Local Government Funding: Merseyside

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing the debate and for the manner in which she opened it. I am honoured to be among my hon. Friends representing constituencies on Merseyside, especially in the face of a Tory Government who have chosen to impose unfair and disproportionate cuts on our constituents. I use the word “chosen” carefully because, as we know, austerity is a choice, which makes the damage done to our constituents’ lives so much worse. It is not just what is in the pot but how the Government have chosen to cut it up that has hit the most deprived the hardest, because the Government have removed the weighting for deprivation from many of their funding formulas. As we saw in the Budget yesterday, those cuts are not going away anytime soon, despite the Prime Minister’s promise that “austerity is over” earlier this month.

Tory cuts have hit Merseyside so hard that there has been a £440 million reduction in Liverpool City Council’s Government support since 2010-11, which is a cut of 64% to the council’s overall budget. We are at the point at which our most basic services are in crisis, and many hon. Friends have articulated examples of where that is the case.

The revenue budget of Merseyside fire and rescue service has been reduced from £73 million to £59.9 million. These cuts might be just figures on a spreadsheet to some, but they have real-life consequences. Our fire and rescue authority has been forced to reduce the number of firefighters it employs from 923 to 620, and to reduce the number of fire engines from 42 to just 24. In turn, the response time for life-risk incidents is on average 35 seconds slower than in 2010-11. What if there were a major incident in Merseyside?

Similarly, Merseyside police has faced startling cuts from central Government, as my hon. Friends have said. Many hon. Friends have articulated the connection between local authority funding and our police, and how we have been disproportionately hit. Our police workforce has been cut by nearly a quarter, so we have 1,600 fewer police staff than in 2010-11. I ask the Minister to reflect on that and I hope he is listening carefully.

Ultimately, the combination of all the cuts to our local authority, our fire service and our police force has led to a reduction in service for many different community services throughout the course of life—from our children’s centres to our youth services, to our leisure and recreation service, to what happens on our roads, to our community services and to services for the elderly and social care.

We have an incredibly stretched council, fire service and police workforce who do so much in such challenging circumstances, and what we are seeing is an impact on real life for too many of our constituents. We are seeing an increase in people in crisis. We are here today because we think it is socially and morally illiterate to see so many people in crisis. It is also financially illiterate. We are sitting here in front of a Minister from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but this situation has wider, far-reaching consequences for all Departments. We have heard about the impact on our national health service and that we are going to see £20 billion extra spent on our NHS, but again this disproportionate focus on crisis is so much more expensive. It does not make any economic sense.

Other colleagues have clearly articulated the impact of cuts, including the increase in crime. I will just reflect on the fact that we are now seeing the most brutal run of gun violence in Liverpool in recent years. In just a 10-day period at the beginning of this month, there were two fatal shootings, one of which was in my constituency, and four non-fatal shootings. This increase in serious crime has far-reaching and serious consequences for our constituents.

However, it is not until we compare the cuts that we have sustained on Merseyside with those elsewhere that we truly see the disproportionate level of austerity with which our constituents have been burdened. Whereas each household in Merseyside has experienced a cut of £712.57, the average reduction per household across England is just £320.99. That is still an unwarranted reduction, but of course it is nowhere near the cuts that the people of Merseyside have to cope with in one of the most deprived areas of the country. It is nothing short of a tragedy that the Government’s own figures have shown that if Liverpool City Council had been subject to that same average reduction, it would have been £71.6 million better off in 2019-20 than it is expected to be. What is worse and most galling is that some authorities have seen an increase in their spending power—colleagues have mentioned Surrey.

Neglect by a Tory Government is nothing new to the people of Merseyside, whose independence and resilience make our region proudly what it is, and our city, under the leadership of Joe Anderson, is doing so much in spite of this Government. Can the Minister tell us when our constituents will be given an equal chance and some relief from this disproportionate burden?