Autumn Statement Resolutions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the fact that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am afraid that the autumn statement will have come as a disappointment to many living in my North Shropshire constituency and rural places across Britain. After years of mismanagement, the Conservative Government have left hard-working people to pay for their mistakes. Some elements of the statement were welcome, such as lifting the freeze on housing allowance and increasing the national living wage, but they will not change the daily reality for many of my constituents who are struggling with stealth tax hikes and spiralling mortgage repayments.

I turn first to the Chancellor’s announcement to increase the national living wage by almost 10%. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I welcome the increase for the lowest paid, but, for people in rural areas, it will not offset the impact of the cost of living crisis. People in rural Britain spend an average of £800 more a year on fuel because of poor public transport, and those who are off grid are still paying about twice the amount for their heating oil than they were before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I therefore urge the Government to support off-grid residents with their energy bills by implementing an off-grid energy cap so that those affected do not have to continue to choose between heating and eating.

The Chancellor has increased the living wage but failed to help local councils fund those increased wages. I have heard from councils run by all political parties that they are currently struggling to provide good services because of the crippling costs of social care, special educational needs and disabilities support, and temporary housing. Councils will have to pay either directly or to their contractors the cost of those increased wages, yet the Chancellor is asking them to find that money from their existing budgets.

That brings me to the closely related subject of social care. There were no announcements of any new investment in adult social care, or indeed children’s social care, in the Chancellor’s statement. For anyone who provides or receives social care, that will be incredibly worrying. Social care services are already under immense pressure, waiting lists for care assessments and provision are at all-time highs, and there are serious retention and recruitment problems in the sector—and they are especially acute in rural places such as Shropshire. Not only did the Chancellor fail to address that in his statement, but his unfunded announcement of an increase in the national living wage will only put further pressure on those services.

Shropshire Council has reported that it spends 85% of its budget on social care. Since I was elected, I have spent a significant amount of time talking to care providers in North Shropshire. They report struggling desperately to meet the need for care packages; they often cross-subsidise them through their private work. But care providers for adults with learning disability, autism spectrum disorder or lifelong high levels of need often do not have such private work, so with central Government not funding the increased wage costs—or local government unable to raise its own finance—there is a risk of a huge crisis in the sector. Crucially, a social care service under more pressure will have dangerous knock-on implications for bed availability in hospitals and—where I am, this is the most acute problem—ambulance waiting times.

After hearing the autumn statement, many people will feel they are about to relive last winter’s NHS nightmare, which the Government have repeatedly promised to prevent. For example, in the last week, NHS Shrewsbury, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board has urged my constituents to stay away from A&E if at all possible because it knows that the department will be under extreme pressure with limited bed availability. The root cause of that is in delays in discharging patients who are well enough to leave hospital. That will only be exacerbated if care providers are unable to recoup their staffing costs from the local authority paying them to provide that care. It is a disgrace that the Government have not recognised the desperate need for investment in adult social care, and as such hospitals are bracing for another incredibly difficult winter.

Conservative Ministers have not got a clue about how to get the economy back on track. They simply do not understand that a healthy economy needs a healthy population, and that requires a healthy NHS and a healthy care sector. The Tories have cut taxes for the big banks and let fossil fuel extractors off the hook from the windfall tax. Liberal Democrats urge the Government to look again at those taxes to fund the sectors that will allow the economy to grow again.

I turn to the Chancellor’s decision to lift the freeze on local housing allowance to support more households with paying their rent. I am sure that is good news for the 8.5 million people who the National Housing Federation estimated are living with unmet housing need this year. A lack of affordable and social housing is a real issue in North Shropshire, where the average house price is 8.6 times average earnings, according to the all-party parliamentary group for rural business and the rural powerhouse, of which I am a member. About 175,000 people are on rural housing lists at the moment, and homelessness is increasing, especially among young people.

I draw the House’s attention to two key shortfalls to the announcement. First, the Chancellor did not commit to ruling out reinstating a freeze in the future, so the policy could be reversed, with the result that councils cannot easily plan ahead their financial budgets. Secondly, it did not apply to temporary accommodation, so the maximum subsidy will remain capped at 90% of rates in January 2011. In my constituency alone, the number of households living in temporary accommodation has more than doubled since 2018, placing yet more strain on council budgets.

Councils of all political parties have recently written an open letter to the Chancellor to explain the unprecedented demand for temporary accommodation and its associated astronomical increase in costs on their budgets. They need urgent clarification that housing allowance will not be frozen again in future and that they will be subsidised to manage this difficult problem going forward.

On mobile signal investment, I welcome the Government’s announcement that 10 regions will be awarded funding for 5G connection for businesses and residents. Mobile connection is an issue that I have significant personal experience with. A mobile signal is essential to a functioning community and paves the way for successful and growing businesses. It will surprise no one that all those areas of the UK that do not receive a 4G signal are classed as rural. Thirteen per cent of my constituency is a partial notspot, and 50% of indoor spaces in North Shropshire do not receive a 4G signal from any of the top four operators. That significantly impacts businesses in my constituency as they struggle to operate without a signal. Therefore, while 5G technology is welcome, I hope that the Government will understand that, to level up rural Britain, a 4G signal needs to be available first.

To conclude, I am worried about the stability of local government to provide essential services, the impact on the health service and the levelling-up of rural Britain.