Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

Debate between Ian Mearns and Peter Dowd

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

I am sure we will have that debate during the general election process.

As I mentioned, this Government have pledged to take back control from Brussels, but what about control for the millions of people who live outside the M25? How can this Government square their desire for less interference from Brussels with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government not batting an eyelid when banning local councils all over the country from charging £1 for fun runs in local parks? Is it really the job of the Secretary of State to micro-manage park budgets? Have we come to that? Have we come to a British Secretary of State telling local authorities, “You can’t charge these people £1, you can’t charge them 50p”? That is ludicrous, which is we why have to take back control, so that when control comes back to this country it is pushed down.

It is all the more bizarre that the Secretary of State has taken that position, given that both he and his predecessors have cut local government support by as much as 60% in some areas. Authorities have had not only huge cuts in their budgets, but interference on piddling amounts of money, such as £1 for park runs. It is pretty pathetic.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful set of points. On the point about local government finance, it is all very well for the Government to withdraw revenue support grant, but at the same time they are not doing anything about the other side of the account: the council tax banding system. The Government are doing nothing to rebalance that system, which makes up local government revenue apart from the revenue support grant. If they do not rebalance that, things are grossly unfair. The RSG was brought in because a band D median did not exist for all parts of the country, and it certainly does not exist for the north-east of England, which is why we have required RSG from its inception in the early 1990s.

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. This Government have abandoned local government—apart from Surrey County Council.

We cannot have a fair and prosperous economy until all regions and cities have access to adequate funding and investment in infrastructure—until all regions and cities have the power to implement financial decisions at a local level without the constant heavy-handedness of a Westminster-obsessed Government. The referendum result in favour of leaving the European Union was a vote against not just so-called “unaccountable bureaucrats” in Brussels, but the lack of accountability of the Government here at home at those local levels. For many people in this country, the Government are alien and have no relevance to their lives. For many people, this place has no relevance to their day-to-day living; they see it as a bubble and, as we often see here, it is a bubble. The Government sit here in Westminster and Whitehall making decisions, and little consideration is given to the ramifications and the disastrous effect their policies have on ordinary people’s lives. That is why a post-Brexit Britain must look seriously at devolving economic powers to the cities and regions across the country. The Government can no longer pretend that we are a unitary state that can be ruled by diktat from London, given that we have a Parliament in Scotland, Assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales, and a Mayor in London, and of course we will have the city region Mayors in Manchester, Liverpool and the West Midlands from next month. [Interruption.] The Minister says that the Government created them, and I completely accept that, but they have to give them significant powers and responsibilities. The Government have been dragging their feet in many regards on that.

Under seven years of Tory mismanagement, our economy has seen stagnant wages, slow growth and low productivity. I note that the Minister did not mention productivity once in his speech—[Hon. Members: “Yes, he did.”] Okay, perhaps he mentioned it once. We have also seen excessive borrowing, rising debt and failed promises. The Chancellor has presided over an economy that has seen tax giveaways for the richest in our society, at the expense of those on middle and low incomes. The Government have drastically cut public services and failed to balance the books. If re-elected, the Conservatives would radically cut tax in a desperate bid to attract overseas investment and transform our country into a low-pay and low-tax economy.

The assessment of the economy presented by the Government does not account for their catastrophic record and failed economic targets, or for the huge black holes in public spending. It makes no assessment of what the UK’s post-Brexit economy will look like, nor does it acknowledge the economic difficulties ahead. I urge the House to reject the motion.