Local Government and Social Care Funding

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a privilege to follow a very moving speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith), who outlined the severe problems faced by our social care service.

On a slightly different note, last year I had the pleasure of attending the launch of renovation works to an historic old primary school in my constituency. Derelict for several years, the school lies at the heart of the Parkhouse district of my constituency of Glasgow North East. The Wheatley Group—the inheritor of Glasgow’s municipal housing stock—acquired the school for conversion to new sheltered social housing. The name Wheatley and the history of the school itself evoked a reflection on the long and proud heritage of municipal socialism in Glasgow, and what the prospects might be for that tradition to re-emerge in the future.

Parkhouse was one of the first districts to be developed for municipal housing by the Glasgow Corporation after the passing of the historic Housing Act 1924, led by Glasgow Labour MP John Wheatley, during the first Labour Government. These state subsidies for house building led directly to the creation of Glasgow’s municipal housing department, and saw the large-scale building of some 57,000 new homes in Parkhouse and other districts such as Riddrie and Carntyne in my constituency during the inter-war period. Indeed, the pressure to develop suitable land for new municipal housing led to Glasgow more than doubling in size, from over 5,000 hectares to over 12,000 hectares during the 1920s and 1930s.

At that time, the gas supply, water, electricity, subway, hospitals, tramways and even the telephones were all in direct municipal ownership, and there was much talk of Glasgow as a European model for municipal socialism. Indeed, at the international conference on workers’ dwelling houses in Paris in 1900, Glasgow Councillor Daniel Macaulay Stevenson, after learning that the municipal control of housing was regarded as impractical by delegates, remarked that, far from that being the case, it had been carried out to an ever greater extent for 29 years in Glasgow. He elucidated the Glasgow Corporation’s extensive portfolio of services under municipal ownership, which the delegates regarded as

“nothing short of rank socialism”.

It is interesting to see that some sentiments do not change, even more than a century later.

The scale of that sort of intervention to address the city’s social problems is scarcely imaginable today. There is simply no capacity or scope within local government to undertake the sort of mission-driven improvement that can massively improve quality of life. Today in Scotland, after two decades of devolution, we now have the most centralised system of government of any country in Europe. We have the absurdity of the Glasgow city region’s wealthiest suburbs carved up into self-contained enclaves, where the residents enjoy relatively low rates of council tax, while the residents of the urban core of the city—home to the poorest communities in the region—must carry the burden of maintaining and operating all the core services and amenities enjoyed by its wealthier suburban free riders. Not only has Glasgow been stripped of its residential tax base through historical depopulation and the relatively recent gerrymandering of its suburbs; the advent of the Scottish Parliament has seen a continuing war of attrition against the power of local government.

This year, the Scottish Government are set to impose cuts on Glasgow that are unprecedented in recent times and will lead to a further decline in public services in the city. According to the Scottish Parliament’s information service, the local government revenue budget was cut by 6.9%, whereas the Scottish Government’s revenue budget fell by just 1.6%, between 2013 and 2018. Over the same period, Glasgow City Council’s core budget has been cut by 12.8%. That is almost twice the average cut to Scotland’s 32 council areas, and seven times the cuts to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government are proposing a further disproportionate cut to Glasgow of 3.6%—or £41 million—this year.

Although there is no question but that the Tories are to blame for cutting the block grant of the Government in Edinburgh by 1.6%, to multiply the percentage cut by four to 6.9% for councils—and by even more than that in Glasgow—is a deep injustice. The only conclusion we can draw is that local government, and Glasgow in particular, has been targeted disproportionately. Our city is having to absorb a cut to its budget proportionately seven times greater than the cut being absorbed by the Government in Edinburgh. That is £233 per head for each Glaswegian between 2010 and 2018.

Already 30,000 Scottish council jobs have gone, swimming pools are being closed, community health projects face non-renewal, class sizes are rising, pupil attainment is stalling, high streets are declining, community groups are losing grants, youth clubs are closing, grass is being left uncut, litter is piling up, roads and pavements are in serious disrepair, and social workers face ever-increasing case loads. In Glasgow North East, we face the potential closure of a local swimming pool, a sports centre and numerous municipal golf courses that were only spared cuts this year after a determined local campaign to save them caused such embarrassment that the council reversed its decision.

Glasgow is unfairly bearing the brunt of decisions to scale up the cuts as a share of its overall budget compared with the Scottish Government. Labour will end Tory austerity at source when the Leader of the Opposition steps into No. 10 Downing Street, but in the meantime Glasgow simply cannot take a further hit that is so disproportionate to that being taken by the Scottish Government. I am continually being contacted by spontaneous local campaigns coming into existence to fight the cuts that Glasgow is making because of the severe retrenchment it has been asked to make. We are facing the closure of entire facilities and services, and the council’s withdrawal from non-statutory quality-of-life provision in my constituency, which is one of the poorest parts of this country. Indeed, last year, the SNP tried to pass the burden of cuts on to working parents by doubling childcare fees, and was only forced to retreat after a determined local campaign.

The Scottish Government need to recognise that Glasgow’s settlement should be no worse than the 1.6% cut that the Scottish Government block grant has suffered since 2013. I plead with the Scottish Government and the UK Government to combine to ensure that, at a bare minimum, they rescind this negative multiplier effect.

[Dr Whitford]

The resource budget of the Scottish Government has been cut 7% since 2010, not 1%. The idea that they have faced only a 1% cut is nonsense.

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[Mr Sweeney]

Perhaps the hon. Lady is not fully aware that the total managed expenditure of the Scottish Government has been cut by only 1.6%. Unlike councils, they have total discretion over that spending. Councils are heavily ring-fenced by the Scottish Government, which is why core budget cuts to councils have been much higher. That is the reality of the constraints faced by local government compared with the central Government in Edinburgh.

Unless Scotland urgently addresses the problem of over-centralised government from Edinburgh and rediscovers its radical tradition of municipal socialism, it is increasingly likely that Glasgow will fall further behind its peer cities in the UK, such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, as they establish new city region governments centred around directly elected metro mayors. The constitutional debate has been preoccupied with nationalist questions over the distribution of powers between the British Parliament at Westminster and the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood; it is now incumbent on us all to break that narcissistic duopoly of Parliaments and strive to rediscover our radical tradition of municipal socialism.

We in the Labour movement are not driven by nationalist sentiment when it comes to constitutional questions about how best to structure government to serve the interests of delivering socialist policy. The atrophy of municipal government in Glasgow is an urgent crisis, which we must address boldly and with imagination. As we consider plans for a constitutional convention in the new future, the question of a municipal as well as a parliamentary route to socialism must be firmly embedded at the heart of it.

Local Government Funding

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) on securing this debate at a critical time for our public finances.

I speak as a Member of Parliament for the great city of Glasgow, which has a fine tradition of what might be called municipal socialism. It would be great to rediscover that municipal route to socialism, but it has been under assault for many years now, with a decade-long programme of austerity cuts, if not more, the brunt of which has been borne by local government. We often hear from Scottish National party Members in this place about how wonderful everything is in Scotland, and how munificent the Scottish Government are in stewarding local government by dispensing the fruits of excellent governance in Edinburgh to the rest of Scotland. That could not be further from the truth.

Look at the dire straits in which Glasgow City Council finds itself. Last year, Glasgow had to find £49.9 million-worth of cuts, almost £20 million of them a direct consequence of the Scottish Government’s cuts to local government. The remainder are due to pay and other inflationary pressures. The real brunt of cuts made by central Government in Westminster and at Holyrood is borne by councils, and, as a result, Scotland has lost 30,000 council jobs in recent years. That is a shameful indictment of those who are responsible. The mass unemployment that we railed against during Thatcherite deindustrialisation in the 1980s has been writ large in local government by a Scottish nationalist Administration in Edinburgh.

Between 2010 and 2018, Glasgow lost £233 per head of population in Scottish Government funding. That is a real-terms cut; it is the cost of the Scottish National party to every single Glaswegian. In May 2017, a minority SNP administration took over Glasgow City Council. However, instead of robust opposition to the onslaught of cuts, we have seen not only meek acceptance by the council, but even an attempt to divert attention and to deny the reality of the fiscal constraints on Glasgow—Scotland’s largest city, and a city with some of the greatest social problems in the country.

In my constituency, the failure in the quality of local services—a reduction in cleansing services, poor repair of roads, failure to help homeless people to move into temporary accommodation, and a decline in care and social work services—has had a creeping effect on some of the weakest people in our society, who disproportionately rely on such services. That has happened at a time when the SNP has celebrated imposing a council tax freeze on local government.

[Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the council tax freeze, does my hon. Friend agree that if local councils are to be accountable to the people who elect them, it is essential to protect the autonomy of local government to raise its own funds, rather than giving councillors the choice between making worse cuts and even worse cuts?

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that pertinent point, which goes to the heart of the issue of local government—structural decay over decades. Once, we had great, autonomous and highly vigorous municipal authorities. Look at Glasgow, which used to run its own gas and electricity provision, tramways, railway system and subway system. The Glasgow Corporation was a huge enterprise, and it has been slowly but surely torn apart over the past 50 years by creeping centralisation. That has happened at a regional level, and it is now happening with the dismantling of Scottish regional councils and regional authorities and their centralisation into Holyrood.

An inadvertent and regrettable effect of devolution over the past 20 years has, in essence, been to displace the municipal power of Glasgow and the west of Scotland, and to suck it into the east and into Edinburgh. We should guard against that in the constitutional reform of city regions across the United Kingdom. We need to consider what effect such devolution might have on the margins and the periphery of that power base. I would like that to be corrected in Scotland as we look forward to the next two decades of devolution.

[Faisal Rashid]

I will be brief this time, Mrs Main. Because of funding cuts, councils across the country are being forced to sell their assets in order to fund the revenue budget. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not the way to fund services?

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[Mr Sweeney]

I absolutely agree. Glasgow is in the absurd situation of having what must be the only car parking company in the world to lose money every year. There is not much of an overhead in running a car parking service, but as a result of the constraints on funding, and particularly the effort to resolve disputes and long-standing historical issues of equal pay in local authorities—that is a national issue, but the council has received no national support to deal with it—the mechanism that was devised was essentially to sell its assets to arm’s length companies. It mortgaged those assets but because of the credit crunch, a lot of them fell into negative equity. Councils are paying off huge bills—to Barclays bank, in the case of Glasgow—to service the financial constraints that have been imposed upon them.

We have to look at the reality of council financing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) mentioned. More than 80% of funding for councils in Scotland is derived from central Government grants. Councils do not raise their own money—very marginal yields are achieved from council tax and business rates. In Scotland, the bulk of it is controlled centrally. With the council tax freeze, the SNP removed councils’ capacity to raise council tax. The SNP has massively cut the budgets available to local authorities, and that will hammer their capacity to provide services and will push councils into destructive decisions such as selling off and mortgaging assets, creating a vicious cycle of decay and decline.

According to the Scottish Parliament’s information centre, the local government revenue budget in Glasgow was cut by 6.9% from 2013 to 2018, whereas the Scottish Government’s own revenue budget fell by just 1.6% over the same period. As opposed to the Scottish average of 6.9%, Glasgow’s budget has been cut by 12.8%—an even greater cut to the local authority that is in the greatest need in Scotland. That reduction is twice the average cut to Scotland’s 32 councils, and a further 3.6% cut for Glasgow is planned for this year.

There is no question but that the Tories are to blame for handing the Government in Edinburgh a cut of 1.6%. However, to multiply that percentage by four to make a 6.9% cut, and to multiply it by seven in Glasgow, is a deep injustice that flies in the face of any semblance of social justice or economic redistribution. It makes a mockery of the Scottish National party’s tendency to come to this place and profess to be custodians of Labour’s soul and of real socialist values. I find that absurd, because it is not the reality in the streets, towns and cities of Scotland under the SNP’s Administration since 2007. That is the stark reality.

The only conclusion we can draw is that local government in Glasgow in particular has been targeted disproportionately for cuts, in large part because for many years Glasgow was under Labour administration, so it was easy enough to pass the buck and blame a Labour council for having to administer the harsh choices. In many cases, we were too keen to be the managers of that decline rather than resisting it robustly.

We need to offer an apology to the women in Glasgow who suffered as a result of the failure properly to settle the equal pay dispute in Glasgow, and who have continued to be militant about it. A Court of Session ruling has declared that they are due more than half a billion pounds as a result of historical pay injustice. That is the reality of what happened, but it is not necessarily the fault or the design of councillors trying to do women out of a settlement. They administered and dealt with the problem badly, but the root cause lies in the destruction of local councils’ capacity to raise their own money, deliver their own services and be masters of their own destiny. That is the brutal reality.

On behalf of the Labour party, I offer a profound apology to women in Glasgow for what they have faced over the last 10 years. Many women died waiting for the settlement. But it was a sin of omission, not of commission; we failed properly to challenge the decline in council services and budgets. In many ways, we tried to resolve the equal pay dispute by selling assets, but we have to recognise that the system and pay structure were flawed. The root cause of the problem was our national failure to get a grip on local government reform. That was a great flaw of devolution over the last 20 years, certainly in Scotland.

I hope that as we look forward to the next two decades of devolution, we can right some of those injustices and properly re-establish decent municipal services in councils and city regions across Scotland. The story of devolution does not end with Edinburgh or Holyrood; it has to continue into the great towns and cities of Scotland and develop for a successful future.

Deaths of Homeless People

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s important point. I want to see appropriate support and provision being provided across the board. I think there is some good practice that we can point to, but there is also not good practice. Therefore, we need to take measures to ensure that people are being cared for. Ultimately, we are talking about some of the most vulnerable people we could point to. They lack confidence—putting aside all the other issues—and the ability to get help. I feel their vulnerability very keenly. We need to learn and to ensure that appropriate standards are in place. I am very happy to look into any further issues she may wish to raise in relation to her particular case in Bristol.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

On average, two people a week die while homeless in Scotland. The average life expectancy of a homeless person in Scotland is just 39. People sleeping on the streets in Scotland before they register as homeless is up 10% from 2016 to 2018. That shows the data picture is not clear. Under Labour, targeted action reduced rough sleeping by 75%. It is not an accident that homelessness has increased. It is because of a failure of policy in mental health, addictions, poverty, social security, housing and immigration. All those areas are failing, and as a result people are dying. If the Secretary of State is willing to address the fundamental failure of public policy, he has to turn to his Front-Bench colleagues and make them accept the reality of what austerity has done and the social destruction it is causing in every part of the United Kingdom. We have to get a grip on this in our national interest.

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the need for concerted action across the board. When I look at the numbers, I see that we have not done enough and that we need to do more. That is what the rough-sleeping strategy is all about and that is what a number of things I have spoken to the House about this morning are profoundly all about. I want rough sleeping to be a thing of the past. There are clear lessons that we can apply and learn from. I will continue to reflect on and review the data as it emerges. As I said, we have provided an initial £100 million for the rough-sleeping strategy. I intend to have annual reviews so that, where further steps and measures are needed, we can take action to ensure we are making a difference.

Street Homelessness

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway]

I will change that sentence. A person can make money in order to buy drugs to feed their addiction—that point was pretty clear in what I said.

An added complexity is that there seems to be a perception among some of those involved in helping the homeless that in order to access services someone needs to sleep on the streets. Surely we should be helping people earlier. The endless churn of people entering the system—many of whom could and should have been helped earlier—makes the job of organisations who are trying to care for those vulnerable, and trapped, people even more difficult.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about the trapped nature of many homeless people. I recently visited a homeless shelter in Glasgow and I discovered a vicious cycle for people who might get a job, but they cannot then secure it because they do not have a bank account, and they cannot get a bank account because they do not have a job or permanent address. That puts people into a spiral of despair, which may well lead to them having addiction problems—no wonder they have addiction problems given the cycle of despair they are in.

[Adam Holloway]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s overall point. I think the business of not having an address has been dealt with by quite a lot of charities, but it is clearly much harder to hold down a job for someone who also has the complexity of sorting themselves out every night and living on the streets. I definitely agree with that.

How should we tackle the problem? From my experience of sleeping rough in 2018, I would say that our priority must be to ensure that we do not make the mistake of lumping all rough sleepers together. That stops us recognising people’s problems, and often means that we not go far enough to tackle the underlying reasons for rough sleeping. We also need urgently to address how mental health problems experienced by rough sleepers are identified and treated. Since my recent experience on the streets, a link has been made between the scaling back of mental health services and a rise in homelessness. An outreach worker, and former rough sleeper, told me only yesterday how he literally begged a doctor to get him some sort of treatment when no mental health services were available to help him.

Outreach workers also speak about their frustration at the lack of emergency mental health assessments, and the desperate need for help at the right time and in the right place. A supervisor at the No Second Night Out hub in London said that sometimes when someone arrives who is obviously suffering from a mental illness, the charity has to hold that severely mentally ill person in the hostel for up to three weeks before they get a mental health assessment. During that time the support workers, who are not psychiatric nurses, have to try to contain the situation, which is hugely challenging. If the person is accepted into an NHS mental health unit—that does not always happen, particularly if the person is a drug addict—more often than not, as has been said, they are simply released on to the streets a few weeks later.

Clearly there is an urgent need for mental health teams to be embedded with outreach teams so that they can look at the needs of an individual and refer them without any delay for the treatment they require. Homelessness charities say that there is no point putting enormous amounts of money into general mental health budgets, where it just disappears. The money has to go to the tip of the spear and stay with those people as they go through the system, so that we do not get the churn I have spoken about.

Thankfully, the problem of homelessness seems to be higher up the political agenda than ever before, and the Government’s 2015 Budget increased central Government funding for homelessness programmes to £140-odd million over the following four years. However, it is important that that money is used correctly, at the tip of the spear, focusing on the immediate needs of those on the streets and getting them the help they require, rather than being wasted on intervention that comes too late or does not tackle the root cause of someone’s homelessness.

If we are serious about this issue—I think the Government’s target is potentially over-ambitious—we must see people as individuals not just as homeless people. We must differentiate between different groups and have the courage to look at whether the provision of service is enabling some people to live on the streets, but obscuring others from the help that they need. We must think carefully about whether public kindness is enabling some addiction, and whether by lumping everyone together we are masking those in real need. In this country where we spend gazillions of pounds on a welfare state, we must try to rescue the people at the very bottom of our society from roaming the streets of our cities.

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[Melanie Onn]

Absolutely, and I will come on to that issue shortly. This problem is not insurmountable. When Labour was in government, there was an unprecedented drop in homelessness, but since 2010 it has worsened by every measure. As the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) made clear, the doubling of rough sleepers since 2010 is a problem of the Government’s own making. Home ownership is at a 30-year low. The average home costs eight times the average salary. Today in England there are 120,000 homeless children. The building of social rent homes has plummeted, with fewer than 1,000 last year—the lowest level on record.

The Minister, who has responsibility for homelessness, recently said that she did not know why homelessness had risen. I find it very hard to believe that anyone in this place cannot immediately see some of the main reasons for homelessness increasing. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly recognised some of them: a lack of social and council homes; disproportionately high rental increases making homes unaffordable for those on lower incomes; reductions in council funding meaning less for drug and alcohol services; crippling welfare reforms that have cut too fast and too far for those who were genuinely just about managing; and difficulty in accessing mental health services as the thresholds for those services get ever higher.

I shall take the opportunity to highlight some of the innovative work that NAViGO mental health services is undertaking in my constituency. It has worked closely with the local housing association to purchase properties and then uses them as step-down accommodation to support the service users who come to it for help, to ensure that they have wraparound care. That is the principle of Housing First in action in measures being taken by innovative organisations around the country.

[Mr Sweeney]

My hon. Friend gives very good examples of people who are homeless being given assistance. I wonder whether she will share my dismay at a letter that I received from Eleanor Wilson, a medical student in Glasgow, last night. She said that she witnessed, in a branch of Starbucks in Glasgow, a homeless man who was just queuing for a cup of coffee being told to get out of the premises. That is one of a litany of issues with Starbucks in the city of Glasgow. Starbucks cannot pay its taxes—does not contribute to helping the public realm—and is also ostracising homeless people on our streets who need help. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is totally unacceptable for a corporate citizen of the UK?

[Melanie Onn]

Absolutely. I think that we all have a responsibility. The hon. Member for Gravesham talked about a society that is enabling homelessness, but I think that there is room for compassion when dealing with people who have myriad social, economic and personal issues driving them to be in this situation.

A sensible welfare state provides security to those in society who need it. That has been eroded over the last eight years, creating an underclass to the extent that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has stepped into the Government’s shoes with its report published yesterday in the New Statesman and identified 78 homeless people who have died this winter. That is 78 human lives lost, 78 people without a place that they could call home, 78 lost people. Why do I call them “lost people”? Because the Government do not collect those figures centrally. Because in response to my written questions and those from colleagues about deaths associated with rough sleeping, the Minister has repeatedly brushed that question off. There was no acknowledgement that the central collection of data would prove to be of discernible use—that it would better inform the Government of the scale of the issue at hand and provide some evidence and a means by which Government initiatives could be measured.

The Minister’s Department seems similarly unaware of which local authorities have commissioned adult safeguarding reviews in the event of homelessness-related deaths in their area, so we cannot know which local authorities have good practices and which need improvement. Will she agree today to start collecting centrally data in relation to deaths from homelessness? For everyone’s information, at least 59 men and 16 women have died. Their ages ranged from 19 to 68, and 14 of those who died were under the age of 35.

I congratulate them on their assiduousness, but it should not take investigative journalists calling round councils, charities, coroners’ offices and police forces to establish a full picture of how many people are dying on the streets of our country. And it is not just those figures that matter. The Government should be doing better in collating general information about people who are rough sleeping, because the accuracy of those figures is wholly insufficient. In the official figures, the estimated figure for rough sleepers in my constituency sits at around 22, but the list that I get every single month from my local outreach services shows more than double that number.

Local Government Funding

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way again, because I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s question. What we proposed, when put together, is a far better deal for our children, our elderly and our councils than what the Conservatives have been able to come forward with.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is about time that we bust the Tory myths about the economic shock that this country faced? The reality is that the economy was growing when Labour left office. It was the absurd austerity policies of the Tory party that prolonged the recession and made it worse, giving us what is now the longest recovery in our country’s economic history.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it cannot be said often enough. When the Gordon Brown Government ended, the economy was growing again. That is a statement of fact. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State chunters again about “the deepest recession”. I think he will find that the global crash started in the United States of America—something that even his former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, now acknowledges.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I must make a little more progress. I will give way once more before I finish my speech.

It is little surprise that when we talk to Conservative Members in private they are just as concerned about what is going on in their own local communities as Labour Members are in public. It is not just the Opposition who are expressing concern about what is happening across local government; the IFS, the NAO and the media that cover local government are all saying the same things, as are members of the Conservative party.

Ensuring that vulnerable children have the protection that they need should not be a party political matter, which is why I am grateful for the work done by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) to highlight the crisis in children’s services. Both the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the current Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, the right hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) have campaigned against library closures. As I said earlier, the Defence Secretary has expressed concern about the cutting of bus services by Tory-controlled Staffordshire County Council—and he is right.

The Government can talk the talk on social mobility, supporting apprenticeships and investing in local communities, but at the moment—as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy)—people who live in rural areas and want to find work or apprenticeships cannot travel because there are no local transport services for them to use. I agree with the Defence Secretary. I only hope that he will be in the Lobby with us today, supporting his Twitter petition. For many years we have argued for a change of direction while the Government have stuck their head in the sand.

[Mr Sweeney]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what has been displayed today, in the most spectacular fashion, is total Tory economic illiteracy about what this country has faced? Had the Tory party continued with Labour’s stimulus plan, we would have restored the public finances at a far faster rate than can be achieved through a self-defeating austerity project.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The evidence was there when we left office, and the almost immediate impact of Chancellor George Osborne’s turning off the taps was apparent for all to see.

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[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Indeed, the average cost of a band A property is some £400 more in England than in Scotland—5.1% up on last year.

The Scottish Government’s progressive budget also provides extra funding for our NHS, our education and—even though it is a reserved matter for this Parliament and Ministers here—the push to make sure that we have done more on broadband coverage in Scotland. There is more money for our economy, for research and for our environment, too, as well as for protecting important things like free university tuition, free personal care for the elderly, free school meals and free prescriptions—among many other items.

[Mr Sweeney]

rose—

[Drew Hendry]

I am happy to give way—I have been waiting for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman describes the SNP’s recent budget as “progressive”. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities says that councils need £545 million just to stand still, yet the budget settlement imposed by the SNP was just £159 million. That yawning gap has not been filled. How can that possibly be progressive?

[Drew Hendry]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has intervened, because I was expecting him to do so. I was a former group leader at COSLA, so I have been watching for a number of years the Scottish Government manage to put money into local authorities in a way that could not be done down here. In fact, in the last debate on local government that I took part in in this Chamber, Tory MPs were talking about their councils having to hand back the keys to Treasury Ministers such were the cuts. Actually, one of the biggest challenges in Scotland is dealing with the private finance initiative legacy left by Labour in terms of the additional interest costs on all these different items that continue to drain local authority resources.

I want to turn to Highland Council, because it is on my own patch and I speak from experience. Highland Council’s resource budget for our services such as schools, roads and housing rose to almost £450 million for the coming year—an increase of over 2% compared with last year. While the Scottish Government protect local authority budgets, the UK Government leave them paying the price for the austerity agenda.

Highland Council is a good example of the impact of universal credit on local authority budgets. As many Members will know, the constituency of Inverness was a pilot area. We went through the live service and then full service roll-out in June 2016. Local agencies, the council and I have been voicing concern about these issues since 2013, and the measures introduced do not even scratch the surface of the process failings of universal credit. Our local authorities are paying the price now, and right hon. and hon. Members in this Chamber who go through full service roll-out will see the effect on their own local authorities.

Let me reflect on the cost to Highland Council of the impact of rent arrears. Average rent arrears for somebody on universal credit are now £840. Average rent arrears for somebody not on universal credit are £250. The effect of that is that in July 2016 rent arrears were £1.6 million. In March 2017, that figure rose to £2.2 million, and then in December 2017, it rose to £2.7 million, racking up the costs for local authorities, which are having to implement and deal with the effects of universal credit. This will have an effect on services as it starts to drain their budgets.

The extra resources needed for administering the change to universal credit are running into hundreds of thousands of pounds—money that is coming out of the council budget. The welfare support team do amazing work, but they are flat out with demand. Housing officers are also flat out with demand, as more people face housing crises. Some 29% of landlords already say that they have evicted because of universal credit rent arrears. People are becoming homeless, so the local authority has a duty to house them. It is a vicious cycle of costs for the local authority. The increased demand then affects other agencies such as Citizens Advice.

The impact on poverty is also very harsh. One in four children in Scotland is growing up in poverty as a result of this Government’s austerity regime. As household incomes are pushed, people find themselves relying more and more on local authority services. Highland Council, especially its welfare support team, has done incredible work in the face of the most trying difficulties.

The SNP Government are committed to mitigating Tory austerity wherever they can. Since 2013, the Scottish Government have spent more than £100 million a year to protect people from the worst aspects of Tory welfare cuts. We are fully mitigating the bedroom tax in Scotland, and we have pledged to abolish the tax completely when we have the powers to do so.

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[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on a critical issue for the future of the UK and, indeed, the integrity of many of our communities that have faced hardship in recent years.

I wish to pay particular attention to the issues that affect my constituency, which come under the Scottish Government’s purview. It was interesting to hear the Scottish National party Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), grandstanding and railing against the cuts that are coming to Scotland, and talking about how the SNP has been stretching every sinew to mitigate Tory cuts. Indeed, he referred to the block grant cut, yet why did SNP Members abstain on Third Reading of the Tory Finance Bill just a few weeks ago? They could have prevented that cut. It is clear that in reality they are not doing much to mitigate the cuts.

Local government in Scotland is now the most centralised system of government of any country in Europe. We have seen a continued strangulation of local government finances. The SNP has slashed £1.5 billion from local councils since 2011, merely acting as a conveyor belt for Tory austerity.

[Drew Hendry]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with not only the Scottish Government but the Fraser of Allander Institute that Scotland’s discretionary budget has been cut by more than 5% over the past few years?

[Mr Sweeney]

The reality facing local government in Scotland is that the SNP has taken Tory austerity and more than doubled it, passing it on to local government. From 2013-14 to 2016-17, the local government revenue budget decreased at a much faster rate—minus 4.6%—than the Scottish Government’s revenue budget, which declined by only 1.5%. If we look at the local government finance order figures for 2016-17 to 2017-18, we see that the revenue budget for local government continues to fall, by 2.2%, while the Scottish Government revenue budget falls by only 0.6%. That is a conveyor belt and amplification of Tory cuts; it is certainly not mitigating Tory cuts in Scotland. That is very much clear from the SNP’s attitude.

The SNP budget was passed on 21 February, with the support of the Scottish Green party. The budget deal struck by the SNP and Greens does not stop Tory austerity, tackle poverty or redistribute wealth and power. For the second year running, Green Members of the Scottish Parliament have backed a nationalist budget, which will leave councils’ lifeline services further squeezed. It is a backroom stitch-up deal that fails to fund a proper pay rise for council staff or to deal with the child poverty that our councils face. As I have mentioned before, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities said that it needed £545 million just to stand still, but the latest budget deal delivers only £159 million. I do not see much mitigation of local government cuts in that settlement.

Faced with a different path from that of the Tories’ austerity, the SNP has ignored it and rejected the progressive, radical package brought forward by the Labour party in Scotland. Audit Scotland has confirmed that in November last year accounts revealed that there is increasing strain on local government finances throughout Scotland. In 2016-17, a total of 19 out of the 32 councils in Scotland used cash from their revenue reserves—up from just eight that did it in 2015-16. This dipping into reserves is really going through the fat and into the bone. It is totally unacceptable. Indeed, over the course of the year, the overall amount held in council rainy day funds, or reserves, fell by £32 million. The Accounts Commission said:

“Councils are showing signs of increasing financial stress. They are finding it increasingly difficult to identify and deliver savings and more have drawn on reserves than in previous years to fund change programmes and routine service delivery.”

That is extremely worrying.

Labour’s alternative plan for the Scottish budget would deliver a nearly £l billion stimulus for the Scottish economy, by saving lifeline local services; increasing child benefit by £5 a week to put money back into the pockets of working-class families; and delivering an extra £100 million for our NHS. We also have a more radical tax policy than the one the SNP has proposed, despite the Scottish Government’s having unprecedented tax powers. The top 1% in Scotland own more wealth than the bottom 50% put together, but the SNP’s proposals on income tax just tinker around the edges, putting a penny on the top rate. Labour’s radical alternative would match the SNP’s starter rate, but would drop the threshold for the 45p rate to those earning more than £60,000 and introduce a new 50p rate for those earning more than £100,000.

Prospects would improve massively under Labour’s proposals. The SNP says that it cannot mitigate, but we have seen no effort to remove the public sector pay cap for local government. Public sector workers have faced years of cuts to their wages thanks to the pay cap. The current SNP proposals do not fully fund a pay rise and do not include all public sector workers—including those in local government. Labour’s proposals would. It is a radical package of proposals from the Labour party in Scotland. In addition to our tax plans, the further investment could be used to deliver more radical decisions on income tax and new economic powers to local authorities, including the ability to levy a tourist tax and a land value tax on vacant and economically inactive land. The latter is critical to my constituents, where 10% of land is vacant and derelict. Those are radical proposals from a radical Scottish Labour Government-in-waiting.

British Transport Police/ Police Scotland Merger

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ian Murray]

The hon. Gentleman has just highlighted that, in terms of terrorism, the Metropolitan police do not say that the British Transport police should be merged in the same way that is suggested in Scotland. I am glad we are having a discussion about terrorism. As I mentioned in an intervention, the BTP chair said that, in the light of terror attacks, any reorganisation of the British Transport police should be paused or halted permanently, on the basis that terrorism and the safety of the people of this country are the single biggest issue that the police service and security services deal with. Everyone should pause and reflect on why the Scottish Government have completely dismissed the British Transport police’s incredibly serious concerns about terrorism. As the biggest public safety issue, terrorism should be at the forefront of our minds. As I said, none of us wants the devolution of transport policing stopped; the question is how it is done in a way that ensures that the police service operates correctly.

It is not just politicians who say that—35% of BTP officers and 45% of BTP staff in Scotland say that they would probably leave the service if this integration went through. They have a great deal of pride in the service and safety that they provide to the public. Before my nationalist colleagues jump up and say that I am talking the police service down, let me say that the entirety of the police service—BTP and the police in my constituency—do a fantastic job in incredibly difficult circumstances. Great damage is being done to Police Scotland because of the botched merger of all the police forces to create that body, not because of individual officers, who do as much as they possibly can on the ground with the slim pickings of resources they are given.

To see how bad this integration would be, it is worth thinking about one of the basic grassroots issues—trains. They were discussed at great length on a cross-party basis when Lord Foulkes of Cumnock brought a debate on this subject to the House of Lords. There is no station on the border, on either the west coast or the east coast. In fact, no one could get a train into Scotland for four days last week. The last stations in England and the first out of Scotland on the UK main lines are Carlisle on the west coast and Berwick on the east coast.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many constituents got in touch with me last week who had been stranded in Carlisle and relied on the help of the British Transport police to make arrangements to get home safely. Surely that would be disrupted if this merger happened and the single policing structure on the west coast main line were dislocated.

[Ian Murray]

The service would be disrupted, and it would be an incredible waste of resources. If I may use these crude terms, we would need either English officers to stay on trains from Carlisle to Glasgow or from Berwick to Edinburgh, or—vice versa—Scottish officers to stay on trains going south. There will have to be some kind of agreement. None of that has been taken into account. That is why we welcome the pause in the integration and the fact that all these issues will have to be looked at.

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[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for your efficient chairmanship of this debate. I commend the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) for securing it.

Last week we debated Scottish city deals, which examined one side of the devolution equation. This debate examines the other side of that equation, and looks at how effective the devolution process has been over the past 20 years. We are seeing the emergence of the Scottish Government as a Leviathan—an unwelcome Leviathan in many ways. The devolution process was never designed to be like this; it was designed to create institutions to facilitate collaboration and strong partnerships at all levels of government, including local government and with the UK Government. Devolution should never be considered an annexation of power; it should be about building strong partnerships that facilitate efficient collaboration. We need to rediscover that as part of the devolution settlement.

I wish to reflect on the process through which the Smith commission discussed the devolution of the British Transport police to the Scottish Government, and the spirit in which that was done. No one disagrees with the idea of devolution, but the manner in which the Scottish Government have subsequently managed it has been less than satisfactory. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee presented three options for railway policing following the publication of the Smith commission’s report and the passage of the Scotland Act. Instead of consulting on which of those three would be the most effective, the Scottish Government instead railroaded through one simple option, with little room for stakeholders to affect the outcome. What sort of democratic devolved discussion and collaborative process is that?

Option 1 looked at administrative measures, including ways to increase alignment with Police Scotland initiatives and BTP’s accountability to Scottish institutions. It examined a new role for the Scottish Police Authority in scrutiny and performance, but that was disregarded. Option 2 considered legislative and administrative measures, including clarifying in statute arrangements through which the Scottish Government may give direction to the British Transport police authority. Under that option, the BTPA would retain responsibilities for pensions, employment contracts, and defraying the costs of policing to the rail industry. Planning and strategy setting for railway policing in Scotland would be reviewed to enable greater involvement by the Scottish Police Authority. Both options considered new branding for the BTP in Scotland, but again that was disregarded without any consultation.

The only option presented as a meaningful way forward was full integration, which was also deemed the most complex route. There was, however, no justification for it on that basis, so why were the other options disregarded out of hand? It is no surprise that the process has been halted, because its basis was clearly unsound from the beginning. That is why the chief inspector of constabulary in Scotland stated:

“The scope and scale of the challenges and complexity of the transfer should not be underestimated. It is not a merger of one complete organisation with another, but the partial extraction of a function from one organisation and its integration into another organisation.”

There is also a problem with staffing, morale, and the skills that are vital to sustaining the British Transport police across the United Kingdom. The Scottish Government seek to merge the BTP with Police Scotland, but they opposed the first two options on the grounds that they would not deliver a single command structure for policing in Scotland.

However, a single command structure is not necessarily desirable, because staff of the British Transport police want to maintain their integrity and their skills and specialisms. If they are removed from that structure and the only way to advance in the organisation is to move out of the rail division and into another part of Police Scotland, the dilution of the skills base will be self-evident. Why is that desirable? It is not, which is why it is necessary and key to maintain the discrete structure of the British Transport police in Scotland through other measures. Such dilution of the skills base is not desirable for staff or for efficient devolution.

For devolution to be a true success, we must examine both sides of the equation and ensure that local government, structures and institutions in Scotland are protected from the encroachment of Edinburgh. We must ensure effective collaboration among the Scottish Government, the UK Government and UK institutions to enable the most efficient management of those services in Scotland.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Why would it be more difficult to retain a transport police function within a broader Police Scotland than to retain a firearms specialism, for example?

[Mr Sweeney]

Because opportunities for advancement within the British Transport police transcend the border—people can move between different regional divisions and they can learn different skills and benefit from training across the UK. It is desirable to maintain such opportunities, and on that basis the British Transport police structure in Scotland should be revisited. We should reconsider those three options and discuss them openly and with good intentions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

I cannot just now. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East spoke of an automatic dilution of skills. That is not a logical conclusion. If a railway division is retained in the new set-up, there should not be a dilution of skills. In fact, it is a way to enhance skills and opportunities within Police Scotland.

[Mr Sweeney]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Alan Brown]

No; I will see if I have time near the end of my speech.

We are debating an important matter, which the Scottish Government are trying to deal with. It is clear that there are concerns within the Scottish division of the British Transport police about the proposals, and the claim that there are concerns among staff members cannot be refuted. We have to take the concerns seriously, given that we are talking about valued police officers who provide vital services, keeping us safe. Staff morale and welfare in relation to stress or concerns is of utmost priority. I think that that is what led to the current pause. However, even when those factors are taken into account, they do not justify the complete policy U-turn that most Members of other parties have called for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

Railway policing has now been devolved to Scotland, and it is therefore the domain and the prerogative of the Scottish Government to determine how best those responsibilities can be discharged. The commissioning route that the hon. Gentleman prefers is not the policy choice of the Scottish Government. It is now for them to deliver on devolution and to make it work as best they can, with the UK Government playing a supporting role.

[Mr Sweeney]

Does the Minister agree that devolution is not necessarily about the Scottish Government having full oversight of this, and that there is nothing to stop those of us with electoral mandates to represent the people of Scotland from offering a view? The UK Government should also not shrink from offering their preferred view of what should happen. This is not the nature or the spirit of the collaboration that should underpin devolution.

[Joseph Johnson]

We will continue to work collaboratively with our colleagues in Scotland to ensure the smooth transfer of powers. We all have the interests and the safety of the passengers and the staff working on our railways at heart. We want to put in place sustainable and endurable arrangements within the framework of law set by the devolution settlement.

I assure hon. Members that, working through the joint programme board, we will be ready to challenge the approach where it is necessary to do so in the interests of passengers, officers and staff and the security of the country. We will continue to ensure that the UK’s interests are fully protected, including by ensuring that the critical, specialist work of the BTP in England and Wales continues to protect rail users and staff.

Scottish City Deals

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the progress of Scottish city deals.

As always, it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. The Localism Act 2011 created the concept of core cities in the UK and granted significant devolved power over financial and planning matters to city regions that successfully negotiated deals with central Government. As the greatest city in the world, it was inevitable that Glasgow was the first city region in Scotland to successfully negotiate a city deal in 2014. I pay tribute to the city region’s councillors—particularly the Labour councillors—who led the championing of that deal. Gordon Matheson, who was then leader of Glasgow City Council, and his colleagues played a vital role in ensuring that the deal was achieved, and it proved to be the harbinger of successful deals for Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh and Stirling.

Glasgow’s deal was agreed by the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the eight local authorities in Glasgow and the Clyde valley: East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire. It aims ambitiously to support the creation of 29,000 jobs, underpinned by £1 billion of Scottish Government and UK Government capital funding and £3.3 billion of private sector investment to support a proposed infrastructure investment programme. The purported aims of the deal are based on three themes: a £1.1 billion fund to support 20 major infrastructure projects in the region, including reviving plans for the long-awaited rail link between the city centre and the airport; three labour market projects to address local employment challenges; and innovation and growth projects to support the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises and enhance the city’s life sciences sector.

The city deal promises significant funds for Glasgow’s development, but very little progress has been made since 2014. For example, more than three years after the deal was agreed, the plan for the Glasgow airport rail link, which was meant to be a key component of the deal, has yet to be agreed. I would like the UK Government to take this opportunity to explain to us Glaswegians why there has been such a significant lack of progress. That raises serious questions about the way in which the Scottish city deals, particularly the Glasgow city deal, were set up, how they are being run and where they will go next.

The Glasgow city deal has been extremely badly handled by the Governments at Westminster and Holyrood. Both the Tories and the Scottish National party need to be held to account for their failure to progress the deal, having so far failed even to agree on the outcomes they want it to deliver. The two Governments seem more focused on arguing about constitutional issues. The UK Government lack oversight of what the money they committed is being used for. Put simply, the Tories do not care enough about the deal to monitor it and press for progress.

The development of the Glasgow city deal and other Scottish city deals is evidently not a priority for the UK Government. That is fittingly exemplified by the fact that no one from the Scotland Office, which I named in my application for the debate, bothered to turn up, and that the Minister for the northern powerhouse, which is a position designed for the north of England, was dispatched to respond instead. That begs the question: what is the Scotland Office actually doing beyond hosting the occasional soirée in Dover House? It has shown a lack of leadership on this vital growth opportunity for our cities in Scotland.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Before the hon. Gentleman was elected, the problem we had with getting Scotland Office Ministers to appear in this Chamber was that there was only one Government MP representing a Scottish constituency and the Secretary of State does not normally appear here. Given that he is now joined on the Government Benches by an illustrious array of talent from Scotland, is it not time that a Scotland Office Minister came to this Chamber?

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my honourable colleague from the great city of Glasgow for that observant intervention. I welcome the fact that some Scottish Conservative Members are here. It is just a shame that none of them are deemed worthy of holding the position of Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, which, bizarrely, was given to someone who failed to be elected to the House and sits in the other place.

[Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Sweeney]

Perhaps you would like to bid for the job, sir.

[Bill Grant]

This is not a bid for the job, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. May I go back to what we knew as the GARL—the Glasgow airport rail link? The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport was heavily involved in that—in fact, the route was mapped out. Does he recall that that was shelved not by the SPT but by the Scottish Government?

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Since the UK Government provided half the capital for the city deal—cash that was contingent on a no vote in the 2015 referendum—it appears that the SNP Scottish Government are at best apathetic about the progress and success of the deal and are therefore dragging their feet and putting nationalism ahead of the national interest and of the interests of Glaswegians. There is no better example of that than the way in which power was ripped away from the SPT and centralised in Transport Scotland. There has been a total lack of progress in infrastructure investment in Glasgow, particularly in the Glasgow metro rail network, which was built by the Strathclyde region. There has been no substantial investment to expand the network since the end of the Strathclyde region and the centralisation of transport powers under Transport Scotland.

The Glasgow airport rail link was scrapped in 2008, and there was a fire sale of the land—a scorched earth policy—that would have allowed it to happen. We struggle to see how we can revive that deal, because all the infrastructure that was put in place to achieve it was sold off in that fire sale by John Swinney. There is also a threat to the Crossrail scheme in Glasgow, which is vital for unifying the city region’s rail network. Transport Scotland has actually demanded its removal from the city region plan, which would open up the land for the construction of housing.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I will avoid the theatrics that some others have used. The hon. Gentleman talks about the danger posed to Crossrail. Does he accept that, under a previous administration, Glasgow City Council granted permission for 800 houses where Crossrail would have gone? I do not think he is in strong territory.

[Mr Sweeney]

I do not accept that at all. The high street curve area was protected until June last year, after the change in administration. It was actually Transport Scotland—[Interruption.] No, the planning application was not before that. I am the only Member of Parliament who raised an objection to that planning application, which went to the city council only last month. Crossrail was enabled in the city region development plan, but it was removed from the latest edition of the plan in June last year at the demand of Transport Scotland. That is why a planning application went in that threatens the delivery of the Crossrail scheme, which is a vital project for Glasgow. I urge all Glasgow city region Members of Parliament to get behind it. We need to protect and safeguard the route for Crossrail. It is a critical project that should be funded by the Glasgow city region city deal, and it is another example of how dysfunctional and disjointed the whole administration of the deal has been.

At a time when public money is tight, it is unacceptable that the involvement of two Governments—in Edinburgh and London—can lead to a stalemate in the progress of the Glasgow city deal and a failure to draw up and implement a strategy for investing the allocated funds. The Tories and the SNP must get a grip if our urban areas are ever to catch up with and exceed the ambition of their English peers.

In an evaluation of their progress in 2016, the Fraser of Allander Institute commented that the three city deals that existed in Scotland at the time

“could have an important impact in increasing urban productivity, and increasing the culture of partnership and innovation in these…city regions,”

but “many more steps remain,” and that for cities in Scotland to move forward,

“they need to be empowered—with additional roles, funding and competencies, because they will need and are best-placed to identify their infrastructure investment requirements, especially in transport and housing.”

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

My constituency is not lucky enough to have a city deal yet—they are still under negotiation in Clackmannanshire and, in the form of the Tay cities deal, in Perth and Kinross. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that devolution does not mean separate? Edinburgh should pass more powers down to local authorities and work constructively with Westminster, so that we get more transparency about these deals and actually get the money to the communities where it is needed sooner rather than later.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which was timely because I am just about to address the question of municipalism in Scotland—a great tradition that is sadly diminished.

To achieve those recommendations by the Fraser of Allander Institute, we need substantially greater powers to act at municipal level, which the Glasgow city deal shows are sorely lacking. It is fair to say that Glasgow has been progressively smothered by the process of devolution in the past 20 years. Edinburgh holds too much power. It sucks up power from other parts of the country, including Glasgow. The SNP has only exacerbated the problem by drastically cutting funding to local government at twice the rate the Scottish budget has been reduced. Rebranding the city council as a city government is just dressing mutton up as lamb, because without any substantive changes to Glasgow’s real political power it is nothing more than changing the letterhead on the city council stationery. We need to appraise honestly how devolution can better support our great cities towards more responsive, representative government, rather than increasingly concentrating power in Edinburgh.

The north of England has been invigorated by a multimillion pound investment and innovative development through its city deals. Historically Britain’s second city, Glasgow is now at risk of losing out in terms of power and investment compared with other big, regional cities in the UK. City regions such as Manchester and Liverpool have made great gains in funding, voice and influence in recent years, including through the introduction of directly elected metro mayoralties. That greater devolution of power is to be celebrated, and Glasgow, which is bigger than each of those cities in northern England, needs to learn from the recent experience of cities such as Manchester to bring more power and investment to our great city. We need to ensure that Glasgow, as one of the greatest cities in the world, and once the fourth-largest city in Europe, has a greater and distinctive voice within the UK. We should be exploring all avenues for how we increase our political clout to improve the lives of Glaswegians.

The city deal appears to be a temporary fix to underlying structural issues for funding the Glasgow city region, which over recent decades has been both ravaged by a decade of SNP cuts and undermined by the Tory break-up of what it saw as a troublesome Labour-led Strathclyde regional council in the 1990s. I hope that the debate will force the Government to provide much-needed clarity on the future progress of the longest-standing Scottish city deal, the Glasgow and Clyde Valley city region deal.

The UK Government need to be proactive in pushing for progress while putting pressure on the SNP Government in Holyrood to deliver their commitments. As has been mentioned in interventions, we need to establish unity of purpose to ensure that the right projects are prioritised so that Glasgow finally gets the vital, world-class infrastructure it needs to thrive as a global destination in the 21st century, without further delay and procrastination. The current deal clearly shows that we cannot trust the UK Government to deliver on their financial commitments, we cannot trust the Scotland Office to show leadership, and we cannot trust the Scottish Government to implement their commitments properly.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Is that not proof that the deal was not fully thought- through by the UK Government at the start? Instead, it was a pre-referendum bribe, with them throwing out the money without laying out what the outcomes were going to be.

[Mr Sweeney]

I do not accept that it was done in that manner, cynically put as it was. I think it was put together with the best of intentions, but it has been managed incompetently. Both Parliaments and both Governments are to blame for the lack of oversight. I hope that both Parliaments will rediscover a spirit of co-operation on this issue and reappraise and reboot the city deal to ensure that we get the best effect for the people of Glasgow. I have been elected to do that, and I am going to ensure that that happens.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is a good friend of mine, and I understand that, as the sole Labour MP in Glasgow—on a wafer-thin majority—he has a job to do. The SNP has been in administration in Glasgow for less than 12 months, while his party presided over the deal for three years. Is there no responsibility on the part of his colleagues in Glasgow city chambers?

[Mr Sweeney]

Glasgow City Council has been pressing valiantly to deliver projects such as the Glasgow airport rail link, but it has been thwarted at every turn by Transport Scotland. Why? Because municipal power has been progressively ripped out of city councils across Scotland by the Scottish Government. [Interruption.] It happened in 2008, when SPT was denuded of any executive transport planning powers. It has the capacity to do it.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. It is great to have so much enthusiasm in the room, but I remind Members that any comments should be made through the Chair.

[Mr Sweeney]

Thank you, Ms McDonagh. I shall conclude by putting two direct questions to the Minister. What will he do to ensure that city deals in Scotland are properly delivered and to ensure the deals bring the hoped-for benefits to the city regions? What discussion has he had with the Scottish Government about enhancing the Glasgow city region’s political power in concert with the city deal, as has happened in other UK cities to their benefit? Will he show us some of the leadership lacking in the Scotland Office by committing to raise those issues with the Scottish Government without delay?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry]

We are in conversations about dates that work. I have already met with the representatives of the Ayrshire growth deal. As I committed to in the Chamber following the hon. Gentleman’s question, I am happy to meet with them again to discuss what we can take forward and how we can work together on proposals that they may have for an Ayrshire growth deal. I will keep him informed about my diary, but I hope that he will not have to wait too long for the second meeting. I know that discussions are ongoing with my colleagues in the Scotland Office.

An important aspect of all the city deals is that their content cannot be imposed top-down by the UK Government or the devolved Administration. They need to be promoted by local partners and draw on the expertise in the local communities, because such deals work best where they are ground-up and locally driven.

I turn to the achievements of some of the city deals that we have already agreed. The Glasgow and Clyde Valley deal was the first Scottish deal agreed, and included a joint £1 billion investment fund from both the UK and the Scottish Governments to support growth across the city region through a regionally controlled investment fund. Good progress continues to be made, with a number of key milestones already achieved. Significant funding—£209 million—has been approved, and many projects have been successfully completed. One example is the positive investment—some £89.3 million —of city deal funding to deliver the canal and north element of the Sighthill regeneration project, which is one of the biggest of its type outside London. I could not put the difference that the project will make better than the hon. Member for Glasgow North East. In one of his recent tweets, he said that the Sighthill regeneration project is

“an incredible legacy for my constituency.”

[Mr Sweeney]

I accept that the Sighthill transformational regeneration area is a wonderful example of the city deal in action, but my point was that, given the lack of political power compared with the powers given to other city regions in the UK, we cannot progress critical infrastructure projects such as transport because those powers are no longer in the locus of the city region. Only when we have the powers to match the investment will we see real progress in areas such as infrastructure. Does the Minister not accept that we are seeing a lack of progress in those areas?

[Jake Berry]

I do not accept that the only point that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to make is that the region wants further political powers. He set out that there had been a lack of progress in the Glasgow city deal. I have pointed out a project that he himself has said will be

“an incredible legacy for my constituency.”

Some £89.3 million has already been drawn down into that project. That ably makes the point that the city deal is making progress, and shows the commitment of both the UK and Scottish Governments to driving forward the economy of Glasgow.

The city deal investment in the Sighthill regeneration project, which the hon. Gentleman acknowledges is a good legacy for his constituency, will fund connections between that area and the city centre. It will provide a significant economic boost to north Glasgow. In addition to the regionally managed investment fund, as part of the Glasgow city deal the Government have committed funding to specific innovation projects across the city region. Those projects have already begun to support small and medium-sized businesses with high-growth potential as part of our strategy to back Glasgow’s life sciences sector.

Among those projects is the world-leading Imaging Centre of Excellence, which is part of a £64 million investment in stratified medicine at the new south Glasgow hospitals campus. Again, that part of the city deal is drawn-down, completed and open, showing that the city deal is already delivering for the people of Glasgow. It is a unique medical research facility, which will translate science into economic and patient benefits for the city of Glasgow, Scotland and the UK. The project will bring 396 new high-skilled, high-wage, high-value jobs to the city region over a seven-year period, and an independent assessor believes that it will contribute at least £88 million to the local economy—another demonstration of how the city deal in Glasgow is already delivering for people on the ground.

On the comment made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East about the delay to the rail link with the airport, I share his disappointment that the Scottish Government have failed to make proper progress on that. It is already fully funded from the city deal agreed gainshare fund. The money is available and ready to be drawn down. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take the message from today’s debate that there is certainly ambition from the UK Government, who are calling for the project, in partnership with Transport Scotland, to be brought forward as quickly as possible to deliver not just for the people of Glasgow, but for the wider Scottish region.

I note that the transport woes in the city of Glasgow are not isolated. Trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow have been both reduced in frequency and halved in their length, because the lease is about to run out on the diesel trains that currently ply that line. I wonder whether one solution could be to take the steam train from the Bo’ness and Kinneil line to supplement the transport between Glasgow and Edinburgh. That should not be a solution that any of us want, but given the incompetence with which the Scottish Government seem to be managing that line, it may be the only one available.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of trends in the number of homeless people sleeping rough between 2010 and 2016.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What assessment he has made of trends in the number of homeless people sleeping rough between 2010 and 2016.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

17. What assessment he has made of trends in the number of homeless people sleeping rough between 2010 and 2016.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question but, frankly, this is not a laughing matter. The Government are clear that one person without a home is too many. We have already taken steps towards combating rough sleeping and homelessness. For instance, we have implemented the most ambitious legislative reform in decades through the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which comes into force this April. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for all his hard work on that Act. We will ensure that more people get the help they need earlier to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.

[Mr Sweeney]

The massive increase in homelessness and rough sleeping in my city of Glasgow is in stark contrast to the situation under the last Labour Government, when homelessness fell by more than three quarters. Given that shocking situation, what plans does the Minister have to roll out the finished Housing First pilot scheme, which prioritises rapid rehousing and permanent tenancies as a national strategy following the excellent pilot results in several British cities?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which rather seemed to be about a devolved matter. As the nation gets to grips with this issue, the rough sleeping advisory panel, which I will chair, will include key figures from local and central Government, as well as homelessness charities. The panel’s role will be to support the taskforce in developing a cross-Government strategy to halve rough sleeping by 2022, and to eliminate it altogether by 2027. The first meeting of the advisory panel will take place on 1 February.