Local Government and Social Care Funding

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to grow that cake and the distribution of resources has to follow need. If we are serious about tackling health inequalities, if we genuinely want a fairer, more equal country, if we want to narrow the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest, which sadly is widening, we will not do it by cutting resources and services in the areas that need them the most.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. A man who gets on the train at Birmingham New Street and gets off in Erdington, either at Gravelly Hill station or Erdington station, is likely to live seven years less than one who continues out into the leafy shires of Four Oaks. Birmingham City Council is the sixth most deprived in the whole country, yet it suffered the biggest cut in local government history—of almost £700 million—with another £80 million to come. Does he agree that what is grotesque about the treatment of a great city such as Birmingham is not just the scale of the cuts—including 12,000 staff gone from the city council—but the unfairness compared with the treatment of some of the leafy shires? Birmingham is high need but is being treated as a low priority.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The treatment of the great city of Birmingham has been appalling. The people of Birmingham deserve the resources they need to have decent public services. He has been a feisty champion of the needs of the people of his constituency and that great city and will continue to make that case.