Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

Some 26 Members have spoken in the debate, and I too apologise if I cannot follow every one of the interventions in detail. I appreciated the contributions of my hon. Friends the Members for Crawley (Henry Smith), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), all of whom spoke from experience in local government and also, significantly and importantly, often from experience in business too, because one of the Bill’s objectives is to re-establish a proper link between local councils and the businesses that they serve and the communities who benefit from growth.

It has been in other respects, I confess, a classic curate’s egg of a debate, with some thoughtful and considered speeches and some of quite breathtaking banality. When I listened, with every respect, to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) talking about a golden legacy left by the previous Government, I realised we had finally entered the realms of illusion. While I bring the hon. Lady back to reality—and talking of experience—let me just tell her that this grandson of a London docker is not going to take any lectures on need from the party of Tony Blair.

The reality is that the Bill is a necessary measure to clear up the mess that the Labour party made of Government finance in 13 years. Two of the Ministers responsible have done their very best to defend a local government finance system which they regard as so wonderful that it should almost be a listed building, but which has been described by dispassionate observers as incomprehensible, complex, unfair and unable to provide a proper means of distribution.

It was interesting to hear references to the Lyons review, which the Labour Government sat on for three years, doing nothing. Lyons said:

“there are no coherent or systematic financial incentives that encourage growth either for”

councils

“or, more importantly for their communities.”

Labour did nothing; we are doing something.

“The current English model of equalisation is recognised as one of the most complex in the world”

said the Lyons review, which Labour set up and ignored when it did not give the answers it wanted. We are doing something about it.

The university of Plymouth—the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) spoke earlier—said:

“the four-block model is deeply flawed and generates an inequitable allocation of this major source of local authority revenue.”

The Labour Govt did nothing about that, although they had the information; we are putting it right.

Secondly, it is shameful—

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

There has been little time, and I intend to make a few points, if I may.

Secondly, and particularly regrettably, there was the simplistic analysis and the misleading attempt in the debate to create a false north-south divide—particularly disgraceful, it might be thought, when one has only to look at the facts and observe that over the last five-year revaluation period, when the average business rate growth in England was 5%, the following authorities had business rate growth above the average, and therefore would have benefited more than average had our proposed system been in place: Doncaster, Durham, Greenwich, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Sefton, Stockton, Middlesbrough—[Interruption.] No, I am not prepared to take any lectures from Labour Members when they cannot get the facts right. I will give way once, briefly.