Merseyside: Funding of Local Authorities

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for not only securing this important debate, but the work she is doing with local Labour MPs, councillors and residents to protect services from Government-imposed cuts in the Wirral. The Secretary of State is quickly gaining a reputation as the Minister for closing down, boarding up and hollowing out services in the Wirral and right across Merseyside.

Libraries, leisure centres and golf courses in the Wirral are facing closure, and their staff are facing the chop, as a result of centrally imposed austerity—an additional £27 million of austerity, despite the Chancellor and this lame duck of a Prime Minister promising that it was over. The stark reality can be witnessed right across every community in Merseyside and beyond. All right hon. and hon. Members present have exposed the continued pathway of Conservative-imposed austerity, despite the Government’s fine words, and have laid out the consequences for council budgets, people and services. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) referred to the exclusion of Knowsley Council from the mysterious levelling-up fund, while my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) referred to the 11 libraries that are being levelled down and facing the chop.

Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State and his team finally published the long-delayed and trailed levelling-up White Paper, as referenced by many Members present. After 12 years of Tory Government, we were presented with 12 mission statements that act as a scorecard for failure; it is a cut-and-paste job with no new money, reannouncements and vague targets to be met in 2030.

It may be fascinating to discover, on page 2 of this 300-page levelling-up White Paper, that Jericho was the earliest permanent urban settlement. However, Members present—and, more importantly, our constituents—want to know when our councils and communities will get back the funds that have been taken away from our villages, towns and cities over the last 12 years. Some £490 million has been taken away from the people of Liverpool, and another £34 million is expected to be cut; more than £50 million has been taken away from my local council of Halton. In fact, every Merseyside local authority has seen a cut of more than 50% in real terms, according to the National Audit Office.

The Minister will of course refer to cash-terms increases, but that excludes inflation, which is at a 30-year high. The consequences in many cases are workforces depleted, children’s centres closed, libraries shut, youth services decimated and new charges introduced. The Government’s approach to levelling up has been to give communities a fiver for jumping through mysterious hoops, while taking away a tenner.

In the case of Knowsley, Tory Ministers do not even see the council as worthy of the crumbs off the table of the levelling-up fund; they instead favour Richmondshire, multi-billionaires who happen to donate to the Tory party, and filling the potholes on the driveway up to their mansions. The good people of Knowsley remain left behind in Tory Britain.

Without doubt, the Minister will refer to the Government’s preferred measure when talking about local government finances: core spending power. There will be some additional funding for adult and children’s social care, but nothing like enough to meet demand or to plug the gaps. In fact, it was stated that in real terms there will be a cut of 2.5% in this settlement. This smoke-and-mirrors approach will result only in the Secretary of State being laughed off the Merseyside pitch during his visit to Liverpool today.

Between 2010 and 2021, council tax has gone up by a massive 31%, while the area based grant has been cut by 37% on average. Tory Ministers have piled on the pain, with hard-pressed families paying more while receiving less in services, as was rightly stated. People have seen services closed down, places boarded up, and more and more councils facing bankruptcy.

Having council tax as a main source of income is inherently unfair; many councils in Merseyside have a higher number of band A properties with a lower tax base, but the arrangement favours the Secretary of State’s Surrey authority. Ministers have promised a fair funding review time and again, yet councils and communities are still waiting desperately. When can we expect that, and a fundamental reform of business rates?

That unfairness and the cuts have consequences. It is no coincidence that, as was reported on the front page of the Liverpool Echo today, a baby born in Merseyside will on average die younger than a baby born in Surrey—a shameful indictment of the Government’s 12 years in office.