Local Government: Provisional Finance Settlement

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the fire authorities are in the same position as everybody else in that they are having to make economies, but they have been pretty well supported. The noble Lord will know that the fire authorities have benefited from the protection in the formula used to set the base line, which used an existing adjustment to provide top-ups for the fire and rescue relative needs formula. That helps in the rural areas. The metropolitan fire and rescue authorities overall, which of course do not include London, are seeing grant reductions of 7.2%, but London has had a reduction and the noble Lord has to make up his own mind about how to deal with that. As I pointed out in the Statement, a review by the retiring chief officer is taking place, and I am sure that that will produce something useful.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a recipient of a small local government pension.

I should like to raise two issues with the Minister. The first concerns the tri-borough initiative in London and the basis for the statement that if councils merged their back offices, as in the tri-borough initiative, they could save £2 billion. Can the Minister circulate further details of that calculation? It is extremely important. In Tyne and Wear, where the number of residents amounts to just a little over 1% of the population, that would imply a saving of more than £20 million, which could be spent on, for example, keeping libraries open and improving services. Therefore, any information as to how that might be achieved would be helpful.

Secondly, I support the comments from other noble Lords concerning the council tax support grant distribution and the fact that the DCLG is not taking account of benefit caseload changes since the end of the 2011-12 year. I suggest that there is a case for using the unallocated transitional grant to assist councils that have faced higher caseload and cost figures in recent months, and I believe that there is a very strong case for using final outturn caseload figures for 2012-13 in the grant figure for 2014-15.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend. I am very happy to ask the councils involved in the tri-borough initiative to let us have full details of the savings they hope to make. I suppose that I ought to declare an interest as having been a member of at least part of that tri-borough arrangement many years ago. However, they are very clear that they have made tremendous efficiency savings and, more than that, that they are much more efficient. As a resident of that tri-borough, I can say that they certainly demonstrate that. I shall certainly see that my noble friend receives those details.

I believe that the benefit caseload for this year is based on the figures for 2010-11 but I shall let my noble friend know if that is not correct. I shall need to write to him regarding the final outturn for council tax.