Rural Councils: Funding

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on a well-informed and passionate speech. I am going to talk about local government in Scotland, which is a devolved matter but which I believe impinges on what the United Kingdom Government do in England and Wales.

I had the honour of serving twice as a member of the Highland Council. The word “messiah” rang a bell with me, because there is that wonderful chorus from the “Messiah” about “Wonderful, Counsellor”; I always regard it as my personal tune. The Highland Council is the biggest council in the entire United Kingdom. It is 20% larger than Wales. We have 7,000 km of road, 200 schools—the most of any local authority in the UK—and extraordinary diversity, from the conurbation of Inverness to very remote areas with very sparse populations. These bring particular challenges that all rural Members here will recognise: distance, inclement weather and everything else that makes funding those councils much harder.

In my brief contribution today, I want to highlight a cautionary tale. I am sorry that no Scottish National party Members are present, because this is an issue for them and their Government in Scotland. The Scottish Government in their infinite wisdom have seen fit to impose a council tax freeze. For the Highland Council, that means that £108 million of savings will have to be found over the next three years. That is incredibly difficult for my former colleagues, because £108 million represents slightly more than half the annual education budget for the Highland Council—that is how massive it is. I do not envy those good people of all parties: Conservative, Liberal, Labour, independent and, indeed, Scottish nationalist. I do not know how they will do it.

I believe that there is a cautionary tale here for the United Kingdom Government. We talk about what exactly is meant by levelling up. The first point is that this sort of thing happening in the highlands of Scotland or in other parts of rural Scotland amounts to a form of levelling down. Services will be cut, investment will be cut and—this is my message to the Minister—that sits unhappily with the Government’s policy of trying to ensure levelling up. If we have part of the United Kingdom going in the opposite direction, it makes the equation that much harder for the UK Government to square, notwithstanding the good intention and efforts that might lie behind the initiative.

This is my second and last point. When His Majesty’s Treasury agreed the local government settlement as part of the Scottish Government settlement, was the intention that the Scottish Government would take those resources and decide to freeze council tax? I do not believe that that is what any Treasury of any Government of the UK would see as a worthwhile outcome. Will the Minister be kind enough to convey that message back to the Treasury? As and when it looks at the Scottish Government settlement, it might just want to take a good, hard look at what the SNP Government are doing in Scotland and how it is having a direct impact on my constituents—the children, the old people and the people who need carers and social help in my constituency. I want to say on the record that I very, very much resent that.