Local Government Finance (England)

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Let me make a bit of progress, and then I will of course give way to more colleagues.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out, over the course of this Parliament the required savings that, as I made clear, councils will need to continue to make will be less than those required in the previous Parliament. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that the required savings of

“around 7% in real terms over the next four years...is a substantially slower pace of cuts than councils had to deliver between 2009-10 and 2015-16, when councils’ spending power was cut on average by 25% in real terms.”

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that within this process councils are still required to do things in a fundamentally different way, such as setting up trading joint ventures, as one county council told me it had done on Monday, or looking at Uber-type services for buses?

[Greg Clark]

Yes, councils should take the opportunities to be innovative. My hon. Friend and I served on the Committee on the Bill that became the Localism Act 2011, which introduced a general power of competence for local councils precisely so that they could take decisions in the interests of their residents and contribute effectively.