Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Helen Jones and Pat Glass

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

I do not think my hon. Friend is at all cynical. He is exactly right. The whole point of the Bill, as we have said throughout, is to centralise power and devolve the blame. We saw it earlier when we were debating council tax. We are seeing it now in the Government’s plans for business rates. I believe their aims are simple. They go about it in a complicated way, but the basic aim is very simple: to ensure that whoever gets the blame for cuts in local services, it is not them. It is also to ensure that the voices of those who are most in need are excluded from this debate.

We believe that the views of those people ought to be heard. Let us think about who they are. They are elderly men and women who have contributed all their lives and who are not getting the home care that they need in their old age, or are paying too much. It is a child in a family who may not be well-off but is dependent on local libraries for his or her education. It is the most vulnerable children in need of care and protection. These are the people to whom this Government pay no heed. We have moved the new clause because we do not intend their needs to be forgotten. I urge my hon. Friends to support it in the Lobby. It might help if I indicate that we will press it to a vote.

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

Perhaps it is a sign of the complexity of the subject and the fact that we have not exactly taken the nation with us that there are so few Members in the Chamber tonight to discuss local government funding. We ought to remember that local government funding underpins local authority services, which support our most vulnerable people—the elderly and the disabled—and that it is women who are the heaviest users of local authority services and who are hardest hit when services are cut or funding is changed. Any changes to local authority funding need to be considered carefully and time must be taken to ensure that all intended and unintended consequences are known before those changes are made, not after, but adequate time and proper consideration are precisely what the Government’s proposals are lacking.

We heard only this morning that nine of the 10 poorest areas in the country are in the north-west, and the 10th is in the north-east. We know that Government cuts to local authority funding have already led to every person in the average north-west local authority losing £133. Every person in my local authority has lost £70, yet every person in deepest deprived Surrey has gained £2.

Because of the complexities of local government funding, even slight changes in one area often have major impacts elsewhere. We are beginning to see clear evidence that the pupil premium, although well intended, is responsible for a shift in funding from the poorest areas to the most affluent, and from schools with high concentrations of children on free school meals to schools with lower concentrations of those children. The Government have already signalled their intention to shift health funding away from need and deprivation and towards the elderly population. That will have an impact on areas such as mine that have high concentrations of people who, because of our industrial heritage, are in need of health provision and live in deprivation, because the funding will be transferred to areas in the south where the more affluent and the elderly live.

Now the Government propose changing business rates, which will simply carry on their work of siphoning funding from the poorest areas to the most affluent. Those policies on business rates are not new or untried; they were used in the USA in the 1990s and resulted in cities such as Detroit and New Orleans becoming derelict, because everyone who could move out did so and left the cities to the poorest and most vulnerable. The Government’s proposals on business rates take absolutely no account of the ability of individual local authorities to raise rates without the support of the Government.

The Government’s proposals also take no account of geography. Any area that is not within the golden triangle of south-east England, northern France and Germany needs the support of Government infrastructure to attract businesses and business rates. We have heard tonight how, as a result of these proposals, the City of London will see cash growth of almost 140% over four years, yet places such as Liverpool, Knowsley, Bury, Wirral and south Tyneside will see cash growth over the same period of about 20%.

The Government’s proposals take no account of the number of children living in poverty in a local authority or the number in need of local authority care and protection. They take no account of the number of elderly poor, the quality of housing or the number of people living in substandard housing or with chronic ill health. They do not take account of what local authorities need to spend; only of what they can raise.

I am asking the Government to agree to carry out and publish an independent assessment of the needs of different local authorities before deciding how much of their business rate they can keep. Local authority funding formulae are complex and any review must be properly handled and carefully considered. I know that the Government do not do detail, but that is what local authority funding formulae are all about. If they get the detail wrong, they will cause chaos for our most vulnerable people.

I remember that some years ago the previous Government were levering additional funding for schools, but the schools were saying that they were not getting it. Treasury civil servants initially pointed the finger at local authorities and said that they were creaming off the money. There was naming and shaming of local authorities, which came out very firmly and screamed that they were not creaming off the money. The civil servants looked again and then pointed the finger at special educational needs, saying that the growth in the SEN sector and its increasing cost was draining money that had been meant for the schools. A proper review found that it was not special educational needs, but a Treasury anorak—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but Ministers should listen to this, because it is important. It was a Treasury anorak who tweaked the system in one area and caused a Mexican wave in another. Local authority funding is complex. If the Government do not take the time to consider it properly, the most vulnerable people in our society will be the most affected.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Helen Jones and Pat Glass

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend highlights a real risk of the Bill. All the modelling shows that the gap between rich and poor will become wider. That is a problem because, in my experience, local authorities have worked relentlessly to tackle these issues and to regenerate their communities. It is a long-term project, however, and it is much more difficult in some areas than in others for a whole host of reasons, including poverty, a local authority’s inheritance, its location and so on.

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

Some years ago, I was an assistant director of education in the city of Sunderland and, despite its massive challenges, the attainment of the children was well above that of their statistical neighbours and was close to the national average. That demonstrates that such places can have massive challenges but still deliver well for their communities.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend highlights the role of local authorities in achieving such gains. I believe that those authorities are constantly working to improve things for their communities and that the assumption underlying much of this Bill—that they do not want to do that—is simply untrue.

Returning to the issue of need, Durham council spends more on older people than a similar council such as Surrey because it has higher levels of deprivation and ill health. That means not only that it faces a greater requirement for social care but that it has fewer people who are able to finance their own care. Fifteen times as many people per 1,000 population receive a community service in Durham compared with Surrey, and 2.4 times as many receive a home care service. That kind of variation in need exists right across the country.

A similar pattern can be seen with children’s services and the level of child poverty, which all experts estimate will rise as a result of many of the Government’s actions. In Hartlepool, 29% of children are in poverty, whereas in Newcastle the figure is 27%, as it is in Liverpool—more than 91,000 children. In comparison, the figure in Wokingham is 7%. I defy anyone to argue that there should not be some resource equalisation to deal with that, but nothing in the Bill requires the Secretary of State to take account of the level of need when he determines the central and local share of non-domestic rates.