Local Government Finance

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Well, so much for gratitude. I do not want to start up the hunting debate again, but we have shot the right hon. Lady’s fox and she has been less than gracious. The first thing we did was to change relative needs level from 73% to 83%. Then we introduced banded floors, and then we introduced a special damping for authorities more dependent on grant than others. This settlement—this formula—is more progressive, protecting vulnerable communities, than anything that the Labour party has produced.

As for the right hon. Lady saying, “What are these figures?”, it is not so long ago that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) was demanding this way of measurement—that we should not just take basic grant and that we should include the question of council tax and money coming from other grants and from the national health service which primary care trusts are spending. It is good to see along the Front Bench my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary, who has done so much to ensure that local government is getting additional powers in this area.

We have delivered everything that the Opposition identified. We have protected the most vulnerable. The right hon. Lady seemed to start saying that we had not done too bad a job, but found that she had notes prepared earlier condemning us.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I very much welcome this truly progressive statement. I congratulate my local authorities in Crawley and West Sussex on the significant efficiency savings that they have already made. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, as we develop the funding formula, it will become more transparent?

[Mr Pickles]

I can confirm to my hon. Friend that that will be the case. The present formula is very difficult to operate. In developing it I had worries with regard to balancing need against sparsity. It is always difficult to do that. We had to move extra money across from my Department in order to protect certain vulnerable districts that are not benefiting from the increase in spending in respect of adult social care and the extra help being offered in conjunction with PCTs.