Helen Jones
Main Page: Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Brandon Lewis
Local authorities have a statutory duty to ensure that they balance their budgets, and they have been doing that. It is particularly interesting and impressive that since 2010 public satisfaction with local authorities has increased. It is also important that small district councils in particular, which are working with silo expensive management teams, look at sharing management to make sure that they spend the money on front-line services looking after residents, and not on bureaucracy.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
In the Jackanory world of the DCLG, it announced that local government spending would fall by 2.3% after 2015, but will the Minister admit that important resource spending, even on his figures, will fall by 8.5%, rising to 10% when the new homes bonus is top-sliced, and that when predictions for business rates are taken into account, some councils could lose up to 19% of their grant without the compensating growth, hitting the poorest again? Does that not mean that the most vulnerable are paying the price for this Government’s economic failure?
Brandon Lewis
I am sure that the hon. Lady remembers that we have put protections in place for the most vulnerable—councils have a duty to ensure that they look after them. In fact, about 40 authorities actually had an increase this year, because we have moved local government financing from the old Labour style of a begging bowl and “If you do badly, you get more” to a reward-based system whereby if an authority builds houses, it gets money, and if it brings about business growth through business rates retention, it gets more money. Councils can provide better services, work together and be more efficient in that way.