Local Government Funding: Merseyside

Louise Ellman Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dame Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing this important debate and on the excellent way in which she opened it.

Local government is vital. It is responsible for essential services such as education, social care and road safety. It is a lifeline for people in need. It drives regeneration and civic pride. In Liverpool, the City Council, with Mayor Joe Anderson, has protected people from the brunt of ongoing and severe Government cuts. It has displayed innovation and civic leadership. By 2020, more than 64% of central Government funding will have been removed from Liverpool. That is a real-terms loss of £444 million. For the fourth poorest local authority in the country, that is a great injustice.

The Chancellor’s statement that austerity is ending rings hollow in Liverpool. Government cuts continue as the council struggles to care for people who need social care and children who just want a chance in life. Nurseries remain underfunded and schools still struggle. The impact of the Government’s cumulative cuts in benefits, often affecting working people, takes its toll. Universal credit threatens to make people poorer. We do not know what the Chancellor’s reassurances in the Budget will mean to people on the ground—not very much, I suspect. Rhetoric needs to be matched with positive action.

Despite increasingly vociferous warnings, fire and police services are denied the essential cash that they need to protect the community. Cuts in fire services are causing increasing public concern, and in Liverpool and Merseyside as a whole gun crime is now increasing. Over the city hangs the threat of Brexit—threats to the economy, to EU-funded initiatives and to the European collaborative research that is so important to our universities and to the city of Liverpool.

I call on the Government to change course and match their words with positive change. They must revisit their plans to put an even tighter squeeze on local services by changing local government funding after 2020 to eliminate central Government support for Liverpool. That is grossly unjust in a city where there is a low council tax base and a 1% rise in council tax raises only £1.4 million; a 1% increase in a place such as Surrey raises £6 million.

Liverpool has a responsible and innovative council protecting Liverpool people from a Government intent on cutting back. I call on Ministers to match their rhetoric with deeds, stop the cuts and give Liverpool a fair deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I will try to make some progress.

Business rates retention is not the only incentive for local growth, as it sits alongside the other support the Government give to local authorities’ wider ambitions through local growth deals. For example, £2 million has been invested to create the first dedicated digital skills academy in the UK, at the City of Liverpool College, and more than £13 million has been invested in a highway infrastructure scheme comprising a series of essential and integrated improvements along the A565 corridor. In sum, the Government strongly support Merseyside’s economic growth, whether through direct investment or business rates retention, and thus enable it to fund services over the years to come.

[Dame Louise Ellman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rishi Sunak]

I will make some progress.

The second vision I outlined, which is undeniably one of the most crucial roles for local government, is to continue to help the most vulnerable in our society. It is local authorities, as we have heard, that support the elderly, the disabled and our children in need, and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to councils for their incredible work. I am delighted that the Government back local authorities to carry out those vital duties. Last year, the Budget provided an additional £2 billion for social care. Earlier this year, another £240 million was announced for social care winter funding, and in the Budget yesterday the Chancellor announced that a further £650 million will be provided for care services next year.

In contrast to what we have heard, the flexibility to use the funding for things such as children’s services is something that local authorities have specifically asked for. They will have the flexibility in each local area to use the funding for different care services, rather than its use being dictated by central Government. I would have thought that all Members appreciated their local areas having such flexibility to make the best use of the money, in the way they see fit.

I am pleased to say that that increased investment and better working between the NHS and local government is paying dividends on the ground. We have seen social care free up 949 beds a day since the peak two years ago—a 39% reduction in social care delayed transfers of care. In Merseyside, progress has been seen particularly in St Helens, and I commend the local authority on reducing such transfers by 72% since the February 2017 peak.

I have mentioned the troubled families programme, which is making amazing strides to support our society’s most vulnerable families. When I visited the Clubmoor children’s centre in Liverpool, it was a privilege to talk to several of the families participating and to see the life-changing work at first hand. I am proud to say that the Government have invested £1 billion in the programme over this spending cycle, with 130,000 families nationally achieving significant and sustained progress against the goals they have been set. In almost 17,000 of the families, one or more of the adults has moved into work, and the families I spoke to told me that that was central to their ambitions.

Across Merseyside, 10,000 families are being helped with more than £20 million of funding, and I pay tribute to Liverpool City Council in particular for doing a very good job, working with early help assessments. We heard from the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about the importance of early intervention. Referrals to children’s services in Liverpool were down 3% in the most recent year—