Public Services

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

As the Fire Minister, I certainly recognise the importance of the delivery of the vast majority of our fire and rescue services through people who are currently employed by local government. As a former council leader, I know there is a whole host of statutory areas where you would seek to deliver services through people who are directly employed. But increasingly there are areas where you can drive down costs through competitive tendering. That also gives in-house services the opportunity to compete with the market to see whether they can deliver those services more effectively. Competition does drive down costs and increases the quality of the services provided.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

The noble Lord, Lord Flight, is not present, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, a significant amount of the councils’ budget is already ring-fenced, including adult social care. It is for local councils to determine how they spend their resources to ensure that they meet local needs. The core spending power in the most recent local government settlement increased from £49 billion to £51.3 billion in this financial year. The ring-fencing of budgets can have the deleterious effect of forcing councils to do something that is not necessarily in the immediate interests of their local residents.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, and we now move to the next Question.