Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Beamish and George Howarth(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Howarth
George—not only a different party, but an entirely different politics, Miss McIntosh.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock). Both he and the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) made a plea for constructive suggestions. I tried to intervene on the hon. Lady’s contribution with a constructive suggestion, but I think she thought that I was going to be disagreeable, and she refused to accept my intervention.
Many hon. Members have mentioned the consequences of protecting pensioners in the overall scheme, and I will not labour the point. It is important to say at the outset that nobody on the Opposition Benches and, I am sure, elsewhere, disagrees with the principle that pensioners should be protected. It is an important principle, to which we all subscribe. The difficulty that we are trying to address is not the Government’s decree that pensioners should be protected but their failure to deal with the consequences of that in the context of a 10% overall cut.
Some contributions have referred to the impact. For example, the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) wanted more information about how the proposal would work in practice. I would like to rely on a briefing that the special interest group of municipal authorities—SIGOMA—has given me. It is a local government representative group, but of a particular set of local authorities. It concludes that, to protect pensioners’ council tax credit, the rest of council tax payers nationally will face a reduction of 17% rather than 10%. We are talking about averages, and we discussed the problem of averages earlier. The range means that, at the bottom end, the figure will be 13.4%, and at the high end, it will be 25.2%. Those who have concerns should take those figures into account.
I will talk about Knowsley shortly. It is a Knowsley problem—there is a distinct flavour of Knowsley to it—but every hon. Member will be confronted with it if the scheme is implemented in its current form.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the scheme will disproportionately affect constituencies such as his and mine in Durham, which not only have many people in receipt of council tax benefit, but a growing elderly population?
Mr Howarth
Yes. There might occasionally be disputes about the scale, but every demographer recognises that people are living longer and that there are therefore many more elderly people in the system.
Mr Howarth
My right hon. Friend makes a strong point, which I hope to tackle shortly.
Currently, many people, especially young people, have to accept jobs, often well below the level of their qualifications, on a minimum wage, at the same time as having to forge an independent existence from their families. I fear that they, or young couples with families, in which the principal earner is on a low wage, will be most affected and put in an impossible position, unless the discretionary powers that the Bill describes are spelled out clearly so that the outcomes cannot be arbitrary. We deserve to know at least what the Government are planning, and that should appear on the face of the Bill. Who are the classes of people? There are vague descriptions in schedule 4, but nothing is spelled out clearly.
I said I wanted to talk about Knowsley and the Liverpool city region. I am indebted to the director of finance in Knowsley for the impartial briefing he has given to me—it is a Labour authority, but he has provided advice on the basis of his financial experience and qualifications. His view is that the 10% cut combined with pensioner protection means that the benefit of other claimants will have to be cut by 18%. If there is provision for others in a local scheme—they could be singled out or ring-fenced—that 18% cut could increase to as much as a 100%, because people could be excluded altogether, as the hon. Member for Poole said.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my right hon. Friend agree that those same people will also be affected by the Welfare Reform Bill? For example, some will lose money under the under-occupancy rule in addition to their losing their council tax reduction. Many such people are in work.
Mr Howarth
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If he bears with me, I will cover precisely that point shortly in the context of the Liverpool city region, but I am sure the same trend applies in his constituency.
Mr Howarth
The hon. Gentleman, who is always fair and reasonable, makes a fair and reasonable point. I hope that the Ministers, who represent the two parties in the coalition, will at least take notice of the concerns that have been expressed from the Government Back Benches, even if they do not take notice of what Opposition Members say.
The Office for National Statistics estimates that pensioner take-up of Knowsley council tax benefit could be as low as 53%, but there could be a significant increase in take-up as a result of a localised scheme, which would place a disproportionate burden on other categories of people. If a greater number of pensioners take up the scheme, which is perfectly possible, the 18% I mentioned could be still higher.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has been patient, so I shall speak about the effects of other measures. It is important that the changes are not taken entirely in isolation. We will talk about welfare reforms tomorrow, but a series of measures will combine to hit some of the poorest in society.
When Labour was in government, I remember the Opposition hammering us by saying, “Well, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says something different from what the Government say.” If that is good for Conservatives and Liberal Democrats when they are in opposition, it is good for Labour Members. “The Impact of Austerity Measures on Households with Children”—an IFS report published this month and produced on behalf of the Family and Parenting Institute—found that the planned changes in the tax and benefit system, including those to council tax benefit, will hit the incomes of families with children the hardest. The IFS estimates that the measures will increase child poverty by 2014-15, with the poorest families being around 10% worse off.
Mr Howarth
I will give way in a minute. I just want to finish my point. The measure in the Bill combined with other measures will have a devastating effect on some of the poorest families in our communities.
Mr Jones
I agree, and that will have a disproportionate effect on northern councils such as County Durham. It will also be a complete nightmare for local authorities in London. I know that the Bill allows for data sharing between local councils and the Department for Work and Pensions, but given the movement of people in London it will be very difficult indeed for councils to chase people up.
What are the options open to councils such as Durham, given the 10% cut, to make up the difference? The Minister and the hon. Member for Bradford East said that it would be made up by charging a different rate on second homes.
Mr George Howarth
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) just made the point that councils could be bogged down in appeals. Does my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) believe that it is also conceivable that the Bill could be deemed discriminatory under the Human Rights Act 1998? The Bill contains a declaration—as do all Bills, for purposes of the Human Rights Act—that the Secretary of State says that
“the provisions of the Local Government Finance Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”
Does my hon. Friend think that that might slightly overstate the case?
Mr Jones
My right hon. Friend raises a very good point, because we will have different schemes in different areas. I wonder whether there will be challenges to the criteria that are used to draw them up. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said that various equality Acts applied to the measure. They may well do, but that is not stated in the Bill. If people who find that they are not in receipt of council tax benefit after the measure is introduced feel that their local authority has discriminated against them, that will doubtless lead to court cases. Again, the costs will fall on local authorities, and again, no doubt the Secretary of State will be nowhere to be seen and will blame councils for not implementing the scheme properly.
The hole could be plugged by further cutting benefits for those who are in work and others. Second homes give another method—obviously, there are a plethora of second homes in Bradford.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Beamish and George Howarth(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Howarth
I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware of the fact that there was a residents group in Liverpool that had a battle with the city council over the right to name the local streets. They lived in an area called Weller streets. They won the battle, and in homage to the city engineer who had said that they could not rename the streets, they named one Weller way.
Mr Jones
I obviously do not want to draw your wrath, Mr Robertson, for going off the subject, but time and time again the Secretary of State talks about devolution and giving local government powers, and then he produces this centralising Bill and gives councils diktats week after week about what they should and should not be doing—whether they should have pot plants, or whether they should have weekly bin collections. The public will start to see through it. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have a Bill that will centralise power and centralise the finance that local councils raise and at the same time tell councils what they can and cannot do, but that is his method. If the Government do not accept the amendment and accept need as the basis for payments, people will come to the conclusion that many of us have already come to—that they do not actually care about need.