Business of the House

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish the Leader of the House and Members across the House “Gong hei fat choy!” for this weekend—the beginning of the year of the rabbit in the Chinese calendar, I believe.

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the Backbench Business Committee day on Thursday 2 February. We propose a debate to commemorate LGBT History Month on that date; we are going to assess which other bid to accept for the second debate on that day. I ask Members across the House, as they did last week in numbers, to continue submitting and supporting bids for Backbench Business Committee debates, both here in the Chamber and in Westminster Hall.

In response to the earlier urgent question on the levelling- up fund, the Minister told us that over 500 bids, valued at £8 billion, had been received and that 111 bids, valued at £2.1 billion, had received awards. But those awards are one-off payments, while local authorities across the country have been stripped of about £15 billion a year in lost revenue support grant. My own local authority in Gateshead has lost approximately £180 million per year in real terms. Can we have a debate in Government time about local government finance and the total inadequacy of the council tax system to properly fund our councils and the services that our constituents desperately need, week in, week out?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for advertising forthcoming debates, which is always very helpful to colleagues, and thank him for working so constructively with my office to ensure we plan time well and give people as much notice as we possibly can of those opportunities.

I fully appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. All Members will want to lever in as much funding for their constituency as possible. There is a very good tool on the Government website, gov.uk, which maps all the funding going into constituencies via the very many funding streams there are, so people can get a good overview about what is happening where and why. We had to deal with a situation when we came in to make sure the Government were balancing their books. We also felt it was incredibly important to hold council tax rises down. Under the Labour Government they rose by 110%. He will see if he goes on to that tool that we are putting enormous amounts of money into areas, particularly those that have been deprived of funding for many years.