Spring Statement

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I start by highlighting my declarations in the register, particularly as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a member of Sheffield City Council.

Listening to the Minister at the Dispatch Box coming forward with forecasts and percentages of growth made me understand why astrology was invented—because it makes Ministers’ economic forecasts seem like a precise science. Of course, they are not. So the real issue is how this Statement affects real people’s lives and what the trajectory is of improving people’s lives. I take myself away from here—I do not hunch over a calculator, as Ministers and officials probably do, and type away with steam coming out, to get the best percentage. I see how real people’s lives are improving when I go back to the north and to Sheffield.

This Statement missed three opportunities to improve people’s lives. One was mentioned, one was partly mentioned and one was ignored. The first was knife crime. This is a missed opportunity. Unfortunately, on knife crime the Spring Statement turned into a short-term knee-jerk reaction. Young people’s lives have been taken away and communities are being devastated. My own city of Sheffield, described as the safest city in the country, has seen nine fatalities from knife crime in the past year. It is a missed opportunity because we are not policing, and we will not police, our way out of knife crime: it is a complex public health issue that needs to be addressed in a much rounder way. The Home Office did some social and economic costings of crime, covering the costs of a crime, the consequences of it and the costs of dealing with it. It found that each fatality from homicide, including knife crime, cost £3.2 million in economic and social costs.

Knife crime leading to the loss of a young person goes way beyond economics: it is a human and social tragedy, and families, loved ones and communities are affected. I am clear, therefore, that the Spring Statement should have addressed real issues such as youth services. In 2014-15 £620 million was spent on youth services. By 2017-18 this was down to £410 million. Support services—good voluntary sector organisations such as the De Hood gym in Sheffield that give young people positive things to do and work with the statutory sector—are important. So I ask the Minister, what will happen with budgets in the round for things such as youth services? Will they be put on a statutory footing, which is really important if those services are not to continue to decline?

We need to be radical if we are going to deal with this—with not just the economic but the human consequences of knife crime. Can we move away from silo budgeting? It is no good just saying that you will give x more to the police, x more to youth services—it is about programme budgeting, where we have to take a radical view if it is a public health issue where the statutory sector has to work together. Can we say that we will start giving to areas—as we perhaps did with troubled families—so that they get a programme budget on issues to do with knife crime? A fixed amount will go to an area, which will then decide how to spend the money, with no strings attached, in order to tackle the public health crisis. The Government’s role will then be to hold local areas to account. It is no good slicing this budget into silos; that will just mean that the public sector will argue for who is responsible for which bit. We have to get much smarter. We need to give hope to cities and towns for knife crime to diminish.

Talking of hope and opportunity, I turn to the north. We have one of the most unbalanced economies in the western world. The northern powerhouse was mentioned once in the Statement. GVA in London and the south-east equates to nearly 40% of the total across the country. In the north, which includes Yorkshire, the north-east and the north-west, GVA is just 19%. I am asking not for money to be taken away from London, but for a fair share for the north. The pay gap between the south and the north is widening, as is the gap in life expectancy. If you are a male born in Blackpool, you are expected to live only 68 years. There has to be greater investment in the north. For every pound spent on transport in the north, £4 is spent in southern England. London gets £149 per head more in transport spending than the north.

UK plc is not firing on all cylinders because we do not have fair and reasonable investment across all the regions of the UK. The £1.6 billion stronger towns fund is not going to solve this, and nor are strings-attached metro mayors. That is just about existing spending being spent differently by somebody else. It is not new money or extra money; it is just moving the spending of money from the centre to the regions. Welcome as it is, we need extra investment.

This is a gigantic failure of a number of Governments, not just this Government. It goes back many years. We need much more balanced investment in the north and the regions. Why was the Spring Statement so silent on the northern powerhouse? Why has it been deprioritised? If it has not, I can tell the House that in the north that is how it feels. The Government need to charge up their cylinders if they are serious about the northern powerhouse and what can happen in that area. If they are going to give us economic independence and interdependence, we need to see real investment in the north and real and sustainable commitment to the north—not just saying that maybe they will fund Transport for the North’s business plan.

The third issue I wish to talk about is dignity and independence in old age. My noble friends Lady Thornhill and Lord Shipley mentioned the crisis in local government and one area in particular, which is social care. This is important for the future economy if people are to live with dignity and independence. There is already a £1 billion gap in social care, and it is likely to increase to £3.1 billion by 2024-25. Last year, there were more than 2 million new requests for council social care, which was a great increase. The NHS spends £850 million a year treating older people who do not need to be in hospital. In 2018, £46.2 billion of our economy—6% of GDP—was in social care. If social care continues to grow with demographic change, by 2030 the number of social care jobs will have increased by 31%. It will be a key part of the future economy and of jobs, enterprise and care, but it is not sustainable in its present form. So will the Government be radical about this? The answer cannot just be about existing tax. Will they look at the examples of Japan and Germany, which have started to get long-term social care funding on a sustainable footing? It will be key to getting a sustainable, balanced economy in the future.

So the Statement was welcome, but it was a missed opportunity. It was a missed opportunity for young people and communities blighted by knife crime; it was a missed opportunity for the north to get its fair share so that it can contribute fully to the UK’s GDP; and it was definitely a let down for older people who want to live with independence and dignity.