Local Authorities: Redundancies

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I suppose I could also produce the statement that I have made frequently in this House that if it were not for the previous Government’s mess we would not have to make these reductions. I point out that the previous Government had also seen the ill of the way in which they were going about this, as they were also making provision for substantial reductions in the budgets for local government in this financial year. The fact that this Government have had to make slightly more reductions than expected should not have been totally unexpected by local authorities—they knew perfectly well that they were going to have to make reductions.

The “tired mantra” that the noble Lord refers to is not a tired mantra; it is just a truth. The truth is that all the money for local government has now been given to local government by this Government. It is no longer ring-fenced—there are now only two areas that are—so local government can use every bit of money that the Government get, except in the areas of education and health, and can decide how to use it. Local government can decide how to provide its services and how to provide the most value to its own communities with all the resources that it has.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, does my noble friend have any figures for natural wastage in local government? Does not natural wastage contribute to the reduction that there will be in the number of jobs—although obviously it will not contribute all of them?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I do not have the figures, but the noble Lord is correct. There is always natural wastage—amazingly, people do leave jobs voluntarily—and there are ways of leaving jobs other than through redundancy.