Merseyside: Funding of Local Authorities

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for calling this important debate. It is timely, because the Secretary of State is in Liverpool today, addressing northern leaders at the convention of the north.

Last week, we heard the Government fanfare around the levelling-up White Paper. As one commentator put it,

“the Government is like the arsonist turning up late to the scene of their crime with a fire extinguisher in hand claiming to help put out the fire they started”.

So hollow is the Government’s plan that this year—the year of levelling up—councils are being forced to increase council tax precepts yet again, while at the same time making deep cuts to local services. The degradation of local government finances since 2010 has exacerbated geographical inequalities, held back our regional infrastructure and limited the potential of our people and communities.

In this coming financial year, Liverpool City Council will see a starting revenue gap of an eye-watering £34 million. Inflationary pressures and the increase in national insurance—not to mention the insult of having to increase the pay of central Government commissioners by 50%, which is nothing short of a disgrace—are making the picture even grimmer. All that is on top of half a billion pounds-worth of cuts since 2010.

The picture is the same across the Liverpool city region. Even after the Prime Minister’s non-plan for adult social care, councils across Merseyside are still having to make swingeing cuts in that area and raise the adult social care precept, with a starting position of £12 million of cuts for Liverpool in adult social care alone. All the while, demand for services increases, and the recruitment, retention and workforce crisis rages on in the sector. We cannot go on like this.

Such is the arrogance across Whitehall that shuffling deckchairs is the modus operandi, with no real plan for municipal revival and no plan to restore local government to the pinnacle of achievement. Most insulting of all, there is no acknowledgement that the decisions of the past decade have contributed to the growing divide between the north and more affluent parts of the country. It is not rocket science why communities in places such as Merseyside, which have some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country and have been subject to some of the most brutal cuts, have become dirtier and less safe, have lower life expectancy, suffer from increasing food bank usage, and see widening education attainment gaps.

Forgive me for thinking that that has been a deliberate political ploy to re-engineer politics across the north of England, which lets Labour councils, as local establishments, shoulder the blame and burden for austerity and higher taxation, while the Conservative Government come along at the eleventh hour to save the day. Pay more, get less —no wonder our residents are fed up. It may benefit the Conservative party, but it is bad governance, and it is our communities that pay the price. The perverse nature of the centralised British state means that we now have Treasury announcements on filling potholes. Guess what? Local councils used to just fill potholes without the need for a Whitehall press release.

The Government cannot and will not level up this country while our councils are scraping around year after year to produce balanced budgets against a backdrop of sustained cuts. Across our city region, we simply cannot take any more. I hope the Minister has some real ideas for how that is going to be addressed.

Levelling Up

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is definitely worth exploring. I recognise that there are particular geographical—what is the word?—issues across the east midlands, but I think the success of Andy Street in the west midlands has meant that more options are opening.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

Since 2010, £465 million has been cut from Liverpool City Council, with £34 million in this coming financial year. Local government staff have had their pay cut by 20% since 2010 in real terms. Will the Secretary of State, if he is genuinely committed to tackling and reversing inequality, tell us when local government workers can expect a 50% pay increase like the commissioners in Liverpool City Council, or will he agree to meet me and my colleagues to look at that eye-watering decision?

Liverpool City Council

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

All councils have a fundamental duty to their residents to provide good value for money. At the heart of our decision to intervene in Liverpool, and to commission Max Caller and his report, was persuasive evidence that it was falling below that standard, and that is what Max Caller has indeed concluded today. All councils need to ensure they are providing good-quality public services and are taking care with the money entrusted to them. I hope we can correct the situation in Liverpool, which has now gone on for too long, and that other councils across the country in different situations also take note and take particular care when spending the public’s money.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I also pay tribute to the incredible staff at Liverpool City Council at this very difficult time. I thank the Secretary of State for coming to the House today, and I hope he will agree to meet the five Members representing Liverpool at the earliest opportunity.

I, for one, do not doubt the seriousness of the issues that have been raised today, and I look forward to receiving a copy of the Caller report. That public resources have been put at risk is deeply worrying, because resources are needed for investment in the vital services on which my constituents depend, even more so at a time when funding has been cut year on year. Will the Secretary of State take this chance to reassure my wonderful city, and anyone concerned, that commissioners will be totally independent and their focus will be on working in the interests of the people of Liverpool?

[Robert Jenrick]

I certainly can. The commissioners will be appointed by me and will report to me. Their task is to support the city and its elected leadership to ensure that a good and credible improvement plan is brought forward and implemented as quickly as possible, and that the mistakes, errors and omissions of the past are put right, so that confidence can be restored to the city and the hon. Lady’s constituents can know and have confidence that they have a well-functioning city council and we can move forward as swiftly as possible.

I share the hon. Lady’s support for the city. It is a great city, and it deserves a good, functioning city council, which is exactly what we want to achieve.

Coronavirus: Supporting Businesses and Individuals

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

By my count, I make it 337 days without proper and sufficient support for those who make up Britain’s 3 million excluded and forgotten. On the reverse side of the coin, the taxpayer-funded gravy train goes full steam ahead, with billions of pounds in publicly funded contracts handed over to Tory donors. In every sense, and at whatever side of the coin one may look, it is a national disgrace.

Who are these excluded people? They are the people denied furlough; the newly self-employed and those with new start-ups; those who earn less than 50% from self-employment, and, perhaps most immorally of all, women on maternity, parental and/or adoption leave. For those 337 days, livelihoods have been at stake, businesses have been lost and too many have been forced to join the queue for universal credit. Constituents of mine, like Jayne Moore and Grahame Park, Neil McDonald and Claire Ryder, and outside my constituency, people like Tim Pravda, have had 337 days of anxiety and uncertainty about their future.

I had assumed that the excluded would be a natural constituency for the Tory party, but what shocked me, to say the least, was the outright belligerence and refusal to engage with just over 3 million people. That has undermined the increasingly hollow soundbite of doing “whatever it takes”. However, the excluded are not going away. Their persistence is testament to their resolve and I am pleased to play my small part in speaking up for them today.

Throughout the pandemic, the Conservative modus operandi of dither and delay has compounded the uncertainties and anxieties. Worse, the Government have at times sought to add insult to injury. One example is dropping the self-employment income support scheme to 20% of profits before realising the error of their ways. We know too many who are excluded altogether from that scheme. One minute, the spending taps are on, the next the Government turn into the mate who has bolted from the bar to the toilet when they know their round is next. Only when they are metaphorically dragged out of the loo do they buy a round, basking in the glory of it all before doing a runner when they are next up. But the excluded are never truly given a seat at the table.

If the Government act quickly, they can get ahead of the curve instead of bending it, and be proactive rather than reactive. I implore them to hear the stories of the excluded 3 million, work with them to plug the gaps in support and put right the wrongs. Let us also significantly extend furlough alongside the self-employment income support scheme, extend business rates relief, continue VAT reductions and keep the eviction ban in place. That means providing reassurance and acting now, not waiting until the March Budget. Our short, medium and long-term recovery depends on it.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Paula Barker Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

Before entering this place, I was fortunate enough to visit the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau on a number of occasions—fortunate in the sense that I was able to see at first hand a place that had once, in our recent history, inflicted so much suffering, destruction and, ultimately, death; a place where human beings routinely slaughtered fellow human beings on account of nothing more than their ethnicity, religious beliefs, disabilities, sexual orientation and political activity; a place that is in every sense a living, breathing monument to all who were killed during the holocaust, a fixed reminder of the horrors of genocide and a warning to any society that wishes to dangerously flirt with intolerance and prejudice.

I am proud to represent such a diverse constituency in Liverpool, Wavertree. I know that many of my Jewish constituents will have been lighting a candle yesterday, paying tribute, remembering and reflecting on the lived experiences of the 6 million Jews and those who survived, as well as the other persecuted peoples who perished in those camps at the hands of the Nazis. It is on candles that I want to briefly focus. How poignant and moving was the “Thought for the Day” from the Chief Rabbi yesterday, in which he said:

“Even a tiny flame can conquer darkness.”

The symbol of Holocaust Memorial Day is, of course, that candle. No matter how small the flame—no matter how inconsequential our behaviours may seem at times—we can be that light in the darkness. It is undoubtedly a powerful call to responsibility in which we all must play a small part as citizens.

I saw that at first hand and was able to capture it in the freezing eastern European snow, as we placed a small row of candles on the remnants and decaying walls of Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp during my visits. It was not the freezing cold temperatures that gave me chills as I stood there. It was, in fact, upon learning the story of 7 October 1944. For months, young Jewish women were smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from the munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex to the men and women of the camp’s resistance movement. A young Jewish woman, Roza Robota, passed it to her co-conspirators in the Sonderkommando, the special squad of prisoners forced to work in the camp’s crematoria.

While the uprising was ultimately unsuccessful and a brutal crackdown ensued, Crematorium IV was destroyed and never used again. Roza was hanged in January 1945 alongside three other women comrades. Defiant until the last, their heroic stand is remembered as one of the most courageous acts of Jewish women prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their resilience and unrelenting insubordination in the face of adversity and death is a beacon of hope to us all. In that place, in that moment, they were that flame—that candle—and it is our duty, many decades later, to continue telling their stories.

Council Tax: Government’s Proposed Increase

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

Before entering Parliament, I spent my entire working life in local government. Local government as an institution is one of the great pillars of our democracy. It is in every sense the frontline, providing the bread-and-butter services our communities and our people rely on day in, day out. I cannot be more earnest in delivering this message from the frontline: morale has never been more crushed or in such short supply within local government than it has for this last decade. Half a billion pounds has been slashed from my own council in Liverpool in the past 10 years and more than £10 billion from local government overall, with a postcode lottery where the Tory shires are cushioned from the devastation inflicted on councils across the north of England.

The disturbing irony of it all is that the Conservatives claim to be no big believer in the central state, yet trash the very institutions that have the expertise and know-how to put local people in charge of their communities’ own destiny. They talk a good game on devolution, but we know in the north that the reality is quite the opposite. Meagre powers with little resource do not deliver real change, nor do they come anywhere close to levelling up. The Conservative party talks an even mightier game on tax and spend, but there is nothing to justify such assertions if the modus operandi is to shift the tax burden from progressive taxation to the most regressive of taxes, council tax. The most sinister swindle of them all is when local people receive their council tax bill. The top does not read “Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government” but “Liverpool City Council”, “Salford City Council” or “Leeds City Council”. I dare say that if the opposite were true and blame was directed where it truly belongs, to Whitehall, the Government would think twice about backing councils into a corner like this.

Social care is a case in point. If this Government in all their delusions honestly believe the way to put adult social care on a truly sustainable financial footing is to pillage the pockets of local taxpayers with huge council tax hikes that let the wealthiest off the hook and allow the poorest to shoulder the greatest burden, they are in for a shock. Squeezing the tax base in areas of high deprivation to subsidise an inadequate adult social care business will never ever provide the solutions our people need as our population grows older and therefore more dependent on such services.

This Government have abjectly failed to live up to their own mantra of “whatever it takes” when it comes to local government. Our councils are delivering despite the most difficult circumstances. Instead of forcing more of them into the humiliation of section 114 notices, let us restore essential government grants, cancel the council tax hike and keep the money in the pocket of working-class people.

Private Rented Sector

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

I will come to the link between local housing allowance rents and rental growth later, but I thoroughly agree with my right hon. Friend that because the link has been broken, people are put at risk of eviction and eventually homelessness. He will know that more than ever, representing a London constituency, where there are serious problems with overcrowding—I know his constituency well.

We have seen a dramatic growth in rents in the last decade. The average private rent is an astonishing £4,500 more than it was in 2010. That is how much it has accelerated in the last 10 years and here are some of the results. Some 30% of tenants now struggle to pay rent; over a quarter of London renters spend more than half their wages on rent alone; one in three older renters lives in poverty after rent has been paid; and it is no wonder that 60% of renting families say they are just one pay cheque away from losing their home.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

On that point, over the past week, I have been contacted by many constituents with coronavirus. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential for the Government to step in and ensure that those people are looked after, as has been done in other countries?