Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for the important work he has done on this. I hope the Government have demonstrated in these early days, by bringing forward a new Employment Rights Bill, that not just what people are paid but the way they are treated at work are of primary importance to us. I apologise if I said the national minimum wage; I should have said the national living wage. In local government, we have always welcomed it, and we celebrate the work our workforce does; they do an amazing job in difficult circumstances. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned Covid. I want to reflect on that period and how comforting it was to residents across the country to see local government teams still going out and doing their job in spite of the very difficult circumstances they were in. They should be properly paid for what they do and have proper working conditions. I welcome the findings of the Living Wage Commission.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I draw the attention of the House to my interest, as set out in the register, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I have nothing but sympathy for the Minister. She is having to do a very difficult job in very difficult circumstances, and to put a shine on something that we know is not worthy of being shined at the moment. I wish her good luck in her attempt to resolve the local government funding settlement battles she will face over the next couple of years. The same Treasury people who made the decisions last year will almost certainly be making the decisions next year, so the reality is that she will not have a bigger cake to cut. If she is going to choose to divide that cake slightly differently, she will have to make sure that she at least says sorry to the people who are going to lose.

It is quite obvious that stopping the rural services delivery grant in this settlement is £110 million of essential money for a lot of councils. On the back of it, people will almost certainly be getting “at risk” notices in the new year, until the Government come up with some sort of compensation for taking that money away, if nothing else. When you go to the new homes bonus the year after next, a lot of people will be put at risk because many small, underpaid councils rely on that payment to pay staff wages.