Funding for Local Authorities

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because I believe that will need to be recognised not only in local government funding but in health service funding. In my constituency the town of Axminster has a population profile that matches the one forecast for the country in 2035, meaning that there is a much more elderly population. In Seaton and Sidmouth and along that coastline, there is an increasingly elderly population.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that the local government funding formula in general needs to be looked at, because there are different problems in different regions, and they require different answers? In Coventry, the local authority has lost £45 million over the last three years and is expected to find another £19 million next year. That is affecting jobs as well as services, so Coventry is down 15%—1.5% above the national average in relation to cuts and resources.

[Neil Parish]

I started my political life in both district and county council—this is going back to the ’80s—and the formula was just as complicated then. Under successive Governments we have made it even more complicated. I think, dare I say it, that it is all done because if the formula is made complicated enough, no one will understand it and those in government can do what they like. The Government spend a lot of time talking about the spending power of councils. It is not only about that spending power, but about how we get to that spending power and who pays for it. I shall discuss that issue later.

Urban councils are still receiving 50% more per head than local authorities in rural areas, despite the fact that residents in rural authorities, such as Devon county council, pay 15% more council tax, and many public expenses are more expensive to deliver in sparsely populated rural areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the distances involved in getting children to school. Also, in rural areas we have many smaller schools, which are very good schools but are more expensive to run.

Despite the fact that rural areas have been underfunded, I would highlight the very good services that education authorities, schools and those across the piece have managed to deliver in very difficult circumstances. However, that does not mean that we should sit here and allow the Government not to give us a fair share. I want to put it on the record that I believe that we have very good services, despite the meagre amounts being spent on them.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the areas he and I represent have an additional problem in social care, because £0.8 billion has been shifted away from local government to try to fund social care, leaving a gaping hole in the funding.

[Neil Parish]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

I completely agree. The closure of libraries really worries me. We face similar levels of closure in Sheffield. We are not applauding or welcoming those closures; we are having to deal with the terrible impact that we know they will have in our area. But we know that the reasons for those closures lie with the lack of funding from central Government.

I have sketched my constituency not because I want to wax lyrical about the area I represent, but because I want to establish a key point that is all too often overlooked when we consider what I call provincial England, meaning England outside London. For too long the debate has been unhelpful, sitting on a platform that polarises the arguments. For too long the argument has been about rural areas versus urban areas, as though the two are literally miles apart. Nothing could be further from the truth, as my constituency exemplifies. As I have already said, I represent deeply rural areas located firmly within a metropolitan borough. I represent rural areas that in the past have supported engineering and coal, railways and ceramics as well as the vital agriculture industry.

My plea to the Chamber today is this: let us start having a more rational and pragmatic debate about the role of local government, let us stop dividing our country up into areas of interest, and let us start representing properly the interests of all the people of England. Let us not have a debate in which we say, “My rural area isn’t getting enough from the Government, so let’s cut the funding for the metropolitan boroughs.” Let us properly recognise that most parts of England, including the metropolitan boroughs, are more complicated than appears to be the case when we just look at a title such as “Sheffield city council.”

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Whether or not we are talking about local government in rural or urban areas, the fact remains that central Government are weakening local government, because one of their proposals, the new homes bonus, takes discretion away from local authorities and puts it in the hands of local enterprise partnerships, and who are they accountable to?

[Angela Smith]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. Affordable homes are a key issue in all areas, both rural and urban. It is important that local authorities have the key role in determining, politically, the best way of delivering those new homes—at the city region level in the case of my constituency—across a borough such as Barnsley, which has a lot of green-belt land. In fact, most people will be surprised to hear that the majority of land in Barnsley is green belt.