Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Helen Jones and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle.

The Minister explained clearly the purpose of the amendments, but the fact that the Government have had to table so many amendments at this stage of the Bill is ample proof of how they are rushing it through the House. The amendments do not deal with esoteric issues. They are not about something easily missed. They simply deal with the situation where a revised calculation is made and an authority may move, as the Minister rightly said, from tariff to top-up or the other way around.

It is typical of this Government’s sloppy thinking and of their desire to rush the Bill through without proper scrutiny that they forgot one simple fact, which the most junior clerk in a council finance department could have told them—that if they want people to pay up, whether that is a council tax payer, a council or a Secretary of State, they must make provision for payment. The fact that Ministers did not even notice that when the Bill was drafted shows how little time they have spent reading it, a fact that was convincingly demonstrated by their performance on Second Reading and on the first day of Committee in the whole House. They are not up to speed on the measures that they are introducing.

We have no objection to the amendments. They are tidying-up amendments, but let us imagine what Ministers would say if a local authority were so sloppy. After all, in determining the baseline for rate income, they would base their figures on what a local authority would receive if it had acted diligently—a term that they have signally failed to define in answer to questions in the Chamber and in Committee. Local councils would be called to account by Ministers for such an omission, and rightly so. It is a shame that Ministers do not apply the same high standards in their own Department. They are as careless in their drafting as they are with the effects of their legislation on local communities. These amendments, straightforward as they seem, epitomise the Government’s attitude to the whole Bill: sloppy, rushed and badly considered.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I am interested to hear my hon. Friend advise the Minister that he should talk to local authorities and take an example from them. Will she encourage him to take a trip to Stockton-on-Tees borough council, my local authority, because not only was it named council of the year the year before last, but for the past six years it has been recognised as providing excellent services and financial management and delivering for the people? The Government might learn something there.

[Helen Jones]

I am sure that it would benefit many people to take a trip to Stockton-on-Tees, as my hon. Friend suggests. There are certainly many things that the Department for Communities and Local Government could learn from good local authorities, but it has failed to do so. We do not intend to divide the Committee on these amendments, but they show what a shambolic lot those on the Government Front Bench are and how little they have thought through the Bill.