Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Grant Shapps and Gloria De Piero

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Do Ministers agree that spending £80,000 on changing a logo, as Conservative-controlled Nottinghamshire county council has, is an irresponsible use of cash when money is so tight?

[Grant Shapps]

The good thing about Nottingham county council is that we can see what it is spending. It is a shame that the same cannot be said of Nottingham city council, the only council in the country that refuses to publish its expenditure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Grant Shapps and Gloria De Piero

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is right. It is for local authorities to work out where to make their savings. I should add for the record that it is not clear whether the Twitter tsar was eventually employed, although the post was certainly advertised. I should also point out that when authorities talk of job reductions, we do not know whether they are including positions that were already vacant.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Last year the Prime Minister asked local authorities not to do the easy thing by cutting the budgets of voluntary bodies, but week after week representatives of such organisations come to my surgery and tell me that their budgets have been slashed and that they cannot continue to do their work. Does the Secretary of State share my concern about Nottinghamshire county council’s failure to heed the Prime Minister’s advice?