Local Government Finance

Debate between Guy Opperman and Brandon Lewis

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

This is a good settlement for local government generally. Councils’ spending power is being reduced by just 2.9%, and a reduction of 1.8% is predicted for next year. That will ensure that local authorities can manage. More important, the Government are putting money—taxpayers’ money—into a council tax freeze for the fourth successive year in order to help hard-working people. I hope that all Labour authorities will follow the example of good Conservative and Liberal Democrat authorities and deliver that freeze to their residents.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

On 25 November, in the House, I raised the issue of the council tax benefit support grant, which is not being passed on to all the parish councils in Northumberland. On that occasion, my hon. Friend responded by saying that local authorities should be ensuring that that was done. Has he made any further progress in forcing them to do so?

[Brandon Lewis]

It is true that a very small number of authorities are not yet passing on the grant, and we are telling them that they should. It is a matter for the authorities themselves, but we made it very clear in today’s written statement that they should be passing the money on to the parish councils.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Guy Opperman and Brandon Lewis

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Council tax benefit support grant is a key part of the money that central Government give to parish councils. This year, Labour-run Northumberland county council has said that it will not pass the grant on to the local town and parish councils. Does the Minister agree that that is specifically wrong?

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. We made it clear this year that councils should pass the money down to parish councils, and my hon. Friend is right to put pressure on councils that do not do what they are supposed to do.

Regional Government (North)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Brandon Lewis

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Brandon Lewis]

I am not quite sure why the hon. Lady is putting those two issues together. From travelling round the country to various counties, my view is that people tend to identify with their county, town or city, borough or neighbourhood, not an arbitrary, centrally imposed government region that, as hon. Members have commented, simply adds a tier of administration that is rarely effective or efficient and is certainly not popular.

I am delighted to say that this Government have swept away the eight government regions, regional development agencies, regional strategies and regional leader boards, which were all based around regions that were completely artificial and had no resonance with the cultural, social and economic realities of our country.

[Guy Opperman]

The Minister is right that localism in its purest form is an exceptionally popular feature; certainly, it is massively welcomed in Northumberland. I suggest that he go an extra mile and propose the disbandment of the unitary authority that was created by Lord Prescott of Hull. Localism would then return to its purest form, and we would get back Tynedale district authority, which is much missed. I assure the Minister that that would make him the most popular man in Hexham that there has ever been.

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. As he rightly points out, the unitary authority in Northumberland was set up by the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. I do not doubt that I would make myself very popular if I were able to return Tynedale district council to Hexham. Unfortunately, the aforementioned Lord Prescott created a structure that ensures, at the moment at least, that that simply cannot happen, which is why we are reticent about going down that kind of road. It is exactly because of our commitment to localism and decentralisation that we scrapped regional government, reduced spending on bureaucracy and transferred power to local councils and beyond.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman completely misses my point. I am saying that the Government are devolving power directly to people. There is a misapprehension that localism is about giving power to councils. Understandably, some powers will go to councils, but localism is about moving power to people in their communities, so that they have control over those communities. It is respect for the traditions and beliefs in such communities that means that artificial, centrally set regional governments simply cannot work.

Since we swept those regional governments away, no one—other than perhaps a few bureaucrats—has generally mourned their passing, at least not until this morning. Indeed, only yesterday, I attended the launch of a report published by the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which is chaired by a member of the Labour party, that outlines the prospects for codifying central and local relations. It states:

“An attempt to introduce regional government in England was abandoned in 2004 after the North East of England rejected proposals for a regional assembly. There were no submissions suggesting a return to regional government. We do not suggest a revival of regional government for England. There is neither the political nor public appetite for this. Local government should be the vehicle for devolution in England.”

For all these reasons—identity and traditions, practicability and efficiency, bureaucracy and effectiveness, and the lack of a political and public appetite—it is clear that the pursuit of regional government is not the way fundamentally to shift decision making away from Whitehall. It would simply shift decision making from Whitehall to an artificial regional-tier construct. Local authorities are best placed to receive powers and take critical decisions on local economic growth and on the public services that impact on the day-to-day lives of our citizens; business rate retention and the new homes bonus, with the Localism Act 2011, are moving power that way.

[Guy Opperman]

To follow up the comments by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs Riordan) and those of the Minister, two groups are forming positive local solutions in the north-east: Lord Adonis is meeting various members of the local community, and an organisation has created the January declaration. I urge the Minister to study that manifesto and to meet me, because in the north-east, particularly in Newcastle and Gateshead, there are genuine efforts to take localism—working with the local enterprise partnership and local communities—and create strong ways forward that do not involve a regional assembly, but involve all local infrastructure and positive steps. I suggest that that is what we all want.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am very happy to discuss that with him. He highlights that where things are working more positively and there is real progress around the country is where there is no artificial, centrally determined sector, region or body, but something that is led by the people in the community. Local enterprise partnerships have such ability and opportunity because they are led by the people in the communities, who understand their traditions and have a vested interest in seeing their local area grow and in working together. We must trust local people and locally elected and democratically accountable councillors to work together in the interests of their communities. That is what localism is about.

Let me touch on how this Government are devolving power to support that process. The Localism Act, which I have mentioned, and the Local Government Finance Act 2012 have devolved more power and greater control over finances than ever before. For example, the general power of competence turns previous assumptions completely on their heads. It gives councils real power to get on and do things, and the room to take action and innovate without seeking permission from the centre, as they previously had to do. We have un-ring-fenced funding, given local authorities greater control over their resources, and put in place proposals to encourage local economic growth.

We are delivering growth and jobs. The hon. Member for Halifax mentioned the imbalance in our economy. We are already addressing that through such things as city deals, which are recasting the relationship between central Government and our cities. They are giving our great cities the powers and tools that they need to drive economic growth in their areas. For example, through those deals, we have supported cities with a £75 million regeneration fund for Liverpool; an earn-back proposal from Manchester that could be worth more than £200 million; a new development deal in Newcastle worth £60 million; and smaller new development deals in Sheffield and Nottingham.

I will focus for a moment on Yorkshire and Humber, which includes the hon. Lady’s constituency. In that area, we have supported, among other things, the Aire Valley Leeds enterprise zone, which focuses on life sciences, advanced engineering and low carbon industries, and aims to create 3,780 jobs; the Humber renewable energy super cluster, which is creating 4,850 jobs; and the Sheffield city region enterprise zone, which aims to create more than 8,400 additional jobs, with an additional £400 million in economic output. We have also invested more than £73 million for local enterprise partnerships in Yorkshire and Humber as part of the Growing Places fund, and a total of £264 million through rounds 1 to 3 of the regional growth fund—it has already been mentioned—which has created or safeguarded more than 63,000 jobs over 10 years and leveraged £1.433 billion of private sector investment.

We are also opening the way for local authorities to work in partnership across economically significant areas through the establishment of combined authorities, which provide a practical way for local authorities to work together. For example, the establishment of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has brought together local authority leaders. It will strengthen their voice and influence, thus increasing their ability to promote their area with businesses and other partners, and to grow investment and deliver jobs for local people. We are establishing other combined authorities in the Sheffield city region and west Yorkshire. With the authorities in the north-east, we are also considering how a combined authority would support them in further strengthening their leadership and economic development.

That comes back to the main point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). The approach is led by the local community, which comes together to tell us in government what they want and what will help them, rather than our having a top-down approach.

Rural Bus Services

Debate between Guy Opperman and Brandon Lewis

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments—

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

On that point, if one is doing statistics, I have the largest constituency represented in the Chamber. I very much support my hon. Friend’s point, but do not the Government need to change the legislation to ensure that local councils control the bus companies, rather than the bus companies being in control? A bus company can drop a route at the drop of a hat, and the local council has no control over the way the company runs that route. That is the origin of the problems we all face.

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank both my hon. Friends for their interventions. To take them one at a time, I agree that we need to look at more progressive and more flexible options for rural communities, and local authorities need to look at how we drive those forward. There are things the Government can do to encourage that, and I will touch on those in a moment, but we should certainly be nudging people and leading the way in pushing local authorities to look at different options.

There are options in rural areas where a bus route is simply not economically viable for a bus company and where the rural authority might not have the funding to subsidise that route for very low usage. It would be advantageous if people could use a concessionary pass more flexibly, whether in taxis or other forms of community transport. The Government could make such an option available; I will touch on that in a moment. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) is right about creating the flexibility to allow local authorities to push things forward.

The cuts in funding to rural authorities, which already receive less than urban authorities, combined with the additional cost of providing bus services in rural areas, mean that rural residents are at an even greater disadvantage than urban residents. A 2009 Leeds university study on the use of passes showed that—in Lancashire, for example—76% of passengers live in large urban areas. It also highlighted the difference in the use of passes, with 53% of pass holders in urban areas not using their passes during a five-year period, compared with 71% in village areas. That might be because of lack of bus availability in those rural areas or higher car ownership, but it is clear that the bus scheme pushes higher usage in urban areas. The point is that although rural areas might have lower usage, buses are vital to those who use them. If we are not careful, we will create a vicious circle.

The Commission for Rural Communities and others, including the Countryside Alliance, have highlighted the lack of transport as a key to social exclusion in the countryside, which is already particularly prevalent among young, elderly and disabled members of rural communities, and it can only get worse against a background of rising fuel costs.