Local Government Finance

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

That is very worrying, and I hope the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will stand up against it. Those of us who have been a Member of this House for some time will remember that the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Lord Pickles, was only too keen to offer up the maximum cuts from his Department, meaning that local government in England was the part of the public sector that was clobbered the hardest.

It is even worse than the 32% fall over five years because, since the Conservative party entered government in 2010, funding for local councils has been slashed by more than half. We have all seen the consequences of that neglect: the unrepaired roads, the uncollected bins, the cuts to adult learning and the closed children’s centres. Under Conservative leadership, almost a fifth of our libraries have been forced to close because of cuts to funding. One of the previous Labour Government’s greatest achievements, the Sure Start programme, has had its funding slashed in half, forcing as many as 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres to close since 2010.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is worried about the impact on the local authorities he mentioned because they cannot raise as much money through council tax. Does he accept that the shire districts get much less local government funding, so their council tax has to be much higher? It is only right that we consider a fairer funding formula, so that everybody pays a fair amount and receives a fair amount.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will come on to the specific point of funding adult social care.

I will happily provide the statistics, but Liverpool, Knowsley, Blackpool, Kingston upon Hull and Middlesbrough are the five most deprived local authorities in England. Since 2010, Blackpool has lost 21% of its funding; Knowsley 25%; Liverpool 23%; Kingston upon Hull 22%; and Middlesbrough 21%. A 5% maximum increase in council tax in each of those local authorities will raise nothing like their loss of grant funding. That is not fair. If the fair funding review is carried out in the way that the Local Government Association suggests it might be, those most deprived communities will see even greater reductions in funding, and we know they will never be able to plug the gap through council tax alone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has been a champion for not only local government across the country, but that great city of Birmingham, fighting the devastation that has befallen that great city. On the LGA’s own statistics, a further £48 million in adult social care funding could be removed from Birmingham to add to the devastation that has already hit his city. That is why the fair funding review is so unfair and wrong.

According to the King’s Fund—so this is not coming just from the LGIU—by the end of the next decade the number of older people who need adult social care support is predicted to increase to 4.1 million. That is piling even more cost pressures on our local councils, which is why the LGIU also highlights the increase in financial pressures on children’s services, as adult social care is only one part of the very costly equation that is people-based services—the services that councils, by law and by right, have to provide. Mrs Smith, on any street of any town in any shire, thinks that her council tax increases are going towards ever-reducing bin services, and she sees parks not being maintained and libraries closing. That is because she never sees the impact on adult social care and children’s services.

On children’s services, the LGIU argues that councils are no longer able to shield vulnerable children from the worst of the budgetary pressures that councils are facing. More than one in three councils said their inability to protect vulnerable children was their biggest concern. We know that there are unprecedented demand pressures on children’s services. The number of children in care has hit a 10-year high, but without the funding to support that increase in demand.

From 2009 to 2019, the number of section 47 inquiries—that is, where a local authority believes that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm—has increased by 139%. The Local Government Association warns that children’s services alone are facing a £3.5 billion funding gap by 2025. It is these pressures on people-based services that are pushing many councils towards the cliff edge, and sticking plasters will no longer suffice. The Minister will no doubt say that he gave £1 billion to be shared by adult social care, children’s services and provision for NHS winter pressures. That is not enough.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We have discussed this before, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should have cross-party talks on adult social care? One of the Select Committee’s key recommendations was that adult social care funding should be removed entirely from local authority pressures and we should adopt a German-style social insurance system. Does he agree that we should have cross-party discussions and that that should be one of the options on the table?

[Andrew Gwynne]

As I have said in previous debates, it is incumbent on the Government to come forward with proposals. We are still waiting for the Green Paper promised in the last Parliament and the Parliament before that. The fact of the general election is that the hon. Gentleman’s party is in power and it is incumbent on Ministers to come to this House to explain how they are going to try to resolve this crisis in adult social care.

We will sit down with Ministers. We have our own ideas. We will share ideas with the Government. We will come to some kind of consensus if we can. But of course the history on this is not great; I remember the former Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, having cross-party talks in the dying days of the Labour Government, and it looked as though we were getting agreement with the shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson—until the general election came, and then there were posters everywhere saying, “Labour’s death tax” and “Andy Burnham’s death tax”. We have to move away from that and tackle this issue seriously.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) highlighted what has been happening over the past 10 years, which is that local government as a sector has taken the biggest cuts. Added to that, Departments might have to find another 5%, and no matter what the Minister says in his reply about levelling up and making promises to northern councils, it will be very difficult, because this Government and the coalition Government had a clear policy to move funding from more deprived to more affluent areas.

Interestingly, the Minister said in reply to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) that he was here because he wanted to make the point that he was the Northern Powerhouse Minister. With one sole exception, the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) has been the only new Conservative northern MP who has sat through this debate. We had a brief interlude from the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), who stayed for about 10 minutes, and I did spot briefly the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). If this new army—supposedly—of new Conservative MPs want to argue for their region, they should be doing it in here and they are not setting a very good example. I will work with them to argue why the Government got it wrong on local government finances over the past 10 years.

It is not just me saying that: the National Audit Office and the Centre for Cities have clearly demonstrated that money has moved from northern councils—the more deprived areas—to the more leafy suburbs in the south-east. That has not been done by accident; it has been deliberate design and policy. If the Minister levels up the system and makes it fair, I will fully support that, but that would be very unpopular among some of his colleagues in the south-east.

We have a situation now, after the last 10 years, where County Durham has lost £224 million in grant. Core spending per dwelling in County Durham stands at £1,727, whereas the figure for Surrey is £2,004, so it is clear that deprived areas such as County Durham are getting less core spending, and that has been deliberately designed by this Government.

The cover for that is the so-called “fairer funding formula”. That is complete nonsense, because it is fundamentally flawed in two respects and it is a disguise to use the word “fairer”. It starts from the premise that the needs of every single area and council are the same, when that is clearly not the case; I will give examples later. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East highlighted, it also works on the basis that each council has the ability to raise local finance on an equal basis; I am sorry, but they don’t.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

rose—

[Mr Jones]

I will give way in a minute.

They don’t, because, for example, in County Durham over 50% of our properties are in band A, so, no matter how much we put up the council tax, we will not—unlike more affluent areas, with larger numbers of Ds, Cs and even Gs in some cases—be able to bridge the gap that has resulted from the withdrawal of core funding.

[Mr Jones]

I give way first to my hon. Friend, as I always call him—the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful. The right hon. Gentleman seems to imply that somehow shire counties are getting a better deal from central Government in terms of spending allocation than metropolitan areas, but that is absolutely the reverse of the truth. The reality is that the shire counties get less than half as much as the metropolitan areas allocated from central funds, and that is why our council tax is, in some areas, twice as much.

[Mr Jones]

Yes, but I have to say that in the hon. Gentleman’s area, North Yorkshire, the ability to raise council taxes is a lot better than in County Durham and others. I am not talking about a metropolitan council; I am talking about County Durham. In Surrey—Woking—and other areas in the south, the core spending has not been reduced at all. So the hon. Gentleman should be shouting from the rooftops about the unfairness of the current formula.

The other issue—

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who made some interesting points, particularly on Grenfell and the cladding situation, which I have spoken about many times in this Chamber. I agree with some of the points she made about that. It was also a great pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), who made an excellent maiden speech, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr Bacon), for Keighley (Robbie Moore) and for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), who are no longer in their places. I have definitely tasted some Cromer crab in my time and probably more than my fair share of Tim Taylor’s Landlord beer.

It is good to see that the Opposition acknowledge the need for a fairer system of spending distribution, and I concur with that. The Government started on this road to try to make the system fairer, as it is certainly not fair at the moment. It is not fair in the amount of money allocated to shires and to cities; there is a huge disparity there. We are talking about more than twice as much money—in some cases, almost three times as much—per capita in cities compared with counties. Let us look at overall spending power. North Yorkshire, if we add in both tiers of local government, has about £770 of spending ability per capita, whereas in London—in the top 10 authorities—the figure is about £1,000 to £1,100. That is despite the fact that their populations are younger and better-off than my local populations in North Yorkshire. It is simply an unfair system and it needs to be rectified.

Council tax in many shires, including in North Yorkshire, is almost twice as high as in many places around the country. The Opposition say, “That means you can raise more money more easily by increasing council tax.” That is, of course, true, but there is a failure to see the irony: the iniquity whereby, despite getting less money, we contribute much more locally for our services ourselves, because lots of these cities are getting a far bigger slice of the pie from central Government moneys. That is where the iniquity lies.

I am glad the Opposition see that we need a fairer system, as I agree with that. We also need to make the system fairer progressively. I do not think it is right to rob Peter to pay Paul, but that is not what this consultation is about. It is about introducing extra money over a period of time, so all boats are lifted in a rising tide. That is exactly where we need to be. The system has to be progressive so that those who are not getting a good deal now are better treated than those who are getting a much larger slice of the pie today, and, as the consultation says, it happens over time—three to five years. I absolutely accept that it would not be right for some people’s share to go down, but that is not what the consultation is saying.

The key to all this is that the biggest area of discretionary spend by local authorities is in adult social care. That is the major problem that we need to solve. The Government are absolutely right to say that we need to do that on a cross-party basis, because that is the only way we will get a sustainable solution. Otherwise, the Opposition will say at the next election that they are campaigning to do it differently and the issue will become a political football again. We need to move away from that and agree on something cross-party. The Government have said that, and I absolutely accept that we need to bring forward a Green Paper so that we can look at the options.

However, it is not right when someone like the shadow Health Secretary says, “We’ll agree to cross-party talks as long as you agree to our preconditions before we start; we want our solution to be the solution.” I have heard that from Opposition Members a number of times, although I do not think that this shadow Minister is of the same view, and I have been given that answer on the Floor of the House. It is simply wrong. We must have cross-party talks on the basis that everything is on the table, we sit down and discuss it, and we see where we can find common ground.

We do that, of course, in Select Committees. The most constructive thing that any of us do in this place as Back Benchers is to sit on a Select Committee where we discuss things cross-party. I have served on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee for four and a half years. It has a fantastic Chair in the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). We have done dozens of inquiries over that time and have never had a single falling-out: all the reports are published with unanimous support. That means that we can get to a position where we can agree on some basic principles to take policies forward, which is what we have to do with social care.

Last year, the HCLG Committee held a joint inquiry with the Health Committee on future funding of social care. In our report we came up with a number of options, all of which we should discuss in the cross-party talks. One of them was to adopt a social insurance-style system similar to the one introduced in Germany in 1995. It is great to see Opposition Members nodding in agreement with that. Until that point, Germany also had a local authority-funded system, but that was seen as an inappropriate way to raise money to pay for social care because there was no correlation between the need for social care and the money that could be raised at a local level. They need to be totally separate. We held a long inquiry. In fact, the HCLG Committee visited Germany to look at its system, which is simple, scalable, and—critically—will stand the test of time.

We cannot solve the issue through general taxation. A report by the Office for Budget Responsibility said that if we carry on taxing things as we do today in terms of the need for things like social care, healthcare and pensions, our debt-to-GDP ratio will rise from 80% to 280%. The taxpayer simply cannot pay for that out of general taxation; we have to find a different solution. For me, an insurance-based solution is the best thing. We developed a similar system for pensions with auto-enrolment, although that is not mandatory and this does need to be mandatory. So we do have a precedent in the UK for something that is scalable and sustainable.

The 22 members of the Select Committee, cross-party, endorsed the German system. It is a very good, simple system. It is based on about 2.5% of earnings, some paid by the employer and some by the employees. The basic principle is that everybody gives something so that nobody has to give everything. In my business life, whenever we were faced with a big problem, we always looked for somewhere else that had solved it. This has been solved over in Germany. The biggest benefit of the system is that when someone needs care, they are independently assessed and choose either to take that care from a provider such as the local authority or to draw down the money and pay it to a relative, neighbour or loved one who can look after them. It is by far the best system. We need to develop this whole policy area cross-party, and I look forward to doing that with Opposition Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

Better late than never. The hon. Gentleman has missed contributions highlighting the impact of austerity and cuts on many of the seats now represented by Conservative MPs. It is little wonder that the actual formula—the data, analysis and impact—has not been shared with the House at all. Why is that? The answer is that the Government realised that they need to go back—[Interruption.] I am going to continue, so that the Minister has time to respond.

Council tax increases generate very different amounts of money, depending on the locality and its funding base. A 5% increase in Wokingham would generate £5.2 million, while the same percentage increase in Knowsley would generate just half that amount, even though both areas have a similar population base. That is no way to fund adult social care. There is a genuine postcode lottery whereby house price valuations that are nearly 30 years old determine whether somebody gets looked after in their old age. I just do not think that is a fair way to do it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on her fantastic maiden speech. What stood out in particular for me was the sense of the power of community. In spite of deindustrialisation and the real pressures faced through austerity, it is the power of people and place that binds and makes communities. The Government just need to be a bit more on their side in future, compared with the past 10 years.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) highlighted that £300 million has been taken from his local authority budget, and noted that the fair funding review is far from fair. It takes money from areas of high deprivation and directs it to more affluent areas, which is absolutely the opposite of fair.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) highlighted a £130 million cut and its impact on neighbourhoods. My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) highlighted the important role that councillors play in making sure that we have strong local leadership, but they need Government on their side. Far too often, when we ask the Government to step up and to do what is right, they are late in doing so, like some Members arriving in the Chamber. The example was given of the Government being far too late in responding to the cladding issues facing many tower blocks. I am afraid that that is just not good enough.

The truth is that the Government do not want to talk about finance. They know that they are not on strong ground on that issue. They certainly do not want to give any detail about the fair funding review, because it would highlight just how unfair the review really is. I am glad that the Ministers are sitting down, because this will surprise them: we are not going to accept the amendment tabled in the Prime Minister’s name. It does not mention finance; it talks about devolution. The Prime Minister wants to be able to pretend that his flavour of devolution is all about giving people power, but that is not what we have experienced.

Under this Government, many parts of this country have been denied devolution. There is no clear framework to enable local areas to know exactly what types of powers can be devolved to them. What we see with this Government is a flavour of devolution that goes from Ministers to Mayors, whereas Labour recognises that to give real power to communities, we need to start off in neighbourhoods and work up to the nation. Neighbourhoods and communities have not been central to the Government’s devolution agenda, and that has been the hallmark of all we have seen from this Government. I am glad that Labour Mayors are using their powers to ensure that the worst excesses of this Government do not filter down as strongly through to their communities they serve.

We have talked about the town centre fund. Clearly, all of us want to see investment in our town centres. We recognise their importance at the heart of our communities, and the decline that many have seen while retail has struggled to catch up with the online world. But frankly, we will never make progress if the Government are not willing to recognise that the business rates system is actively harming our high streets and town centres. It is not good enough to give just the local independents a boost. Of course that is welcome, but it does not go far enough. Doing only that massively underestimates the importance of anchor stores to bring footfall into big town centres.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think the shadow Minister said that the business rates system is driving the change on the high street. I speak as somebody who has a number of properties in my business, and that is not what is driving this change. It is a change in consumer behaviour that is driving the change on the high street.

[Jim McMahon]

It is right to reflect that the high street will always evolve. It will never be what it was, and it will of course be different in the future. But that does not mean that we should just give up and accept that decline is inevitable. The types of spaces that are often talked about are bespoke spaces. It might be possible to reuse a single shop front, but how it is possible to reuse a whole shopping centre that was built to be a retail core?

The Government’s agenda of only supporting independent traders massively underestimates the impact of anchor stores such as Debenhams or Marks & Spencer, which bring footfall through a town centre. How can it be right that companies such as Amazon can have very clever accountants to hide their profits away from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—which cleaners in their factories would not be able to do, by the way? How can it be right that Manchester airport’s warehouse distribution centre pays half the business rates of Debenhams in Manchester city centre? Where is the fairness in that system? If the Government really want a future for town centres and high streets, they really have to address that issue.

The Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), was right to thank local government, but I am afraid that it will be beyond ironic to many that these thanks came from the Minister who has lorded over austerity and who tries to ignore the fact that the last 10 years have been under a Tory Government, whether in coalition or not. I am afraid that it is not good enough for him to disown the last 10 years as if they had never happened.

Most councils have done a fantastic job to survive. It has been the hard work and leadership of local councillors that has meant that many areas have not just been about decline, but have been offered hope. Council officers have worked so hard to ensure that public services can be delivered. But while thanking them, maybe we should give consideration to the fact that there are more than 900,000 fewer council officers today than there were in 2010; they have been sacked and sent out the door because councils do not have the money to pay them. That is the reality on the ground.

When we were told that austerity was over, I do not think that anybody really expected that we would go back to 2010, but nor do I think that anybody expected the cuts to go even deeper even faster, and that is exactly what will happen under the fair funding review. I challenge the Minister—if he is so confident that that his fair funding review is well thought through and genuinely fair, and that the evidence base is robust and can be tested, what is there to hide? Why not place the data in the Library by the end of the week, so that every Member of this Parliament can hold the Government to account?