Local Government Funding: Birmingham

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Dorries—everyone has said something different. I have just come out of the debate on Aleppo, and a Government Member who served in the armed forces stressed that perhaps we would not be so ready with some of our suggestions had we seen some of the things that he had seen. I express exactly the same sentiment here. If some of those in the Department for Communities and Local Government, including the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), had seen some of the things that I have seen in my work with the homelessness services in the city of Birmingham, they would not have made the decisions that they have made in the past six years and are continuing to make.

The people who use those services rely on them for their lives. Compare that with the money we spend on other things. I have seen people’s lives saved. These people are not just about managing; they are surviving. Without the refuges, without the St Basils youth homelessness service and without Sifa Fireside—I invite the Minister to sit and eat breakfast with me every morning at Sifa Fireside—we are condemning these people to death with a cut of £5 million to £10 million in Birmingham City Council’s budget for those services.

I am not shroud-waving. I am an expert—I know we do not like experts any more—and I know what even half the proposed budget cut to our current Supporting People services will mean. It will basically mean that the services cannot function any more. There are 4,000 victims of domestic violence in the city of Birmingham. Already, every single day, hundreds of people in our city are turned away from specialist services. We are about to start turning away many more.

On average, there are 97 homelessness applications in our city every single day. We used to have services all across the city where people could go to get help and advice, which reduced the number of homelessness applications. I set up some of those services. Birmingham & Solihull Women’s Aid used to provide specialist support in each of our neighbourhood offices so that there was a specialist, not a checkbox, there when a victim of domestic violence came in needing support for their housing. Those specialists have been gone for about two years; the centres they were housed in no longer exist.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) began his powerful comments on the subject of social care. I put in a freedom of information request to every single council in the UK, asking how much they spent weekly on adult social care in care homes. In Birmingham, the spend is £436 per week. That is £100 less than it costs the care homes in my constituency to care for the people who need adult social care, so the poorest people in our country are paying a top-up fee. In Buckinghamshire, the weekly cost provided by the council is £615; in Richmond, it is £805.

Yesterday, I asked the Care Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), do the nans and grandads, the aunts and uncles, the mums and dads in Buckinghamshire and Richmond matter more than my nan and grandad, than my mum and dad? Because that is what those figures tell me—and that is post-precept. Those figures show an already widening gap, where some people matter and some people don’t. That is what is being created all around the country.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

How does my hon. Friend think the situation will now unfold, given that the funding gap in social care in our city grows to something like a quarter of a billion pounds by 2020-21? Never has a social care system had to withstand this kind of pressure. The situation that she describes is only the beginning.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Byrne, you really should know better than to walk into a debate and intervene as soon as you walk in, without even hearing the opening speeches. You also should address the Chair, not the individual Member.

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. There is a huge gap, and it is widening. Care homes in my constituency often get a bad name when we see “Panorama” documentaries about how awful care homes are, but the ones in my constituency are largely not for profit. Yardley Great Trust and Grey Gables have both told me that given the situation with the social care budget, the simple fact is that they will have to close their doors. Where do the people go who live there?

The social care budget problems will not be solved in Birmingham by a further increase in the precept. It is a sticking-plaster on an enormous wound and it will simply put a burden on those who are just about managing, when the percentage of their income that goes on council tax is far higher than for those at the highest end of society. I am not sure why I should be asking those who are just about managing, to pay that price. Perhaps we could ask Andy Street.

What my FOI request revealed about the social care budget is its clear and stark unfairness. Since I came to this House, I have heard an awful lot of Government Members talking about the stark unfairness in schools and education funding—“They are getting loads more money,” and so on. Those calls have been answered by the Government; incidentally, it has meant staff reductions in my constituency, and in my own children’s school. My son’s class will now have 33 children, exceeding the legal limit. I have watched Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and say, “It isn’t fair that children in Knowsley get this much.” Well, I am here to speak up for the old people of Birmingham. My children are paying the price because this Government are righting a perceived unfairness in education funding. I am asking for my unfairness to be righted, and for social care disparities to be addressed today. The problem is not going away; it is a problem now, and it must stop.

What I would say about all the different people sent into Birmingham City Council—rightly so; I am sure that all of us, as Members of Parliament across the country, have seen our councils do good and bad things and got annoyed at them—is that it seems like moving the deckchairs while Rome burns. Nothing has changed for the end users, the citizens. I ask the Minister to look at the figures—Richmond with its £805 a week, Birmingham with its £400, Coventry with even less and Wolverhampton with £350—and tell me that he thinks that is okay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman will understand that I have not been in the meetings so I cannot comment on their content. Needless to say, because I was meeting Councillor Forbes yesterday to discuss another matter, I had a brief conversation with him about the issues in Birmingham, but I cannot comment beyond that.

I could list lots of the other investment the Government are putting into Birmingham through local growth deals, which are having a significant impact and transforming people’s lives, but I want to respond to as much of the debate as possible rather than discuss overall investment in the region. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) made a powerful case about transition funding, which was also mentioned by other Members. Birmingham did not get transition funding for the simple reason that it had benefited from the 2015-16 change. The shire counties were the authorities hardest-hit by that change, so the transition funding was naturally focused on them.

The hon. Lady also mentioned school funding. I represent the third-worst—sometimes worst—funded education authority. If she wants to come to Goole in my community, she will also see very high levels of deprivation and huge challenges, but ones that we have to address with many hundreds—

[Jess Phillips]

Do your schools have 33 kids in their classes?

[Andrew Percy]

Yes, some of them do. We have funding differences of many hundreds of pounds below the national average, let alone our neighbouring authorities. Nobody owns one particular community. I grew up in one of the poorest cities in the country and attended one of the worst comprehensive schools, and for many years I taught in some of the toughest schools in the country, let alone in the city. I understand the challenges as well as the hon. Lady, as do others on the Government Benches. Some of her comments were a little divisive, trying to set Tory-run shires against Labour-run metropolitan areas. There are huge challenges in many areas. Deprivation and poverty do not necessarily respect local government boundaries.

A couple of points were made about homelessness, which is of course a massive challenge. I cannot comment on the specifics of the funding decisions that have been made in Birmingham, but the Government do take the issue seriously, which is why we have supported the Homelessness Reduction Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). Homelessness is at half its 2003 peak. Birmingham has received nearly £1.1 million in homelessness prevention funding for 2016-17, and we are investing £500 million in seeking to tackle homelessness.

In the short time remaining, I say to Members who represent Birmingham that the Government see solving the issues there as a partnership. It is important that the decisions that need to be taken on financial management in Birmingham are taken. As I have said, other local authorities and metropolitan boroughs have, with less spending power per dwelling, dealt with the very challenging settlements for local government. We want to assist Birmingham in doing the same. We have to wait for the independent financial review, which should conclude in the middle of January, to report so that we can consider matters further.

We are determined to try to get Birmingham, like many of the metropolitan councils, into a position where the budgets that are set are realistic, so that people know what services are being delivered. Plenty of other local authorities, many with much lower funding per dwelling, are not reducing services in the way described today. Key to that is having a budget that is viable and realistic, which is what we hope will come out of this process.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered local government funding for Birmingham.