Local Government Finance (England)

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

This settlement is a landmark for local government. After years of doffing their cap to Whitehall, councils throughout the country can now take charge of their destiny. That message has been in danger of being lost amidst the fog of deficit denial and doom-mongering coming mainly from Labour Members, who are mumbling right now. There are real reasons why people will soon see the benefit of this settlement as plain as day—despite the doom-mongering work of the Labour party.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is generous of the Minister to give way at the start of his speech. He talks about councils being able to control their own destiny, but how can they do that when he is implementing these vindictive cuts, which are hitting the most deprived councils?

[Brandon Lewis]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention, as it gives me a chance to highlight exactly the Labour party’s problem with local government. It is not about how much is spent, but about how it is spent and about how local councils have the power to make decisions for themselves—something that local government never had under the Labour Government.

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[Diana Johnson]

I will not give way to the Minister because I only have a few minutes and he will have lots of time to peddle his view of what he believes is happening. It is clear that areas such as Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham are being disproportionately hit.

[Julie Hilling]

These figures are calculated as a per capita cut. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that the citizens of West Dorset are getting only a £47.44 cut.

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for providing that figure. As I said, that compares with the cumulative figure over four years of £228.36 for Hull residents, and that is just not fair. The case that I am putting to the Government is that they need to think again if they want to rebalance the economies of the north and the south. This is just another hammer blow to economic regeneration in the north, and to cities standing up and paying their own way. It will not help my city of Hull, which is struggling at the moment. Just before Christmas we saw 1,200 job losses in the local area from the private sector.

I pay tribute to the work of Hull city councillors who are trying to work with the budget they have been given by the Government. They have been put in a very difficult position. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, set out clearly the important work that local councils do on environmental health and trading standards, and in looking after some of the most vulnerable and damaged young people in our society—looked-after children, and elderly and disabled people who need social care. The councillors in Hull are doing their best to make sure that they can cover as much of those services as possible, but the Government are making it completely impossible to provide the kind of services we need in an area with such disadvantage.

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[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I do not know how the Government and Government Members can justify what they are doing to local government finances. It is rare that I agree with a Tory, but I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who is no longer in his place, who said that those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt—perhaps that is why he is no longer in post. That attitude is apparent in the cuts to local government spending—cuts that disproportionately affect the poorest communities.

Newcastle city council research shows that Bolton, the 36th most deprived borough, will receive a cut of £178.26 per head over the four years, while Epsom and Ewell will lose £15.18 per ahead. It is not fair and it is not right. Why did the Secretary of State sign up for the biggest hit across Whitehall? Why did he sign up to £5.6 billion of cuts to local authority spending—a higher percentage than other Departments? If it is to pay down the deficit and debt, well it is clearly not working, because both are increasing because of those savage cuts. [Hon. Members: “No they’re not!”] The poor are paying the price of an economic crisis not of their making.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The debt is going up.

[Julie Hilling]

The deficit is going up too.

The Government will not even take responsibility for these cuts, because they simply try to pass on the responsibility to hard-working councillors up and down the country. They are masters of the politics of passing the buck. They try to say that it is the fault of Wigan and Bolton that services are reduced, that libraries are closing and that youth workers are being made redundant. How dare they? They like to paint a picture of profligate local authorities wasting taxpayers’ money, but that is not true of the councils in my constituency.

One of the senior officers in Bolton told me that he had worked in local government for 24 years and never known a year in which the council had not had to make savings of £3 million or £4 million from the main budget area. However, he went on to tell me that he had never seen anything like what is happening now. Bolton has already had to find cuts of £60 million to its budget since the election, and it will now have to find an extra £43 million over the next two years, out of a controllable budget of £178 million. Of course services will be affected; it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

The Secretary of State has told us all to go and challenge our local authorities on the cuts, so I did. I took his list of 50 ways to save, and asked people on my council what they were going to do about it. Their response was illuminating. They asked me what on earth I thought they had been doing over the years. They also said that most of the changes would save only pennies, in comparison with the £43 million savings that they needed to find. As Members would expect, however, I did not accept that. I went through every one of the 50 suggestions with them. They said that they already share back-office services and, where possible, procurement and IT. They pointed out, however, that those things could not be achieved overnight because contracts came up for renewal at different times in neighbouring local authorities. They control spending, they have transparency and they take cheats to court. Their reserves are already committed. The Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation was set up 30 years ago to enable combined procurement. They collect 99% of the council tax due, which is a great achievement in the 36 most deprived areas.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am sure that Bolton and Wigan councils will be really concerned, just as Tameside council is, that their collection of council tax will start to drop as a result of the council tax benefit changes.

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[Julie Hilling]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The changes are creating real concern among local authorities. They are wondering how on earth they are going to collect extra money from people who already have incredibly squeezed budgets.

I will continue with my list. The council has already closed all the cash offices except the central one. It shares buildings and is centralising its staff, who already hot-desk. The canteen breaks even. The council stopped using posh hotels and holding glitzy award ceremonies years ago. It opened a coffee shop in the library, but it did not work. It has got rid of more than half the senior posts in the authority. It considered sharing the chief exec post, but realised that that simply would not be feasible for a local authority the size of Bolton.

The people I spoke to laughed at the suggestion of a recruitment freeze, because they have not been recruiting for four years. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), they thought that getting rid of councillors’ pensions was a disgrace and that it would work against fulfilling the need for younger councillors, as well as the need for cabinet members to have real oversight of their departments. The council does not have consultants, and it uses agency staff only to cover the changes that it is being forced to make.

[Andrew Percy]

I declare an interest, in that when I was officially Hull’s most popular councillor, I did not take a pension. I was the only one on the council who would not take one. Is the hon. Lady saying that councillors should not make any savings at this time in the cycle? My councillors in North Lincolnshire took a cut in their expenses so that they could employ apprentices. Does she not think that councillors should lead by example?

[Julie Hilling]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman has been listening. I am saying that Bolton council is already looking at every one of the points on that list. On pensions, it is a disgrace to say that councillors should not be able to pay into the pension scheme—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We cannot have challenges about each other’s pensions at this stage—[Interruption.] Order. Mr Percy, you should know better. I am not worried about your pension; I have no interest in how much your pension is worth, and the House does not want to know either. We want to hear the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling).

[Julie Hilling]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The only time my council uses agency staff is when it is forced to do so because of the changes it has had to make. The people I spoke to pointed out that agency staff were often cheaper because they did not have pensions or sick pay, but we want local authority workers to have those things. The council does not send people on leadership courses, and it certainly does not waste money on head-hunters or adverts, because it has frozen all posts. Absenteeism is low, and it invests in physiotherapy to get injured employees back to work. It releases staff only for trade union duties; because of the scale of the changes that the Government have wrought, that is essential for effective consultation with staff. Of course, trade union reps are incredibly busy at this time.

The council does charge for check-off and has never employed a lobbyist. It does private advertising, including on roundabouts across the borough, and has service level agreements with the voluntary and community sector projects to which it gives money. It stopped free food and mineral water years ago, and now provides no tea or coffee at meetings, including all-day planning meetings. There is no first-class travel. Travel is paid at nationally agreed rates, but the top two bands have been cut. It uses videoconferencing when it can, but as the borough is compact there is no money to be saved on travel. It uses the voluntary sector and has had multifunctional printers for years. It does not produce glossy leaflets and makes questionnaires only when it consults on Government cuts.

The council sells the services that it has not already had to get rid of, and the town hall has been hired out for years. It may be able to lease a few more works of art if that makes financial sense, but it thinks that will bring in only a few pennies. It already leases out the Egyptology collection, which raises a lot of money. It saves money on computer software where it can, and asks staff for suggestions.

The Minister will, of course, have been listening very carefully and knows that I have missed two areas. Bolton council wanted me to ask how the Government think it can inform residents about changes to services if it does not communicate with them, and it finds the Secretary of State’s point about scrapping the “town hall Pravda” very insulting. In fact, the newspaper that the council produces four times a year is virtually self-funding.

The Secretary of State says that councillors can issue their own ward newsletter using party political funds—what nonsense. Anyone who has read a Lib Dem leaflet will know that it is not an organ for unbiased truth, and they and I fundamentally disagree with the Secretary of State’s proposal to stop translating documents into foreign languages. Would it not be wonderful if all our residents were fluent readers of English? In the real world, however, in which Labour Members live, people do not. What absolute nonsense to propose that translation undermines community cohesion. Translation enables all our citizens to play a full part in society and find out essential information. Without such information, there are higher costs to the state in terms of health and dealing with problems.

The Government are trying to put up a smoke screen and say that despite the most savage cuts ever known, local authorities do not need to cut services. Cutting more than £100 million from Bolton, the 36th most deprived local authority in the country, is wrong and will mean that my constituents suffer. The Government should hang their heads in shame.