Rolling Stock (North of England)

Debate between Ian Mearns and Angela Smith

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Angela Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Indeed, I agree with him on most of those points, particularly about the northern hub, which was initiated by the previous Government and brought forward to completion, in terms of agreeing all the terms and the funding for it. That was a genuinely cross-party effort, and there was a genuine consensus on it, to ensure that the northern hub goes ahead. However, the problem with the northern hub is that although it opens up the network, frees it up and creates more capacity, there remains a potential problem, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) referred earlier, of providing the rolling stock that is necessary to ensure that we can make good use of the increased capacity.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

We need to highlight the point about the differentiation in investment in different parts of the country. At a presentation last week to the all-party group on rail in the north, Network Rail outlined its plans for investment, including in the northern hub. However, the only reference to the north-east of England were signs on the map saying, “York”, and, “To Scotland.” The north-east of England was not an afterthought—it was not even a thought.

[Angela Smith]

That illustrates perfectly that we have to defend it. It is one of the sad realities of parliamentary life that those of us in the north of England, including those in the north-east and the furthermost outreaches of the north-west and Cumbria, have to defend our corner at every twist and turn.

The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) wanted me to give way. I shall, but this is the last time, because I really must make progress.

Funding for Local Authorities

Debate between Ian Mearns and Angela Smith

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith]

I do not blame anybody for raising concerns about their own constituencies, particularly with regard to education, but that is not the key point in relation to funding for local government services. Metropolitan areas have significant rural aspects. In fact, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley between them are 70% rural. The way in which the hon. Gentleman expresses his argument is not helpful in delivering more resources for his area. I repeat that the key issue is the central Government cuts to local government funding. The difference between provincial England and the capital is another issue that has been completely overlooked.

[Ian Mearns]

Before coming to this place I had the privilege and pleasure of being a local authority councillor in Gateshead for 27 years. Like my hon. Friend’s borough, Gateshead is very diverse: it has a concentrated urban core and a big rural hinterland. Councillors who represented the urban core and those who represented the leafy shire had these types of discussions, but we would never have swapped our social problems, because the differences were stark.

[Angela Smith]

My hon. Friend hits on a key point. That is why I mentioned the old pit villages in my constituency which even now carry the deep scars that were left behind, not just on the landscape but on the lives of the people who were, in effect, abandoned following the wave of closures in the late 1980s and early ’90s. People underestimate how difficult it is for an authority such as Barnsley to rebuild an economy that was built almost entirely in villages. It is not easy to rebuild that type of economic infrastructure once it has disappeared.

Local government provides many of the public goods that our constituents consume, whether they live in rural, suburban or urban areas. These include emptying bins, educating our children and picking up the pieces of shattered lives when things go wrong. Local government is the backbone of our civil society. There is no doubt, however, that it is approaching a crisis that is not of its own making, but that has been made in the offices of No. 10 and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

We have all seen the infamous graph of doom, which shows that councils will eventually run out of resources to run anything except the most basic of services. For my two councils that catastrophe will occur in 2018, when all discretionary spending will disappear and major cuts will have to be made to adult social care and other core functions. Councils up and down the country are being asked to do more and more, but with less and less resource.

In addition, it is clear that this Government decided early on to contract out many of their austerity measures for delivery to local councils across the country. The average cut to departmental budgets has been about 7% in real terms according to the special interest group of municipal authorities, but local authorities have seen their share of funding fall by 27% over the same period, with only benefits and welfare being cut more, which, of course, has in itself had a direct impact on demand for local authorities.

To compound matters for the core cities, while the average loss of Government support in England will be £240 per household in the years 2013-14 and 2015-16, the core cities will see a reduction of £352 per household. On the issue of rural and urban areas, metropolitan areas are bearing a large part of the local government reductions—much more than has been acknowledged so far in this debate—which is not at all helpful in terms of delivering for the rural areas in those metropolitan boroughs. That is on top of the already unequal cuts that core city authorities have experienced since 2010, which have seen them lose a third of their grants from central Government.

If that was not bad enough, these cuts have not been the end of it for many local authorities. The hidden cuts, including those major cuts to grants, are not so obvious to many of our constituents. For example, a £400 million cut occurred when council tax support was transferred to local authorities, and the cut to the early intervention grant removed £430 million at a stroke from local authorities. These cuts are now on a scale never seen before and they are having a chilling effect on local services.

Contrary to the belief of the Secretary of State, local government has not been a place of excess. In fact, it has been recognised for many years as the most efficient branch of government, and that makes it even more likely that cuts to its funding will have to come out of the services it provides.