Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

1. What estimate he has made of the likely amount local authorities will incur in redundancy costs in the next 18 months.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

It is for individual councils locally to determine redundancy policies based on their own circumstances. Decisions about when and how to make and manage work force reductions, including policies on redundancy payments, are rightly for individual councils to make as the employers.

[Mr Blunkett]

Ministers do not have the first idea what the cost will be to local taxpayers. Is this not a triple whammy, whereby families and individuals lose their services, communities find that provision is taken from them and individuals lose their jobs? Is it not correct that instead of paying for services, council tax payers will have to pay for redundancies for services that are being withdrawn? Is it not a scandal that the Government do not know what the impact will be?

[Robert Neill]

The Government have endeavoured to assist the most vulnerable local councils by increasing the amount of money available in the formula grant that is not ring-fenced, moving more money into formula grant, reducing the amount of ring-fencing and rolling more grants into one. I imagine that when his Government were in office, the right hon. Gentleman would have complained greatly about their removal of working neighbourhoods funding for his city of Sheffield, which will cost the city some £38 million. We will endeavour to find the means to cushion that—

--- Later in debate ---

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in that analysis; I completely concur with it. It is a disaster for first-time buyers. One of the first things I did as Housing Minister was to reverse the policy of the previous Minister to say that I believe in the aspiration of people owning their homes. The reason we ended up with this problem in the first place is related to the enormous deficit and boom and bust, which was led by housing in particular. We need a more stable economy in place—not like the one that we were headed for or like the Irish one, but one that is stable for the long term. That means that cutting the deficit is the No. 1 move. I am also very aware that there are effectively only five lenders on the high street, which means that there is very little competition for first-time buyers. The banking review will report next June. It is very important that competition is opened up and we reverse the situation for first-time buyers.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

This week my Government will be co-operating with interfaith week, celebrating how faith communities are adding to the well-being of our society. We have published details of our plans to build 150,000 more affordable houses over the next four years. We have welcomed the decision of the Local Government Association’s chief executive to take a cut of £200,000 a year, and we hope that more town hall chiefs will follow his example in these austere times.

At the 2010 British curry awards, the Government paid tribute to the spice industry’s £4 billion turnaround—a real bhuna for the British economy. From bin collections to small business tax relief, we will do our utmost to ensure that Britain’s curry industry is second to naan.

[Mr Blunkett]

Sorry, Mr Speaker, I can hardly follow that.

The proposal to refund 2.5% of income to councils freezing their council tax next year, which was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), will have the perverse outcome, will it not, of top-slicing the money from all councils and then rewarding the wealthiest, high rateable value authorities such as Surrey twice as much as the poorer low rateable value authorities such as Hull, Newcastle or Sheffield? Given that those three councils are Liberal Democrat-controlled, will the Secretary of State tell me which conjuring trick he managed to do in persuading the Deputy Prime Minister and his colleagues that this was fair or even acceptable?

[Mr Pickles]

I am sorry to tell the right hon. Gentleman that he is wrong about the top-slicing. It is in fact new money, and we will not be top-slicing the authorities. I face a great dilemma. As the money that each local authority has varies, the grant differs considerably; he alluded to that. The particular problem I face is the decision taken by the Labour Chancellor to remove £300 million from the working neighbourhoods fund, which will hit Sheffield particularly hard. At the moment, I am trying to ensure that Sheffield and all those authorities are cushioned against Labour cuts.