive in the medium term so that if you want to use some of the additional business rate income, you can go out to the market and perhaps get infrastructure funding to promote some bigger schemes, but you would have to pay it back over a longer period of time. There needs to be flexibility in how much incentive there is and in how much business rate increase you can keep for a longer period to get real economic growth.
Peter Aldous
Q For the record, I am chairman of the county all-party group, for which the County Councils Network provides the secretariat. Mr Soulsby and Councillor Borrow, you very much emphasised the importance of the needs-based review of the fair funding formula being synchronised with the implementation of the provisions in the Bill. Do you think there is a case for including that in the Bill?
Councillor David Borrow: It is unusual that the two things have been separated. The timing of both parts of this change needs to be as close as possible. If they have to be done in two separate pieces, they need to be co-ordinated. Clearly, until we have sorted out the funding formula, we cannot really move ahead with 100% business rates, and getting that right is fundamentally important.
Graham Soulsby: It will be okay if the co-ordination is done properly, given that this is more of a framework. One of the things that the working groups at DCLG are working with local government on is the much longer gestation of the needs-based side of it. We have been trying to argue that the timescale needs to be brought back a bit and it needs to be done more quickly. That definitely needs to happen. Whether it needs to be part of the Bill, I am not sure, to be honest.
Kevin Hollinrake
You have also got nine of the 10 authorities with the highest spending power in the country.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q This is evidence. And nine of the 10 lowest council tax charges in the country. I am not saying every local council in London—
Guy Ware: We also have nine of the 10 areas with the greatest multiple deprivation. The point that we need to get to is that there is a history behind that, as one of the previous questions suggested. The differences between neighbouring London boroughs can be as great in terms of spending power and tax as between some London boroughs and some authorities in other areas of the country.
One of the previous questions this morning was about the Independent Commission on Local Government Finance. One of the commission’s key recommendations was that the variations between authorities were at least as great within regions as they were between regions. As a result, it concluded and recommended that it would be possible and sensible to devise an approach that looked at regional funding needs, which would allow authorities within a region to deal with the distribution within that region.
Peter Aldous
Q As part of the whole devolution process, in order to facilitate the new business rate retention process, at present various responsibilities are being transferred from central to local government so as to ensure fiscal neutrality. I would welcome your views on that. From your perspective of taking on those responsibilities, are there any unexploded bombs that you might think are being passed to you unfairly?
Graham Soulsby: That is a really good question, but one that is quite hard to answer at this moment in time. The issue of new responsibilities, as you can see from the drafting of the Bill, is not in there. We have had discussions in the DCLG working groups about different ideas of what those new responsibilities might be, but the big point that all representatives of local government have made is that, obviously, we are open to the discussion. We do not want to take on responsibilities that have that ticking time bomb element where they are fiscally neutral at day one, but by year five a huge deficit is eating into our business rate income. As a principle, we have been trying to argue that with DCLG officials. They understand the debate, but we have not yet got to the detail in terms of thrashing it out.
Councillor David Borrow: I would go along with that. From our perspective, there is a real risk. The point that the County Councils Network would make—this may be shared by other people in local government—is that there is a first call to be made on any business rates before additional responsibilities are transferred, which is to ensure that the existing funding gap is met. Particularly in terms of adult social care and looking forward over the next few years as the revenue support grant disappears, the figures show a gap. In my own authority, we are looking at a gap of £150 million between income and expenditure in 2020-21. That sort of figure is not particularly unusual among upper-tier authorities.
Guy Ware: The equivalent figure in London, collectively, is about £2 billion, plus the GLA.
I echo what my colleagues have said. To be perhaps more positive than I have been about some other issues, one ticking time bomb has already been defused in the non-transfer of attendance allowance. I give credit and pay tribute to the joint working groups that Graham mentioned earlier and that the DCLG has been leading with the LGA. That is evidence of some listening and some progress in the joint assessment of problems.
Mr Thomas
Q Just to follow up the ticking time bomb analogy, if the £3 billion public health grant were to be abolished, would public health become a ticking time bomb for local government?
Guy Ware: I think public health is a ticking time bomb for the country as a whole. One of the comments that Graham made earlier, about the desire to shift spending into prevention and away from expensive interventions, applies fundamentally to this issue. If the grant were abolished and public health became a local authority responsibility like any others funded from council tax and business rates, the incentive to ensure that we were fulfilling the kinds of policy objectives that underpin public health would become all the stronger. There is risk involved in that, obviously—namely, that we cannot cope with the consequences—but certainly there would be benefits in aligning the responsibility and accountability for managing those services with those who are raising the resources.
Councillor David Borrow: This raises a bigger issue: local government, in terms of adult social care authorities, needs to find a way of working properly with the NHS. At the moment, there are disincentives around adult social care and the NHS. Clearly that is the direction of travel that the Government want to move in, but they need to look at what they need to do to ensure that the right partnerships between local government and the NHS can exist. With something like public health, if the funding for it is reduced, that would put more pressure on adult social care and on the NHS in the longer term, however useful that may be in reducing budgets in the short term.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allocated to the Committee to ask questions. I thank our witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence.