Merseyside: Funding of Local Authorities

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on her contribution and on obtaining the debate.

My constituency covers two of the local authorities involved on Merseyside—Liverpool City Council and Knowsley borough council. I want to say a little bit about Knowsley. This small authority has been disproportionately hit by the austerity and the brutal cuts that my hon. Friend referred to in her introductory speech. It has lost more than half its funding—that is, over £100 million. Years of austerity cuts have resulted in an average loss of £485 per person, compared with the average countrywide loss of £188 per person, yet Knowsley borough council represents the second most deprived borough in the nation. It was ranked the fifth worst when the Lib Dem-Tory coalition began to impose austerity, and it is now ranked the second worst, so it has not been improving over that period; its situation has worsened. It has the lowest score in the city region for deprivation affecting children, and the second lowest for deprivation affecting older people. More than 10,000 households are in fuel poverty—15% of the total—with many of them living in the Harewood part of my constituency. They are now facing a cost of living crisis as well as having to deal with the austerity cuts that my hon. Friend has set out.

Inflation is at its highest level for 30 years, and energy bills are about to rocket by 54%. Food prices are rising faster than general retail prices. Wages are stagnating and falling in real terms, with tax increases to national insurance and council tax stealth increases to come in April. The cut in universal credit has impacted on many people in Knowsley, with many now having to choose between heating and eating—that is the choice facing them. When they turn to the council, the amount of support that can be given after 12 years of brutal cuts is much lower than it used to be, and it is much harder for the council to provide the kind of support that it used to provide. It is the same in Liverpool, where the capacity for local people to get support from the council has been severely curtailed because of the impact of the cuts over that period.

If the concept of levelling up means anything, surely it means improving the lives of people in places such as Knowsley in order to level them up to the better standards of living in other parts of the country. One might have expected, therefore, that Knowsley would receive some of the Government’s levelling-up funding, but it has not. Despite making bids for the funding that the Government keep saying is available, it has not received any. The council was unsuccessful in its bid for an allocation from the levelling-up fund, and neither has Knowsley benefitted from any of the other levelling-up schemes through which the Government have been dispensing largesse.

The Government said that funding would be allocated to level up places such as Knowsley, but Knowsley has not been given any such funding. Instead, it has been given to other places that are perhaps not as high as Knowsley on the indices of multiple deprivation. This is not good enough. I hope the Minister will come up with a better way to make sure that people in Knowsley can get the respect and levelling-up funding that they deserve, because it has not happened so far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

I am up against the clock, as the hon. Lady knows.

As we announced on Monday, the local government finance settlement for the next year makes an additional £3.7 billion available to councils in England; that includes funding for adult social care reform. This is an increase in local authority funding of more than 4.5% in real terms compared with the previous year, and we expect core spending power—the measure of resources available to local authorities to fund service delivery—to rise from £50.4 billion in 2021-22 to £54.1 billion in 2022-23, which I am just about to come to. I emphasise that the Government are providing around £1.6 billion in additional grant in the next year through the settlement, and through additional funding for things such as the supporting families programme and cyber-resilience. What that means for Merseyside is that core spending power will increase for all authorities in the region by at least 7.7%, compared with last year.

[Maria Eagle]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Neil O'Brien]

I have made it clear that I will not give way.