Local Government Finance (England)
Debate between Gordon Marsden and Lord Foster of Bath(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
As the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) who opened the debate moved to the apotheosis of a speech that, sadly, was rather shot through with bombast and self-satisfaction, he delivered the stirring words that putting councils in charge of their own destiny was the centre point of this local government statement. In the time allowed I would like to look at one council—my own council in Blackpool—and see what it has done to put itself in charge of its own destiny and how it has been affected by the way the Government have dealt with it.
As a small unitary authority, Blackpool is entering a difficult situation and difficult narrative due to Government cuts over the past two years. According to the multiple deprivation index, it is the sixth most deprived council in the country, and in that respect resembles a number of other seaside and coastal towns that have pockets of severe deprivation—such as the Minister’s council in Great Yarmouth, for example. Most of those areas, including many in the north, were hit badly by the removal of area based grants, which, as we have heard, were famously defended by a former Minister because most must be cut from those who have received the most.
Blackpool does not benefit from any dedicated funding because of the level of transience, and there is no acknowledgement in its health funding of the extra burdens placed on services by visitor numbers. On the heat register, Blackpool will lose an average of £215 per person over four years, and £83 over two years. My council has had funding cuts of 19.2% for the past two years. It has lost £40 million over the past two years, with approximately £14 million of further cuts in 2013-14 and approximately £20 million more over the next two years. I noticed that the Minister waxed lyrical about profligate councils sitting around with big reserves, but Blackpool council’s current reserve stands at £4 million, out of a proposed net expenditure budget for 2013-14 of £150 million.
Like many other councils we have heard about this evening, Blackpool has done many of the things that Ministers have preached should be prudent for local government to do. It has worked on ways to cut waste in a major way and cut a whole level of senior officers. Sadly, it has had to lose hundreds of posts and hundreds of jobs over the last two years, with 300 posts proposed to go this year. Blackpool has also frozen the council tax, but—of course, the Minister did not tell us this—that is on the basis of a grant of only 1% this year as opposed to 2.5% for previous years. Despite all that, Blackpool council has gone ahead with progressive measures, including moving towards a living wage for its workers and free breakfast clubs, so it does not need to take any lessons from Ministers about that. The cash reduction in this year’s Government settlement is £3 million. The council tax freeze grant, to which I have referred, means a further loss of £1.5 million, with demographic pressures from children’s social care of £1.1 million.
Let me turn to the council tax changes and the basis on which they are taking place. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Secretary of State, millions of people in England on low incomes face rising council tax this year, including those who will now have to contribute to council tax who have previously been exempt. What will that figure of £410 million and a 10% cut in funding do for people in Blackpool? In Blackpool, it means a tax rise on a large number of people on low incomes. Like most seaside and coastal towns, we have people doing two or three part-time jobs, many of them women. We have larger than average numbers of older people and disabled people, which has specific implications for the amount that my council will now be forced to charge those who are not exempt, because this Government have decided that pensioners should be exempt from contributing to the council tax support scheme.
However, the more pensioners and older people an area has—it is a well known and established fact that large numbers of old people move into seaside and coastal towns—the higher the level of account that has to be placed on other people. Who are those other people? They are not the millionaires, who will receive a tax cut; they are people working hard on low incomes—carers, the disabled and single mums. They are people who are already being hit by the Government’s cuts in the uprating of benefits and working families tax credit. They are the people who will suffer and whom my council will not be able to protect from the depredations of this Government.
The Minister who opened this debate comes from a seaside town. He knows of some of these issues. Perhaps if he were to move away from the distorting mirror that he has had inserted in his little red ministerial box—
Mr Marsden
Well yours might be, but I am not sure about the Minister who opened this debate.
If the Minister got away from that distorting mirror and went back to his constituents in Great Yarmouth—to some of the houses in multiple occupation, the people living in bad private housing or some of those groups of his constituents who will be most affected—perhaps he would not come to this House with a speech so full of complacency and smugness.