Local Government Finance Bill (Fifth sitting)

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

I am always up for things that are radical and transformative, but I like to see the detail before I decide whether they are radical or transformative in a positive way. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, of whom I am very fond—I am always keen to promote him to his Whips—made a series of interventions about the case for rural authorities in north Yorkshire. I gently suggest that his contributions were, sadly, slightly less impressive than those of the hon. Member for Waveney. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton sought to bash London at every opportunity, which I would gently suggest is par for the course for him.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Thomas]

I will give way in just a second to the hon. Gentleman. In his contributions to date—he might be about to recover the situation—he failed to mention any assessment of need in London, or indeed in any authority outside the particular ones in north Yorkshire that I suspect he cares about.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s kind comments, which of course are reciprocated.

The hon. Gentleman misquoted me. In my remarks to him, I talked about the differential between Harrow and North Yorkshire—it is £80 more spending per person, per year, despite the income and age demographics. He has a younger and richer population in Harrow. I am not saying that those are the only demographics and the only cost drivers that we need to look at, but the key is fairness. Would he support a system that is fairer and that truly reflects the cost drivers in Waveney, North Yorkshire and Harrow, even if that disadvantages his local area?

[Mr Thomas]

Of course I would support a fairer system. I think of the ways in which the system is not fair in relation Harrow council’s finances—£80 million plus of cuts in the last four years. I wonder how that is fair.

The exchange that the hon. Gentleman and I have had about fairness is an entirely reasonable debate. I simply think it should be had on the Floor of the House on an annual basis on the local government finance settlement.

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[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to you, Mr Gapes, for getting Conservative Members under control again.

I return to the essential point: there was no mandate for what the Minister and the Secretary of State propose. There was no mention of a shift to 100% business rate retention in the 2015 Conservative party manifesto. There has been no Green Paper and no White Paper about the changes. There has, of course, been a great session of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, of which the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton is an excellent member, but the only commitment I could see in the manifesto was to a pilot scheme for allowing councils to keep a higher proportion of business rates in Cambridgeshire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of 100% business rates retention or not?

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is in danger of suffering from the same disease as the hon. Member for Torbay, and of repeating his question. Of course I am in favour of the principle of 100% business rate devolution. Indeed, we had it in our manifesto as part of a much bigger package of devolution than anything envisaged by the Conservative party. Perhaps the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, who has a reputation for hard work, would like to dig out a copy of the Labour party manifesto, where he can check the section on local government. I will happily pay for him to have a cup of tea with the hon. Member for Torbay so he can point out to him the passage about the increased spending power that councils would have had if Labour had been in charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

I am struggling. I thought that I had helped the hon. Member for Torbay not to make that mistake. Hearing the Minister make the same mistake as a Back-Bench Member is too much. A £30 billion increase in revenue spending power for councils was the centrepiece of our manifesto for local authorities, together with an English devolution Bill.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Page 13 of the Conservative party manifesto clearly states that

“we will pilot allowing local councils to retain 100 per cent of growth in business rates”.

Was not the direction of travel clearly expressed in the manifesto?

[Mr Thomas]

“We will pilot” is somewhat different from “we will introduce”. One might have thought that the hon. Gentleman’s party would follow up with a Green Paper and a White Paper. Where is the Green Paper? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

I am getting closer, Mr Gapes. I thought the Minister’s intervention did not do him justice. I fight for my local authority and I respect the contribution of the hon. Member for Harrow East, although I try to guide him to make better defences of the local authority. I hope that the Minister listened carefully and will act on what the finance officer from Harrow Council said.

Sadly, one thing we have not touched on thus far is bus services—a small issue in the context of the state of local government finance, but it matters—and there will be even less scope to debate it if our amendments are not accepted. You may not know this, Mr Gapes, as, like me, you are a London Member of Parliament—we are lucky to be north London Members of Parliament in particular—but around the country, local authorities that have direct responsibility for bus services say that those services face substantial cuts. That is a concern. There is obviously scope for that to be debated in part at Department for Transport questions, but given that those services are financed by local government, surely that should be part of the issues relating to local government finance considered by the House regularly.

The Campaign for Better Transport says that reductions in local authority funding have already resulted in thousands of bus services being reduced or cancelled in recent years. According to its research, people in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Somerset, Dorset, West Berkshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, North Yorkshire and Lancashire will be among the worst affected by the cuts in funding to local authorities—cuts that they will have to pass on to bus services. Surely that is an issue that Members of Parliament want to debate. Certainly, Opposition Members regularly seek to raise it through Adjournment debates or in questions, but it is surely part of the broader picture of local government finance and should be considered properly.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman said earlier that I was trying to stand up for rural areas as against urban areas, but that is not the case. The biggest disparity is between London and the rest of the country. He talks about transport in London, but we need only walk outside to see buses, trains and trams galore. The top 10 authorities for spending power per head—including Camden, Kensington and Chelsea, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Lambeth—all have about £400 more per person per year than North Yorkshire and many other places. The lowest-spending authority in the country is York, an urban area. The disparity is between London’s spending power and that of the rest of the country. That is what needs to be dealt with, and that will also be reflected in our ability to provide decent bus services in rural areas.

[Mr Thomas]

Over the course of our proceedings, I have been gently suggesting to the hon. Gentleman the need for a proper fair funding review—I strongly support that—but he is a little misguided in his assessment of the level of need in London. It is not an issue of rural and urban outside London against London—that would be a huge mistake to make—but an issue of the quantum of local government finance, and spending power being savagely reduced by the party of which he is a member, in the misguided belief that that will somehow lead to a substantial reduction in the national debt. We know how that played out: the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer got sacked.

I therefore gently suggest to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton that if he has been unable to support any amendment of mine up to now, and cannot be tempted—although I hope he will be—to put pressure on the Minister to give way on the issue of ongoing levels of parliamentary scrutiny, he might want to consider the matter of when the Bill should come into law. Should it do so when we know the details of the fair funding review and of the regulations, and when the Minister finally gets around to publishing the 400-plus responses to the consultation document? Should the Bill not take effect at that point, instead of in this financial year?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman’s point about the distribution is absolutely right. I support a review of the funding formulae that will be introduced before the Bill takes effect in 2020. His point about quantum was interesting, but to increase quantum he has to do one of two things: take spending power from elsewhere in the economy, from other Departments; or raise taxes. Which one would it be? Will he specify which one of those two things he would do, or which Departments he would remove funding from?

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman, in his usually charming way, is tempting me down a path that will get me into a lot of trouble with the shadow Chancellor. [Interruption.] “Be brave!” say Conservative Members, and I am, but nevertheless I will not use the Committee to announce future Labour party policy. It would feel like a missed opportunity if only a few party members were present to hear about the new direction that Labour will take when it returns to government.