Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a very important debate at a very important time, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for her introduction in opening it. I also thank the Minister for the spirit in which he conducted the response. For Members across the House, a lot is going on at the moment: tensions are heightened and people are fearful in our communities, and we have all received an increasing volume of correspondence from people desperate to find out what happens next, what this means, and how they can get help and support. It is telling therefore that so many Members have stayed for this debate just to put on record our appreciation for the time given to this important issue.

In particular, I want to reference the Select Committee—and my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) in particular, previously a distinguished member of it—for the work it has done on a number of reviews. On almost every issue and in every policy area, a consistent theme came out, which was that the Government did not have a grasp of the scale of the impact of the decisions they were making on the communities affected by those decisions. Whether it was housing, planning, local government finance, adult social care, children’s services or homelessness—you name it—every review had that strand going right through it.

It is absolutely right to point out that a decade of cuts has taken its toll. Critically—and let us be honest, this issue has transcended different Governments—the absence of a proper assessment of the responsibilities placed on councils, which would then allow an informed assessment of the cost of delivering those responsibilities, is a glaring omission that we need to put right. It is staggering that we are carrying out a fair funding review without having reviewing the responsibilities. That cannot be a real, balanced assessment of the costs of view of delivering services.

Of course, the debate naturally goes on to social care workers and the genuine concern about the type of protection that they will get. This is a constant frustration. We all love the NHS: it is part of who we are as a nation. The NHS gives us help when we need it most, when we are at our most desperate; it brings new life into the world, and we all celebrate that; and it supports us when our loved ones are reaching the end of their time, and right in the middle of that experience, too. It is a frustration for local government, though, that social care is always placed in second or even third place behind the NHS. I just do not understand it: surely if someone is giving care in a hospital environment, they have the same value as if they were giving care in somebody’s home environment. The skill and compassion that person needs, along with their dedication to public service, are critical requirements.

Let us look at what it feels like to be an adult social care worker. First, they are often not treated with respect by the person employing them. We have only recently made progress on 15-minute visits, pay for travel time, not deducting uniform costs and all those types of issues, but even now many are paid the minimum wage or just above it, and that is not even enough to live on. It starts at the beginning: we say that we value care as an industry because it is so important to our society, but the apprenticeship levy rate for care is the lowest possible rate that can be paid for that skill and training provision, at £3,000 a year. A fencing installer who takes on an apprentice can attract £12,000 a year, but that adult social care worker on an apprenticeship attracts only £3,000 a year. There is a real question mark about how we value care as a career. Let us be honest: we have got away with it for too long. As a society and as a nation, we are not paying people a fair wage for their responsibilities and the importance of the job that they do. That just has to change. It will have a price tag, but we should really value the work that they do.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

In the NHS and social care so many of these employees are taken for granted. Their skills in dealing with people—patients, clients, or whatever we call them—is taken for granted. The sector is to a large extent running on the good will of its employees.

[Jim McMahon]

That is absolutely the case, but it is also running on high levels of vacancies—there are 120,000 vacancies in adult social care. We are highly vulnerable to staff in that industry becoming ill and going into self-isolation, which is why the question of the protection and support they are given becomes so important. It is absolutely about making sure that, first and foremost, they are considered in the same way as hospital staff. Making sure that they get the proper protective equipment that they need is critical, not just to protect the patients who are being dealt with and the receivers of adult social care, but for the individuals who are placing themselves in a very risky situation, going into people’s homes without knowing who that person has been in contact with, but doing it anyway because they believe in the care they are offering.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) made a really important point that went beyond adult social care: the fabric of our society has changed as a result of the cuts. The 70% reduction in youth services has almost certainly had an impact on knife crime, on county lines, and on whether people feel they have a stake in the future.

[Helen Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in this time of crisis central Government support for local government is urgently needed in respect of protection of our young people, who may be even more vulnerable to violence as a consequence of the lack of support systems, of activities and of the people who are normally are responsible for keeping them safe day-to-day?

[Jim McMahon]

That is absolutely true, and it is also true that many lives are lost, in terms of potential, through the criminalisation of young people who are effectively groomed into criminality by those in positions of power or authority in the community who attract them in and entice them. We need to do far more to make clear to young people across the country that there is a real alternative when it comes to leading a fulfilled life. Until then, we will never break the cycle of young people being caught in crime unnecessarily.

This goes right to the heart of the “cradle to the grave” approach to public service. We cannot ignore the impact on Sure Start centres, which were about investing in young people and giving them a taste of what opportunity was from the time when they were young and receiving that type of care. Taking it away has had a massive impact, and that is before we get on to primary school budgets and special educational needs. Young people are just not receiving the tailored support that they need.

However, today is also about thanking councils for the work that they do. Regardless of party affiliation, I want to place on record our thanks for the work that councillors do. They come into public service from their community because they really want to make a difference. Hearing from some of the councillors and ex-councillors who are now in this place about the passion and connection that they still feel, as I do, is very inspiring. We must also thank our council officers.

After 10 years of austerity, councils have experienced a very stressful period in trying to reconcile delivering balanced budgets to remain within the law with managing the huge demand for adult social care, children’s services and services for the homeless. People believe they pay council tax for the very neighbourhood services that are being taken away because councils cannot afford to make ends meet and provide those services. Councils are placed in a horrible position. They are trying to keep their heads above water, and providing targeted support for people who really need it, but at the same time the public are holding them to account for the real cuts that have been made locally. I do not think that that is a fair burden for central Government to place on local government.

That brings me to council tax, which is a hugely regressive tax. It has increased by a third, and what was hidden in the Budget papers was, within the lifetime of that Budget, an £8 billion increase in council tax income for the Treasury. The Government are not coming to the table and giving councils sufficient funds to deal with the demands of adult social care and children’s services in particular. What they are saying is “It is the survival of the fittest. If you can raise money through council tax or business rate retention, good luck, but if you cannot, I am afraid that you can no longer rely on central Government to step in and provide that partnership solution.”

That is just not a fair way of doing things. How can it be right that today, in England—and we have an English problem, because of the nature of how the country is governed—adult social care and people’s ability to access the care that they need will soon be determined by the house values in their area in 1991? How can it be right that they will be based on historic industrial and commercial land values and the business rate take in that area, when the council has very little control over that base? With every revaluation, we see many regions being devalued, and London and the south-east increasing in value. That will be the model, the baseline, of public service funding in the future.

I mentioned the survival of the fittest, but the fittest are not that fit. Local government still faces a £6 billion funding gap between now and 2025. There will still be people in the most affluent parts of the country who are living in absolute destitution and not getting the support that they need because councils do not have the necessary funds.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Having been a councillor myself, I can echo his comments. The difficulty for our local authorities is that in the absence of the central Government grant, they are having to be more inventive and creative in respect of how they bring in revenue streams. What we have found in the last couple of weeks and what is forecast is that certain revenue streams will be cut off, and councils will become more and more desperate to continue what few services they can maintain. When the car parking charges and the revenue streams for the local civic centre are not coming in, they will be under even more pressure than they were before. Does he agree that the local authorities need to understand urgently how the £500 million that the Chancellor mentioned will be distributed—and distributed fairly?

[Jim McMahon]

I think that is right. When councils have to look elsewhere for funding, a risk naturally comes with that. The National Audit Office produced a report on this and the Government share these concerns. The Public Works Loan Board interest rate was doubled overnight by the Government, because they are concerned about the exposure that councils face in buying assets as investments. The NAO expressed the same concern. In a two-year period, councils have been buying investment portfolio assets of £6 billion. Why? Because they are desperate to see income from other places, but this is office accommodation and in retail, sometimes not even in the area that the council is responsible for. The Government response is to double the Public Works Loan Board rate instead of addressing the fundamental reason why councils have to look elsewhere for funding, which feels illogical. We have to make sure that the base funding for councils is absolutely where it needs to be.

We are coming to the greatest test of local government, public service and society that any of us have seen in our lifetime. It will test us all. It will test the fabric of society and test public services to breaking point, at a time when they are built on extremely weak foundations. I am genuinely fearful for how we can continue this in a sustained period. For a short time, they will make it work. They will roll their sleeves up and work together. They will create a partnership at a local level and find a way through it, but the Government know full well that this is not a crisis that will last weeks or even months. A sustained response will be required and the Government will have to make sure that they give local government the funding that they need to provide the critical response. We also need to manage public expectation.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that only today, local government has received a directive from central Government to provide street sleepers—homeless people on the streets—with self-contained accommodation? Great idea, but where are they going to find it?

[Jim McMahon]

It is also the case, as I hope most Members know, that solving homelessness is not just about providing a roof. That is a critical part of it, but it is about how the ecosystem of public service works to make sure that the alcohol and drug addiction services, mental health support and physical health support are in place. We need to make sure that this is not just about giving someone a set of keys for a property—by the way, if that was possible, why did we not do it before this crisis? —but making sure that the wider support is in place.

The Government need to be honest about the scale of the challenge that public services will face. I still believe that at this moment, the public of this country do not understand the scale of what may face us all and particularly the impact that it will have on public services, and not just for the workforce. We need to remember, when we talk about public services and the community over here, that public servants are the community. They live and work in the communities where we all do. If people are off work because they have to self-isolate, are ill or have caring responsibilities, that will have a direct impact on the local government workforce. Many will have partners working in the private sector, as well as the public sector, and they may well face redundancies and hours being cut in the family. They will go through the same financial stresses and strains, and there will be an impact on family life in the same way. The Government need to be honest about what that means for day-to-day public services, and what the public can expect when we really have to pull through to make sure that we can keep the most urgent critical care going in this country.

The Chancellor said that money will be made available, but we see a drip feed of those announcements in a way that is not helpful for local government. The public health settlement for next year was released only yesterday, 14 days before the end of the financial year. Local councils were not even able to plan ahead about what that meant. We cannot have that when it comes to a crisis of this scale.

I have always believed that our local government is the first line of defence and the frontline in delivering public services. I have always believed that they are the glue that holds our community together, that they are the leaders of place and that they can stir us to a better future. We have seen that in the way that they bring communities together, invest in their local economies and deliver decent public services. What we will demand of those people in the coming weeks and months will test us all, and it will test their resolve. It will not be good enough just to say, “Thank you for all that you do,” without addressing the fact that, for 10 years, they have had to shoulder a disproportionate burden of austerity. Surely, now is the time to say to those people, “We will right the wrong of making you take on that burden of austerity. You were not the bankers, you did not create the financial crisis, and it was wrong to place you in a position where you had to bear a disproportionate burden.” We need to put that right today.

We need not just money for the current crisis but sustained funding so we can rebuild public services, invest in our frontline and do more than just give those people one word. By the time we get through this, they will not be just the frontline that we respect; they will be seen for the heroes that they are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her further intervention. I know and understand the point she is making, and we have already made funds available to local authorities. The Chancellor, in his Budget speech, made clear the support we want to give. He made further announcements yesterday and, if she is prepared to bear with the Government a little longer, I suspect further announcements will be made as the situation evolves.

As the Under-Secretary of State made clear in his opening statement, this funding is in addition to extending SSP and a range of other measures by the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Jim McMahon]

Local authority base budgets are based on an assessment of council tax collection rates. If people are made redundant or if they move on to statutory sick pay, they will clearly not be able to afford their rent, let alone their council tax. We expect councils to withhold any enforcement action, because that is the right, moral thing to do, but surely the Government will provide compensation to protect the base income of those councils, and surely they must now consider whether people should have the protection of a council tax holiday, too.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As the Chancellor made clear, we will do whatever is necessary to stand behind our public services, our local authorities and our volunteers to get through this crisis. More announcements will be made in this fast-moving situation, so I ask him to bear with the Government in that regard.

As hon. Members will also be aware, yesterday, my Department announced £3.2 million in initial emergency funding to help rough sleepers or those at risk of rough sleeping to self-isolate to prevent the spread of this virus. The Under-Secretary of State, the homelessness Minister, made that point in his opening remarks; I just wanted to reiterate it to ensure that colleagues who have come into the Chamber more recently have heard it.

A number of Members from across the House raised the question of whether the Government have provided sufficient funding. The first point I would make—I have made it already—is that this situation is changing every day. The Government are responding at pace to the evolving challenges and working closely with the Local Government Association and other local authority representatives to understand the effects of covid-19 on the delivery of statutory services, including social care. The second point is to stress that the announcements that we have made so far, including those from the Chancellor last night, do not signal the end of the Government’s response; they signal its beginning. We stand ready to do more and we will go further as necessary.

A number of colleagues raised the question of our social care workforce, including those who care for the elderly and vulnerable in care homes and in their own homes. Building on our existing strong local relationships, the NHS and local authorities are working with care providers to make sure that people receive the specialised care and support they need during this outbreak. Councils will map out all care and support plans to prioritise people who are at the highest risk and will contact all registered providers in their local area to facilitate plans for mutual aid, and they will do this at pace.