Local Government Finance Settlement

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend highlights the vital issue of more and better integration between the healthcare system and the adult social care system. I referred in my statement to places where we are seeing good practice. I mentioned Manchester and Northumberland, and there are some other such areas. Many areas can learn from that, especially on things such as delayed transfers of care. We want to see more work in this area. That is why the Department has already started to work with the Health Secretary on a set of principles that we expect to be implemented as local authorities access the additional funding.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The great city of Birmingham has been hit hard by the biggest cuts in local government history—£800 million. That is having increasingly “catastrophic consequences” for public services, in the words of the chief executive. According to the chief executive of Birmingham YMCA, it is leading inevitably to more young men and women dying, like the young man who froze to death on a Birmingham street on 29 November. Birmingham has been denied a fair deal. Can the Secretary of State begin to explain why—as we have seen with nursery schools last week, schools yesterday and local government today—Birmingham is treated less fairly than the Prime Minister’s own constituency of Maidenhead? It cannot be right to put the interests of the Tory party above the interests of the public.

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman should re-examine the figures and get them right. I have here some helpful figures for him. He will know that Birmingham has significant failings, which is why an independent panel was put in place by my predecessor. Failings were significant in management areas. The hon. Gentleman seems to suggest that there is a real funding issue with Birmingham, but let me give him the facts. Birmingham, among the metropolitan districts, by 2019-20 will receive £1,984 per dwelling, in comparison with the average of £1,767. It is a well-funded local authority, and it is incumbent on those who run it to do so more efficiently in the interests of their residents.