Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Clark Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

18. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the community and voluntary sector of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

Spending decisions are a matter for local councils, but no council will see its spending power fall by more than 8.8% next year. Councils face difficult decisions owing to a fiscal crisis that was not of their making or of ours. The best councils are expanding the opportunities for the voluntary sector to help them to make savings. The worst-run councils are targeting the sector for disproportionate cuts. We are requiring all councils to be transparent in their actions.

[Dr Whitehead]

Next year, my local authority is cutting more than 20% of its running grants for voluntary and community organisations, which means that organisations such as the citizens advice bureau, the council for voluntary service and advice services generally will find it almost impossible to continue to support the volunteers they have supported over the past year. Does the Minister think that authorities such as Southampton will rue the day they did that, or is he rueing the day that he enabled his Department to acquiesce so readily in the cuts to local government funding that he has endorsed?

[Greg Clark]

I have made it very clear that councils should not cut disproportionately. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to meet his local council. I understand that the leader of the council has invited every voluntary organisation to come to see what other opportunities there are for them within the council. I also hope that if he does go to the council, he will reflect on the fact that every Conservative and Liberal member has taken a 5% cut in their allowances, but Labour members have refused. When he is in city hall, I hope that he will get his friends there to make their contribution to the voluntary sector.

[Julie Hilling]

The Government have completely cut the grant to vinolved—a youth volunteering project—cut the grant settlement to Bolton council by £60 million, which will amount to 25%, and last year cut £1.3 million from Bolton’s grant to the voluntary and community sector. Bolton council is prioritising funding to the voluntary and community sector, but cannot work miracles with no money. Why is the Minister not listening to and supporting the voluntary and community sector?

[Greg Clark]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady listened to the debate in the Bolton council chamber on Wednesday—it was its budget meeting—but I did. I listened to it live on the internet, and it was fascinating. Two things emerged: first, the director of finance warned two years ago that the council should get its house in order, but was overruled by Labour members; and secondly—and disgracefully—a motion by the Conservative group to provide a fund to protect voluntary organisations was voted down by her Labour colleagues. She pipes up in this House, but can she pluck up the courage to talk to her colleagues in Bolton?

[Mr Speaker]

I call Pat Glass. She is not here. I call Andrew Bridgen.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is now more important than ever that local councils maintain and strengthen their links to community and voluntary groups, because these very groups can lead to innovative ways of delivering very high quality public services?

[Greg Clark]

They can indeed, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Reading council, for example, has taken the opportunity to increase funding to the voluntary sector, knowing that actually it helps it to change its services and make some of the savings it is required to make.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recognise the need to bring forward legislation to strengthen the ability of charities to come together to get the expertise to procure and gain contracts from local authorities that all too often set the rules in ways that do not enable charities to provide the services in their local communities that they really want to provide?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and that is why he will know that in the Localism Bill we are establishing rights for every voluntary organisation in the country not to be rebuffed by local authorities but to make a challenge to provide services, if they can demonstrate that they can do it better. That is the right approach, but it did not happen during the 13 years of Labour party rule.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

We all know that local councils are the largest providers of public funding to the voluntary sector, which has grown over the past 10 years, particularly through the partnerships that operate so successfully up and down the country. What was the Department’s estimate of the number of jobs that would be lost in the voluntary sector as a result of the front-loaded cuts the Government have imposed on councils, and will the Minister confirm that the Government’s transition fund, which was meant to help charities that have lost funding, was closed to bids on 21 January, before most councils had even finalised their budgets?

[Greg Clark]

I welcome the right hon. Lady to the debate; I had thought that her silence on matters concerning the voluntary sector might be terminal. We have made it very clear that councils should not cut disproportionately, but she has been absolutely silent, as have her Front-Bench colleagues, about Labour councils that are taking their cuts out on the voluntary sector. We have provided £100 million of transition funding, which is now being taken up. The first grants have been paid this week. I look forward to the right hon. Lady writing to members of Labour councils up and down the country and joining us in making it clear that they should not cut services.

[Caroline Flint]

Labour has always celebrated the partnership between local government and the voluntary sector, and under a Labour Administration we saw those partnerships grow. We saw local voluntary groups taking over some of the services that councils had traditionally run. The fact is that it is not only we who are raising concerns about the threat to the voluntary sector: 88 Liberal Democrat council leaders have made a public statement about their concern, and we know from a freedom of information request that Tory council leaders have also raised concerns about the front-loading of the cuts that they are facing, so the Minister should not make any party political points on this. However much he might pretend otherwise, is it not the truth that every Home-Start that goes to the wall, every over-60s club that closes and every domestic violence shelter that shuts—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think we have got the thrust of the right hon. Lady’s question, and we are grateful to her.

[Greg Clark]

I wish the right hon. Lady was more vocal when she talked to the Labour councils that are making disproportionate cuts up and down the country. The fact is that they are having to make those cuts as a result of the policies of the previous Government, who left a completely unsustainable legacy. Our spending on debt interest is almost twice the amount that the council tax raises. Labour politicians got local authorities into this mess, and they are not playing their part in helping the voluntary sector. They should be saying very clearly, as we are doing, that councils should not make disproportionate cuts.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We need to speed up from now on. Questions and answers are simply too long.

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[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

16. What plans he has to take into account work completed on existing local development frameworks in his proposals for the reform of planning law.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

Work that has been completed by councils on their development plans remains valid, provided it is based on up-to-date evidence. The reforms set out in the Localism Bill do not contain any measures that will invalidate work on existing plans, but we have included changes to make the process easier and more flexible.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. I recently had the good fortune to attend a village meeting in Caythorpe in my constituency, where local people were concerned that their views should be listened to, as they were not listened to in the context of planning under the previous Government. What assurances can he give me that the views of local people, particularly in rural communities, will for the first time be listened to when it comes to planning?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend’s question. He will know that the Localism Bill will give communities the right to be heard and to set out a vision for their community in future. They have not had that before and when the Bill gets Royal Assent, they will have it for ever.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to increase transparency in local government.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

On the Localism Bill, 12,000 people in my constituency supported a 1,000-job development, and there was one objector. Guess who the Secretary of State backed. Whatever happened to localism?

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

Under the Localism Bill, local people will have the right to prevail in future. Once the Bill has received Royal Assent, every community will have the right to a local plan that will then govern decisions made in future.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

T5. Conservative-controlled Devon county council has reduced chief executive pay and slimmed down middle and senior management, and it will reduce back-office expenditure by £14 million in 2011-12. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending its efficiency savings? Does he agree that responsible councils should take such actions in order to protect front-line services?

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[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Does the Minister think that having to make a total of £185,000 in cuts to the voluntary sector and £106,000 in cuts to various youth services, as well as having to lose up to 170 posts by March, all because of Government-imposed efficiencies of £15.9 million, are more likely to change and, in fact, reduce the provision of services by North Tyneside council?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. I hope that she recognises that different councils are doing things in different ways. With a maximum cut of 8.8%, there is no reason for any council disproportionately to cut the voluntary sector. I hope that she will look at the examples of positive councils such as Reading, Thurrock, Lancaster, Ipswich, Watford, Stafford, Rugby, Redditch, Crawley and Wolverhampton—10 councils that are either maintaining or increasing their support to the voluntary sector at this time. She should look at them, and go back to her constituency and talk to her councillors.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I recently submitted to the House a petition of more than 2,500 constituents calling on the Government to help to protect the local Kingswood green belt, which is still being threatened by the previous Government’s disastrous regional spatial strategy. What reassurance can the Minister give to my constituents, who are rightly concerned and wish to protect our local green belt?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

In Cumbria and elsewhere, local charities are finding it very difficult to compete with big national charities for council contracts. What steps will the Minister take to allow local charities, which know more and can often do more, to compete fairly?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a great champion of the local voluntary sector. He will know that the Localism Bill will establish a right to challenge, which I expect to be taken up especially by local community and voluntary groups to enable them to do what they do best, which is to know their local community and provide a better way of doing things than what has been required so far.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that as a result of his policies and funding settlement, Hartlepool borough council is cutting much-needed local services and making 89 people redundant, but its chief executive has taken an £11,000 increase in his salary, making his pay £168,000. I have written to the chief executive asking him, in the current climate, to waive that salary increase in back pay, but I have received an unrepentant and defiant response from him saying that

“mob rule seems to have been the order of the day”.

What can the Secretary of State do to curb such an arrogant sense of entitlement from some senior executives in local government with regard to pay?