Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I join my hon. Friend in praising her local council, and in particular the excellent local council leader she is lucky to have, Elizabeth Campbell, whom it has been my pleasure to work with this year on many different issues.

My hon. Friend is right to say that business rates are a challenge. Of course, this year the Chancellor has provided a business rates holiday, which so many businesses on our local high streets have benefited from. It will be for him to decide whether or in what form that should continue into the next financial year, and no doubt he will bring forward further details on that next year. There will be a fundamental review of the future of business rates, and I am sure she will contribute to that in due course.

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]]

Merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the Secretary of State knows full well, Newham has the highest level of homelessness in the country and the second worst level of child poverty in the country, and more than half of Newham residents are either on furlough or out of work. The crisis is getting worse. Our food banks have never known times this bad, and despite fantastic work by local charities, many of our children will be going without this Christmas. Our council has suffered drastic cuts over the past 10 years and has even been underfunded for covid impacts by about £20 million. Can he assure me that the settlement will right that wrong, and if not, will he meet me and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) to discuss?

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can give the hon. Member that assurance, but equally, I would be more than happy to meet her and her right hon. Friend. She raises a number of different points. Her local council has received a great deal of money from the Government over the course of this year. It has received almost £50 million in covid-19 expenditure alone so far, in addition to the schemes I have already referred to, which will no doubt amount to many further millions of pounds. The Government have provided the council with £56 million to support 4,000 of her local businesses. She also mentions homelessness and rough sleeping, on which we have worked very closely with Newham Council—I visited a brilliant move-on accommodation site in her constituency earlier this year with the mayor—and we will be providing it with further funding next year, thanks to the £750 million that we are investing in our campaign to end rough sleeping.