Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim McMahon and Jonathan Brash

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

We always say that local government is paid for one way or the other: either we pay at the front-end through fair funding being fairly distributed across the country, or we pay at the back-end because eventually the system falls over and we must repair the damage. If we take ourselves back to the coalition years, when austerity first came in, the cruelty was that we did not reform public services, repairing them from the ground up, to get ahead of those system changes. That was a wasted opportunity.

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

This year, Hartlepool borough council is set to overspend on children’s social care by some £5 million, due in no small part to the outrageous charges levied by private sector children’s homes. What can the Minister do to cap those providers’ charges to ensure that local government can continue to deliver its statutory obligations?

[Jim McMahon]

I recognise that, in large part, children’s services are the funding pressures that are driving council budgets. We cannot forget, though, that behind every one of those numbers is a child who often is not getting the outcomes they need. Far too often what we are seeing in the system is that high costs are not just sending councils to the point of bankruptcy, but delivering worse outcomes for young people. We want to see far more resilience built back into the system, and there are examples today of councils that are building that public sector provision back into the marketplace.