Local Government Finance Bill

George Howarth Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The danger in the hon. Gentleman’s formulation is in assuming that that would shift all funding in that way, and that is not correct. What we have said is that we will have the option to make an adjustment to keep the grant within the control totals, and to ensure that money raised by business rates is returned to local government, in a way that is consistent with the scheme in the Local Government Finance Act 1988. That is not different, because as the hon. Gentleman, with his experience, will know, quite a number of funding streams are paid to local authorities, outside formula grant. I do not accept that it follows that all of them have to be added in. What we have said is that we will seek to align more closely the grants with the responsibilities.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has been generous. He may cover this later, but the top-ups and tariffs updated by the retail prices index would mean that, without the protection of safety nets, Knowsley, which I have the honour to represent, would have a four-year cash growth of 21.9%; by comparison, for the City of London, it would be 139.6%. Will he explain how the measures that he is about to announce would ameliorate the problem?

[Robert Neill]

In a later passage of the schedule, we deal with the operation of the set-aside and the safety net, and that will deal with the issue of recouping what is decided to be disproportionate growth, and how that will work in principle. Of course, as this is a framework Bill, it does not set out the impact on any individual local authority; it sets out the methodology that will be applied, and I will happily deal with that at the appropriate time.

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that, as we may have indicated earlier, over the spending review period that we have looked at, Knowsley’s non-domestic rate increase was 8.4%, which is significantly above the national average. Of course, I accept that local authorities start with different financial circumstances, and we are reflecting that in the baseline, so that no one is worse off, but we are right to point out that some local authorities that certainly have a number of demands on their resources are capable, as we have seen, of a growth in business rate income that is above the national average.

In a nutshell, the Government amendments deal with a set of revisions that we do not anticipate having to use, but which it is desirable to have, as a fail-safe device to correct any mistake or erroneous calculation. That is the background. One further point should be made: it follows that where we have occasion to use the provisions to recalculate tariffs and top-ups, or to make an amending report, obviously the sums due to local authorities would potentially differ from those of which they were originally notified. It is therefore right to point out that the provisions in paragraph 12(5) and 12(7) and in paragraph 15(3) and 15(5) ensure that the sums due and paid by an authority as a result of the original calculations can be compared with the result of the recalculation or the amending report, and that adjusting payments can be made to reflect the difference.

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[Mr George Howarth]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I sat through his speech last week on the first day in Committee, in which he pleaded the case for Westminster. I found it difficult to sleep that night, given the strong concerns that he raised about the consequences of the Bill for his constituency. On reflection, I decided that it might not be that bad really.

I have some sympathy with the Minister, with the amendments and, indeed, with the Bill. Local government finance generally is so technical that it reminds me of the Schleswig-Holstein affair. People think that they understand it, but many years later they have forgotten it. Some 25 years ago, when I was a local authority finance chairman, I actually understood multiple regression analysis, but if anyone were to intervene and ask me to explain it now, I would struggle.

[John Healey]

rose—

[Mr Howarth]

My right hon. Friend would give me another sleepless night.

[Mark Field]

The right hon. Gentleman mentions Schleswig-Holstein, but he has not gone into detail about which local government Minister has gone mad as a result of all this.

[Mr Howarth]

I suspect that there are several candidates. I remember a few, but it would be churlish to name names.

I shall be brief, largely because my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) stole my thunder, but my concern is that in Knowsley we have two large private sector employers. QVC, the home shopping channel, employs about 1,500 people, and Jaguar Land Rover is also a major employer with more than 1,000 employees. There is no reason to believe that either company is in any danger. Both are very successful and are doing well, even in these straitened economic times, but what would happen if one were at some point to go bust—one of them represents 7% of the total business rates take? Unless there is clarity about what would happen in those circumstances, the effect on the finances of the borough of Knowsley could be appalling. We need clarity about what would happen in such circumstances. I hope, therefore, that when the Minister replies, or perhaps at a later stage, he can give some further and better particulars about how all this will work.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I would like to make just a few comments, because I have listened intently to the discussion and found I am quite confused about the time periods that different people are talking about. I would like to ask the Minister what time of year the levy will be announced—that is critical—and also which year will be used. I have found it difficult to see whether we are dealing with historical data or doing it as we go along.

One big change will be that council finance officers are likely to be preparing monthly reports on the revenue from business rates, which will be different from what happened previously. I can see how that will focus the council’s mind on what is happening to its business rates, as well encouraging it proactively to talk with its local businesses to check stability and so on. I can see a lot of positives in that, but I need to know what the stocks and flows will be—it is really confusing—what the time periods will be and when the announcements will be made.

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[Robert Neill]

As I recall, when we get to paragraph 26 we are looking at that ability, but let me double-check the exact paragraph. One has to look both at this part and at the part that deals with the safety net. In paragraph 26 of the schedule, there are regulations that can be made about payments on account. We envisage circumstances in which the Secretary of State may make an in-year calculation in response to a request, and regulations can be drawn up to deal with that eventuality, which is a fair one. I hope that puts the hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest.

[Mr George Howarth]

This might make me a bit unpopular on the Opposition Benches, but I think it is perfectly understandable that the Minister might want to deal with the detail of this, after consultation with local government, through regulations that will go before the House. That is not unreasonable, but it would help many of us if rather than giving the detail of the regulations he gave some indication, either now or later in the afternoon, of the principles he would like to adopt in the regulations and on which they would be based.

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[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend, herself the former leader of a major local authority, makes a fair point. It is what we have been debating throughout the Bill. Everywhere we look in it, we see no consideration of need; the poorest local authorities are being penalised most at every point.

We have said that the Bill does not recognise the barriers to growth that some areas face, such as the lack of appropriate transport infrastructure or of surplus capacity, as my hon. Friend will know from Halton, near her own area of Liverpool, for example. Everyone seems to accept that some growth happens simply because of where it is. Add to that the fact that councils also face a 10% cut in money to fund council tax benefit and we see that there will be real pressure on many local authorities. They will face having to cut benefits for some of the poorest people, having to cut services or having to raise council tax. We all know how difficult it is going to be to raise council tax. The result of the changes is that stronger local economies will find it easier to grow while others find themselves caught in a trap of rising demand and declining resources.

[Mr George Howarth]

My hon. Friend mentioned Knowsley. Does she accept that the problem is not just current, but stretches out into the future? My information is that from 2017-18, wealthier authorities will begin to see real-terms growth in resources, yet Knowsley will still face year-on-year reductions in resources of more than 5%. After 10 years, it will still have reductions of 3.8%. If what we are discussing is wrong now, it will become progressively more wrong as the years go by.

[Helen Jones]

My right hon. Friend has hit on the key to the Bill. It is not simply wrong in the beginning; it will increase inequalities—get more and more wrong—as it proceeds.

Inequalities will widen, even if the top-ups and tariffs are uprated by the retail prices index, and the levy will not fully compensate for that. Remember that even if we get a proper definition of what constitutes a disproportionate gain—bearing in mind the earlier debate, that seems unlikely at the moment—councils need to pay only a proportion of that in levy. The logic of that is that some areas will benefit from disproportionate growth. Others will fall further behind.

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[Mr Jones]

Yes, or Pickles dyke.

[Mr George Howarth]

My hon. Friend is developing an interesting argument.

[The Temporary Chair (John Robertson)]

Order. But one that has absolutely nothing to do with the Bill.

[Mr Howarth]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware of the fact that there was a residents group in Liverpool that had a battle with the city council over the right to name the local streets. They lived in an area called Weller streets. They won the battle, and in homage to the city engineer who had said that they could not rename the streets, they named one Weller way.

[Mr Jones]

I obviously do not want to draw your wrath, Mr Robertson, for going off the subject, but time and time again the Secretary of State talks about devolution and giving local government powers, and then he produces this centralising Bill and gives councils diktats week after week about what they should and should not be doing—whether they should have pot plants, or whether they should have weekly bin collections. The public will start to see through it. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have a Bill that will centralise power and centralise the finance that local councils raise and at the same time tell councils what they can and cannot do, but that is his method. If the Government do not accept the amendment and accept need as the basis for payments, people will come to the conclusion that many of us have already come to—that they do not actually care about need.

[Robert Neill]

I will endeavour to confine myself to matters that are germane to the amendments, so I will be fairly brief despite the temptation to inquire what happened to Trotsky and Bakunin drives. I imagine they were probably airbrushed off the map in Durham at some point.

I am not sure whether hon. Members have quite followed how paragraph 28, relating to the distribution of any remaining balance in the levy account, will actually work. As I hope they will be aware, provision is made in the Bill for some or all of the remaining balance in the levy account to be returned to local authorities. It provides flexibility over the amount to be distributed and the basis of distribution, and we believe that it is wise and sensible to keep it that way. It will enable the distribution of the remaining balance to be carried out as is appropriate at a particular time. For example, it might be appropriate to distribute it to authorities on the basis of need, or if we assess that there is no such need, we might wish to return it to some of the levy authorities to make up for the taking of levy moneys that were not needed for disbursement. It would be wrong to preclude that possibility, which is provided for in the Bill.

[Mr George Howarth]

Actually, paragraph 28 states:

“The Secretary of State may determine that an amount equal to the whole or part of the remaining balance on the levy”

be distributed. I am sure it was inadvertent, but the Minister misled the Committee slightly a few moments ago.

[Robert Neill]

No, with respect, because first, there is flexibility to distribute all or part of the balance on that basis. Secondly, that flexibility is not unchecked, because the procedures in sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) require the Secretary of State to include both the amount to be distributed and the basis on which it is to happen in a local government finance report, which will be subject to the scrutiny of the House. Such a report is laid before the House and can be debated.

Finally, paragraph 18 tightly defines the debits that may be made from the levy account. The effect of that paragraph, taken together with the rest of the schedule, is that any money in the levy account can be used only to make safety net payments or to be returned to local authorities as part of the distribution of the remaining balance for the year. The idea that the Treasury can somehow snaffle it and keep it back from local government is simply not correct.

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[Mr George Howarth]

I have already mentioned paragraph 28. Sub-paragraph (1) refers to paragraph 19(2), which states that the remaining balance must be

“debited (as an item of account) to the levy account kept for the year”

or

“credited (as an item of account) to the levy account kept for the next year.”

The flexibility still lies with the Secretary of State, who can decide whether it is utilised in the current year or the subsequent one.

[Robert Neill]

That just enables the sum to be carried over. The point is that it would remain in the same account. It could not be used for any other purpose. It could be carried forward for a year as part of a buffer, but as I have indicated, it could go out of the levy account only by way of a safety net payment or as a distribution of the remaining balance to local authorities. Either way, it would go back to local government. That is the key point that I am not sure has been grasped. I therefore hope that Members will not press amendment 33 to a Division.

Amendment 35 would require any payment in respect of the remaining balance to take place in the following year. There are some technical reasons why I do not believe it would work, including the need for any payment from central Government to local authorities to include the standard provisions about Treasury consent. I know that Opposition Members will remember that. It is a technical thing, but it has to be done.

I assure Members that in practice we would not want to hold back any distribution of the remaining balance once it had been agreed in the local government finance report. However, payment as described in the amendment might be difficult to achieve because of the timing of that report.

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[Helen Jones]

I did not say that they were in every constituency: I said that they are concentrated in London and the south-east, which is a plain fact.

In any case, we do not believe that this is the way to proceed. If the Government do not take steps to tackle the gap—and those steps are not set out in the Bill—services in many councils will decline, while others are able to reduce, even abolish their council tax as time goes on. We will therefore seek to divide the Committee on the amendment later, and I commend it to my hon. Friends.

[Mr George Howarth]

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on amendment 65, which encapsulates an important principle. The 2012-13 settlement, which will be used as the baseline for the new finance system that is to be introduced, has a number of problems that will affect areas such as Knowsley disproportionately—we have already heard examples from other areas.

It is important for Knowsley in particular—and I hope the Minister will comment on this when he replies to the debate—that the system is based on the damped allocations, including the grant floor, as that will lock £6 million in for Knowsley, which is a very important sum of money. The baseline also needs to consider the scale of cuts faced by some local authorities in the recent multi-year settlement which, as my hon. Friend has said, targeted some of the most deprived areas in Britain, including Knowsley. It is worth reminding the Committee that Knowsley’s cut in revenue spending power per head of population in 2011-12 was £156.09 compared with the average in England as a whole of £49.18.

If the Secretary of State were here for this debate, he would be sitting there smiling and might even be tempted to say, “The point we’re trying to make with this Bill is that local authorities such as Knowsley should go out and promote their businesses, get more inward investment and shore up the business rate, the benefits of which would offset some of these problems.” However, the difficulty is, first, that that does not address the fact that we cannot switch around economic activity in a given area in a short space of time. We can do it over time, and Knowsley has been quite successful in retaining major industries. Earlier I quoted the example of Jaguar Land Rover, which has remained in Knowsley; indeed, it has grown, with new products and a major recruitment programme last year. New businesses can also be attracted, which is what we did with QVC, a massive business, employing about 1,500 people in Knowsley, and a major contributor to the business rates of the borough. However, doing that takes time, and such changes cannot be made in a short space of time.

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[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful point about the needs of specific areas, and he is correct in saying that Liverpool, Walton now has, unfortunately, the fifth highest level of unemployment in the country. Liverpool as a whole therefore needs more support. How does he think the Government can justify the fact that, proportionally, places such as Liverpool have been hit the hardest and that Liverpool has had to take a cut of £141 million in the past two years?

[Mr Howarth]

I shall give my hon. Friend two possible answers to his question, and I shall leave him to decide which is correct. The first possibility is that the Secretary of State and the Ministers responsible for this Bill genuinely believe that areas such as mine and that of my hon. Friend have the capacity create to economic growth—a bit like turning on a tap—and to widen the tax base and increase the revenue that they get through the business rates. They might also think that we are not doing enough to attract new investment into our areas. My hon. Friend and I know that that is not the case, however.

The alternative answer was put forward in very explicit terms by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) earlier. It is that these measures are a crude way of rewarding those areas that send Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to this House and penalising those that do not. To put it even more crudely than my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham did—although I am not entirely sure that that is possible—I think that the Government are rewarding their friends and penalising their enemies.

I am not standing here as the representative of the Knowsley constituency to cry crocodile tears or to wave around the levels of deprivation that exist there. Those are facts. This is not a question of sentiment or of special pleading. The reality is that, as a result of historical events, some of which took place at least 20 years ago, we have problems and, as a result, we have needs. Unless the Bill can satisfy me and the people of Knowsley that those needs will be taken into account when the grant formula is determined, the more bleak interpretation that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton drew out of me a moment ago will be the inescapable conclusion.

I hope that the Government will accept the amendment, either here or in the House of Lords, later in the proceedings. They must not fall back on the argument that we heard earlier, when they said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take all this into account in the regulations. It will all become clear then.” The risks involved are so great for my constituents and for the local authority in Knowsley that it is impossible for me to accept those assurances. I do not believe that they have been given dishonestly. I accept that they have been given in good faith, but I have been around long enough to know that promises made in the heat of the moment in Committee in response to concerns about specific provisions have a habit of getting lost in the ether later. We need clarity, but we need it now. Local authorities are expected to plan on a long-term basis to meet their needs and determine their expenditure on services. Without that clarity, we will find ourselves in a position, some years down the line, in which the worst possible interpretation that we can put on the Bill will be the nightmare reality.

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[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Helen Jones]

rose—

[Andrew Stunell]

I shall give way to the right hon. Gentleman and then to the hon. Lady.

[Mr Howarth]

I need to make two points. First, when I spoke earlier I made the point that as far as I know there is no danger of the two companies I mentioned—Jaguar Land Rover and QVC—not surviving and prospering in future. I mentioned them merely as examples of the sort of investment Knowsley has been able to attract and I was not saying that the inherent volatility is likely to come about because either of them will close. Secondly, the Minister suggests that I should talk to the director of finance at Knowsley, but my speech was based largely on a discussion I have already had with the director of finance. Given the current circumstances, he does not think that the kind of investment we have been able to attract in the past can be guaranteed in future.

[Andrew Stunell]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, I agree and I am sorry if any of my remarks conveyed a different impression. He is absolutely right that the issue is not about the future of particular companies in his constituency. On his second point, it is a good idea for me to tackle this issue of need head-on, as the amendment is about need.

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[Andrew Stunell]

I invite the hon. Lady to check her diary carefully and see exactly when it was that we had to buy all the banks because they had gone bust.

I want to contrast Knowsley with another local authority. Knowsley gets £1,225 per resident in formula grant. I am sure the right hon. Member for Knowsley would say that is not enough, and I understand his point of view, but I want to draw his attention to Wokingham, which is often prayed in aid as one of those rich southern places that benefits from an unfair system. Wokingham had a 3.3% growth in its business rates in the period I have mentioned against Knowsley’s 8.7%, and whereas Knowsley got £1,225 in formula grant per person, Wokingham got £686. That is being built into the system.

The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) said he thought the Government were behaving grotesquely unfairly. He may think that, but I have hon. Friends who think that that outcome is grotesquely unfair for a different reason. We have a system that recognises need, albeit imperfectly and even though we have built in damping. That suits the right hon. Member for Knowsley but does not suit my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner). That is entrenched in the system and it is important that if the Opposition make criticisms—understandably, because that is their job—they should be based on a sense of reality.

We are introducing a scheme that provides an incentive for growth and localises decisions over the money that local authorities can spend. That growth and localisation is very much better than local authorities standing as beggars at the door of Whitehall, year after year, saying, “We want more money.” Surely it is right that those who have the money can decide how to spend it and those who can promote growth have opportunities not only to do it but to benefit from it.

What about Westminster which the right hon. Member for Knowsley prayed also in aid? Let us be clear: he should rejoice when Westminster gets loads of business rate. Why? Because the authority keeps only the baseline figure. It will keep only its formula grant figure. All the rest will go to help Knowsley, among other places—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) says it is not true. I am not sure whether she is accusing me of deceiving the Committee.

Westminster gets its formula grant and the rest goes back into the pot. When Westminster has growth, it will be able to keep some of it. If it has disproportionate growth, it will be taken away in the levy. Two things will affect Westminster: it will get only the equivalent of its formula grant in its baseline, and when growth comes, any disproportionate growth will be taken away to fund the right hon. Gentleman’s safety net.

[Mr George Howarth]

Let me make it clear. I am not arguing that Westminster, Wokingham or even the Isle of Wight should be penalised in any way. That is not my point. By making invidious comparisons, the Minister makes the case for the amendment. We are saying not that everybody should get the same, but that what they get should be based on rigorous analysis of the needs of individual areas.

[Andrew Stunell]

The right hon. Gentleman should be careful about making that argument; I might be tempted to take away his damping. That would be the unchallengeable fact in what he said.

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[Mr George Howarth]

I suggest that in the morning, when the Minister has a quiet moment—I am sure that he has them in his life—he reads the Hansard for this debate; he can then decide which of us is being contradictory. For the purposes of absolute clarity, and following the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) made, will the Minister make it absolutely clear that his was a light-hearted debating remark, and that he does not intend to penalise Knowsley in the way that he described?

[Andrew Stunell]

I am disappointed with that, I have to say. I said very clearly that the Government have reached a settled view about including damping in the formula grant system; I hope that that is very clearly on the record.

Let me turn to the part of the amendment that relates to what should happen to revenue support grant. We are talking about funding outside the local share of the rates retention scheme. We could only use the revenue support grant for other matters. For instance, in the financial year 2013-14, the most likely recipient will be Local Government Improvement and Development. Perhaps the scale of these things needs to be understood: £27.8 billion is being distributed through formula grant—the amount that will, in future, come through the business rates retention scheme. Local government receives funding from outside that, from departmental budgets. For instance, under the provisional settlement for the coming year, the learning disability and health reform grant will be £1.36 billion; that comes from the Department of Health. The local sustainable transport fund will be a much smaller figure—£100 million—and comes from the Department for Transport. The preventing homelessness grant will be £90 million, and comes from the Department for Communities and Local Government. In the great majority of cases, it would be completely inappropriate to do what is suggested in amendment 65 and run those through a needs assessment.

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If the new system will be perfect from day one, what have the Government to fear from reviewing it after three or five years, as local government wants them to? As councils recognise, the inequalities will continue and there would be a loud clamour and pressure on the Government to change the benchmark in three, four or five years’ time. If it is locked in for 10 years, they can keep on ignoring that, saying that as the law says they must wait that long it is the earliest time they can review it.

[Mr George Howarth]

Does my hon. Friend accept that as well as the regional disparity he has described there are disparities within regions, which mean that things could be even worse for some local authorities?