Oral Answers to Questions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

Mr Speaker, if you ever take the opportunity to visit Southport, like Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, you will find out that its famous high street, Lord Street, inspired the wide boulevards of Paris. The £675 million future high street fund, which that historic high street will hope to access, will be subject to a prospectus published by my Department by the end of the year.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

T4. When I was a local authority executive member back in 2012, we were often warned about the “graph of doom”, which showed that by about 2018 local authorities would be running out of money for everything but statutory services. At the time, the Government accused the Local Government Association and the National Audit Office of scaremongering, but given what has happened in Northamptonshire and elsewhere, those warnings were accurate, were they not?

[James Brokenshire]

We recognise the pressures on social care, which is why this year an extra £240 million has been committed and £650 million is being committed through the Budget to deal with those pressures. We are looking to long-term sustainability and valuing our local government sector, which is what we do.