Local Government Finance

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which is why it is all the more worrying that Ministers want to abolish the revenue support grant totally under the Local Government Finance Bill.

Perhaps I should not be too harsh on the Secretary of State. After all, he has had a rough week. He was accused by the former Conservative party chairman of “spinning the numbers”, and I hear that there was concern among Conservative Members that the Secretary of State was being hung out to dry by colleagues, so it was good to hear the Prime Minister’s spokesperson confirm that No. 10 still had full confidence in him. In truth, in just eight short months, the Secretary of State has been found asleep at the wheel twice—with a social care crisis entirely of the Government’s own making, about which he was warned well in advance; and now a business rates crisis, which he must have known might create a problem for many businesses, given that his party delayed the revaluation by two years, yet the seriousness of which it has apparently taken him until now to grasp.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if county councils such as Nottinghamshire want to do better on social care, they can look at cutting their costs by going into a unitary authority? Conservative county councillors in Nottinghamshire agreed that that was a good idea, but Labour county councillors, no doubt thinking of their allowances, decided it was a bad idea.

[Mr Thomas]

I encourage the right hon. Lady, for whom I normally have a lot of respect, not to make such partisan and, I suspect, inaccurate points, but to look at a booklet published by the LGA Labour group that gives 100 examples of the way in which Labour councils have innovated during the past few years. She may want to encourage some Conservative councillors whom she knows to follow such examples.

The Secretary of State sent a letter to all his Conservative colleagues claiming that the concerns raised about business rates by businesses and hospitals were based, apparently, on a

“relentless campaign of distortions and half-truths”.

Leaving aside the question of whether it was right to release the figures just to Members of his own party, the irony is that, as was quickly exposed, the actual bills businesses will receive are likely to be 7% higher than the figures he produced. I gently suggest that the Secretary of State is in danger of getting a reputation for being sloppy in his use of figures.

Ministers have known about the business rates revaluation for a long time. Indeed, when announcing the delay, the right hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles) explained that it was to prevent “unexpected hikes” in business rates. Why did the current group of Ministers not think to analyse its consequences a little earlier? How can it possibly be fair that the overall business rates bill for Amazon, which has avoided paying much in corporation tax despite making huge profits, has gone down while family-run businesses that have existed on local high streets for decades face huge rises in their business rates bills? To accuse, as the Secretary of State effectively did, the Federation of Small Businesses, the CBI and the British Retail Consortium of “distortions and half-truths” in their campaigning is a disgrace. He should apologise to them.