Local Government Funding: Birmingham

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and I have every sympathy for what he says, because Coventry has experienced the same thing. Importantly, it was only some weeks ago that a private Member’s Bill was approved in this House and we were being assured that homeless people would be found accommodation. However, we never got a price tag put on that.

[Steve McCabe]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and he is exactly right. It is difficult to see how the Government can say they are doing a great job with the homelessness reduction legislation if its effect will be to impose more duties on local authorities that are unable to fund their existing proposals for Supporting People.

I am concerned about young people, older people with support needs, those with learning disabilities or mental health needs, and the victims of domestic violence. If there is a cut in budgets for Supporting People, all that help is at risk. It will lead to a reduction of provision and a further reliance on the costly unregistered and unregulated sector. Is that what the Minister wants? I commend the Birmingham pathway model for under-25s to the Minister. I understand that it is seen as a national exemplar and has been used to inform the work of his Department in establishing a framework for all other services for single homeless people. Why would he want to stand by and see it close down?

The Minister might want to remind me of the council’s failings and suggest that its members should put their own house in order, rather than complain to the Government. I acknowledge that Birmingham is under scrutiny. We have had: an independent review of education and the appointment of a Government commissioner for education; an independent review of children’s services and the appointment of a children’s services commissioner; and the Kerslake report into the structure and functioning of the council itself, and the appointment of a Government improvement panel to oversee the implementation of the recommended changes. How many meetings has the Minister had with those commissioners and members of the improvement panel since being appointed to his post? Does he consult them weekly or fortnightly? What is the frequency of the contact? Surely he cannot be defending this dire approach to our city’s future without reference to his own appointed experts. Would that not be tantamount to a dereliction of duty on his part?

We want a fundamental re-evaluation of spending needs to determine the funding levels of different local authorities, and we want a fair system, not a skewed or fixed one. We want recognition of some of the unique problems that confront Birmingham and an offer of some transitional support while that re-evaluation takes place. I can try to be helpful to the Minister, if he is in any kind of listening mode. I am not simply calling on him to give the city council more money. I am open to discussions, as are a number of my colleagues—any place, any time—to see what kind of partnerships, innovative approaches and pilot schemes might be available to help to ease the plight of our city and its people. As I have indicated, the Minister might like to consider bringing forward resources from the better care fund to recognise that pressures are being experienced now. I am open to suggestions about how that extra funding might be distributed. My concern is that those in desperate need get help. If the Minister has set his face against giving any extra money to the city council, I will accept an alternative approach to boosting the overall social care resource if he is ready to make that offer.

The Birmingham Social Housing Partnership has made a proposal to Government to pilot a locally administered co-investment model for supported housing, which would make possible the squeezing out of transactional costs. If agreed, it could be part of a national pilot for the delivery of supported housing. Can the Minister offer any comfort on that front today?

If we do not see some improvement in the financial situation facing our city, I predict dire consequences: the abandonment of the elderly, vulnerable and homeless; the full-scale closure of libraries, public parks and play areas; the second city reduced to a wasteland; and a breakdown of the social consensus on which the very basis of our community exists. Our city has had an extremely raw deal. I beg the Minister to treat these warnings seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing it, on making such a detailed, determined and effective speech on behalf of his constituents and on defending his city as he did. I also acknowledge the contributions of my right hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), and for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff), who supported my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak today and who each sought to defend and make the case for the people of Britain’s second city.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak set out the scale of the cuts that have hit Birmingham —some £90 million in 2016-17 in total. After Liverpool, Birmingham is the local government area hit hardest by the Government’s funding cuts: some £750 million has been cut from its budget since 2010. He went on to point out very powerfully the failure of the Conservatives to ensure any transitional funding at all for Birmingham in last year’s settlement. Conservative-led Surrey got £12 million and Hampshire got £19 million; those are just two examples, alongside the others he mentioned, of areas that benefited from the transitional funding package, while his city—one of the biggest and most significant local authority areas in the UK—got nothing at all.

I will come back to some of my hon. Friend’s opening remarks, but let me first dwell on the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington. He referenced the impact of local authority cuts on homelessness in Birmingham, and particularly on young people suffering homelessness. He noted the work of 14 charities in Birmingham that support their Members of Parliament today in demanding a better settlement for Birmingham and in praising the efforts of the council to protect the most vulnerable in challenging times.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I do not want to detract from the bigger issue of Birmingham, but I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that other local authorities in the west midlands are experiencing exactly the same cuts to public services—youth services, libraries, teachers, education budgets, social services, you name it.

[Mr Thomas]

My hon. Friend widens the debate to the impact of cuts in funding on local authority areas throughout the west midlands. He could also have widened it to underline the cuts in funding that all English local authorities have suffered since 2010. In that context, Thursday’s local government finance settlement will be particularly important, not only for Birmingham and for local authorities in the west midlands but for the whole of England.

If he will forgive me for saying so, my hon. Friend interrupted my praise for the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington, who underlined a number of points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak about the need for further improvements in areas for which the council is responsible. He said quite rightly that that is absolutely no justification for the scale of cuts that various local government Ministers have demanded of Birmingham’s public services.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley made particularly powerful points about the impact of local authority funding cuts on the many victims of domestic abuse in Birmingham. She backed up the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak, and for Birmingham, Erdington on the impact of homelessness in Birmingham and the lack of available support. She underlined the significance of Birmingham’s social care funding crisis, which we will particularly need to focus on when the local government finance settlement is debated on Thursday. She went on to widen the debate from services directly funded by local authorities to other public services. She spoke about the impact on children in our schools of the real-terms cuts in schools funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak referenced the impact of other aspects of the funding cuts on the national health service and the police.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green made a series of important points about the impact on youth services, which, when they exist, can offer alternatives to crime and radicalisation. He underlined the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak about the scale of the cuts in youth services that Birmingham City Council has had to push through because of the loss of funding.

Before the debate, we had the chance to read some of the comments made to the media by the chief executive of Birmingham City Council, Mark Rogers. It is impossible for anybody who has read his comments to doubt the veracity of my hon. Friends’ contributions today. He spoke about the

“catastrophic consequences for some people”

in the city of Birmingham of years of cuts that have forced it to slash funding for key services for vulnerable people. He said that the council had

“just two youth centres”

left and that the

“youth service has all but gone.”

The article also states that, according to Mr Rogers,

“homelessness prevention services had been cut by so much that rough sleeping had quadrupled”.

Understandably, he is worried about the impact of cuts in funding on social care and about how fewer elderly people are now eligible for care at home. He is expecting to have to implement £113 million of cuts in 2017-18, on top of the cuts that have been made since 2010. In the context of the much-debated social care crisis, which many Members on both sides of the House have underlined to the Government, the fact that Birmingham is having to look at taking almost £30 million out of its adult care budget will be profoundly worrying to anyone who knows people who are elderly, in need of care or vulnerable in other ways.

We already know from the letter that Ministers sent to councils last year with the details of their funding settlement that the Government increasingly expect councils such as Birmingham to increase council tax by as much as 20% by 2020. Across the country, that is equivalent to an increase in average band E of about £300 a year by 2020. Effectively, the people of Birmingham are being expected to pay 20% more in council tax while getting dramatically lower levels of service. Will they get better street cleaning? Will their bins be emptied more regularly? Will they have a better chance of seeing the elderly people they love get better care? Sadly, the brutal truth is that the quality of services is going down as the Government seek to continue to cut funding.

We are told that Ministers are no longer talking about austerity, but the brutal reality of the cuts in funding that Ministers are still making is that public services will continue to decline. We hope for something different when the local government finance settlement is announced on Thursday.