Local Government Finance Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Like my hon. Friend, I am not surprised by that. I seriously question whether the scheme will work even on its own terms, but I support the principle of a system that provides some rewards and incentives to local authorities so that they better support growth in business, jobs and the economy. The cost of doing that in the Bill and under the new system is very great given that they take no account of need or resources, and do away with the decades-old principle of equalisation.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman knows the high regard in which I hold him from when he was in his former positions in the Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government. We had fruitful conversations when he was a Minister and I was leader of a large council. However, I must tell him that Bexley has to raise so much more money than Barnsley because when he was a Minister, he fiddled with the equalisation formula to force affluent southern councils to raise council tax to subsidise northern councils. That is why there is such inequality.

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has a lot of experience of local government and was a distinguished leader of a council in north, not south London. However, no one could tell that from the comment that he has just made. As to my fiddling the figures in the local government formula, my goodness, many people say that Labour should have learned many more lessons more clearly from the extent to which the Tories did that before 1997.