Troubled Families Programme
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
As far as the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency is concerned, there are two local authorities. Barnsley, with 645 troubled families, has achieved a 95% turnaround, which has cost slightly more than £2 million. Rotherham, with 730 troubled families, has achieved a 89% turnaround, which, again, has cost slightly more than £2 million. He makes a really interesting point: even in that sea of dysfunction, the work with troubled families has been very successful. I am delighted to tell the right hon. Gentleman that I have released the money. The money will go to Rotherham today.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I sincerely thank my right hon. Friend for his leadership of this project, which has helped to turn around the lives of 1,165 families in West Sussex. Will he join me in sincerely thanking the workers in my constituency who have made such a positive difference to individuals and to our community as a whole?
Mr Pickles
I think the House is divided into those who know exactly the number of troubled families in their areas and those who do not. I confirm that my hon. Friend’s arithmetic is absolutely correct. I also confirm that the improvement is entirely due to the enormous hard work of the people in his area determined to make a difference.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
3. What estimate he has made of the number of local authorities who are planning to raise council tax by more than 1.99% in the next financial year; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Councils have yet to set their budgets. I encourage every local council to take up this year’s offer of additional funding to freeze council tax. If they want to hike up council tax, they should put that to the people in a referendum.
Henry Smith
A recent TaxPayers Alliance study identified that the chief executive of Pembrokeshire council had a Porsche funded at a cost of some £90,000 and that, in Camden, £3.25 million had been spent on so-called gagging orders for employees who were leaving. What more can be done to bear down on these unnecessary costs that burden the taxpayer?
Mr Pickles
Transparency is the order of the day. It is sad that the kind of information available to English taxpayers is not available to their Welsh counterparts. With regard to Mr Bryn Parry Jones’s Porsche, if any chief executive puts in a Porsche as part of their terms of contract, I think that is a cry for help. The chap is obviously suffering from a mid-life crisis, and the council would have been better spending money on getting him some professional help.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
The House always enjoys the right hon. Gentleman’s Lady Bracknell impersonation. He is saying that I am guilty of consulting on this issue, listening to the consultation and implementing what it wanted, but that seems to me to be a fairly reasonable way for a democrat to behave.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
T5. Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning the incoming Labour administration of Crawley borough council, which with a complete lack of vision and aspiration has cancelled the town centre regeneration project? Will he say what the Government are doing to help regenerate our high streets and municipal centres?
Flooding
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Pickles
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes some reasonable points and shows what can be done. In fairness, the weather was much worse for a more prolonged period than it was in 2007, and the number of dwellings affected is 7,000 or thereabouts, which is just a tiny proportion of the 55,000 or 56,000. That is a reflection of some very good protection work.
Henry Smith
Will my right hon. Friend also welcome the £11.7 million that has been spent on the upper River Mole flood alleviation scheme since 2010, which has protected hundreds of homes that otherwise may have been flooded during recent events?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
7. What steps he has taken to increase the right of bloggers and journalists to report council meetings.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
It is right that journalists and taxpayers are able to use modern media to scrutinise councils. Accordingly, we have legislated to ensure that that happens.
Henry Smith
I am grateful for the steps my right hon. Friend is taking to allow local authorities to encourage journalists and bloggers to report council meetings, as they do at Crawley borough council. Will he condemn councils such as Tower Hamlets that still seek to ban such practices?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
I am afraid to say that, despite Formby being the apple of my eye and a wonderful place to invest, the process will be at borough level.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
20. What plans he has to tackle the abuse of social housing tenancies.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles
Mr Pickles
God help us if the hon. Gentleman does not understand that. Local authorities work hard to bring new things into their areas and to ensure that there is a balance. The difference between this system and the existing system is that, at the moment, despite everything that the local authorities do, we take the money away from them and it goes back into a central pool. In future, they will keep that money, which will give them an incentive—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman clearly does not seem terribly familiar with the entrepreneurial system that exists. His counsel of despair is that we cannot do anything and should not do anything but continue to stand here with our hands out. That is not really a policy; it is a surrender.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Will he confirm that, contrary to the call from the Labour party, business rates will not be raised for small firms in my constituency or elsewhere in the country?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. He will recall that we have introduced a simplified system for small businesses, to ensure that in the long term they will not have to fill in forms continuously in order to get the necessary rebate. Another important difference is that, unlike what was promised in the Labour manifesto, we are committed to keeping the formula. We are not going to increase the level of taxation, because to do so would have a disastrous effect for firms across the country and for the small firms in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
There does seem to be a big difference between how Sheffield and other large authorities are going about this, and how Manchester is going about it. The reduction purely in grant is some 15% over the period, but the council is choosing to cut 25%—above and beyond the reduction in grant. But those figures only really stack up if we completely ignore the level of council tax revenue. That is why we are able to say that no authority is receiving a reduction in their spending power of more than 8.8%. That remains an absolute fact, on a measurement that those on the Labour Front Bench urged us to use. The Local Government Association also suggested that measurement, and it is a very sensible way of doing things.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
My constituency has some of the most deprived areas anywhere in the region, but for the last eight years we have received among the lowest local government settlements there have been. My local authority has been preparing for the even tougher times we face because of the economic crisis that we were bequeathed. Why does the Secretary of State think that other areas of the country have not?
Mr Pickles
It appears that there are two kinds of authority. There are Conservative and Liberal Democrat authorities that seem to be making a genuine attempt to protect the front line, as are a significant number of Labour authorities, but there are several that are simply grandstanding. They have perhaps made one or two financial mistakes in the past and are seeking to hide them by claiming that the financial settlement is the problem.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Henry Smith and Lord Pickles(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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.