Local Government Finance

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

This settlement is welcome because for many councils it staves off financial armageddon. However, as we have heard, we need a far more strategic approach to the funding of local councils and to how they deliver the crucial services that they provide. Year after year we go through an annual routine of the Government issuing a provisional local government funding settlement in December, which presents many councils with significant challenges. That is followed by an intense period of lobbying by councils, their representative bodies and MPs. The Government then find some more money to solve the short-term challenge. We then agree the settlement, as we will do tonight. Life goes on, and we repeat the whole exercise again the next year. I think there is consensus across the Chamber that we must break out of that cycle.

A county such as Suffolk faces significant challenges, including an ageing population, which means that there is an ever-increasing group of vulnerable people who require care and support. It is right that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor increased the national living wage in his autumn statement but it was wrong that, in the first instance, councils such as Suffolk were asked to fund most of the increase themselves from their existing resources. We need to pay properly and support the thousands of workers going out in all weather conditions to care for and assist vulnerable people in their own homes.

Like Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, Suffolk covers a large geographical area. In such circumstances it is expensive to deliver services, including, as we have heard, home to school transport and SEND provision. Faced with those challenges and an inadequate provisional settlement, Suffolk County Council cut its funding for arts and heritage. The latter in particular leaves the Waveney and Lowestoft area inadequately served and resourced with regard to archives and records. I am sure that I will return to that issue in due course.

My right hon. Friend the Levelling Up Secretary is right to set up an expert panel to advise on financial stability, and to ask local authorities to produce productivity plans, but more is required. As I have said, we need to move away from the current short-term approach to local government funding. To do that, I suggest the following changes should be considered. First, as many Members have said, there should be multi-year financial settlements rather than the annual settlements that we have had for the past six years. Secondly, we must recognise the added cost of delivering services over large rural and coastal areas such as Suffolk. Thirdly, working in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities must provide a sustainable long-term plan for social care, with care workers being fairly paid and provided with proper career paths.

There should also be a review of statutory responsibilities in such areas as home to school transport, to ensure that they are properly funded. Finally, as we have heard, the Government should carry out the relative needs and resources review—the so-called fair funding review. The review should look at not only the opaque and complicated formulas used, but the data used for the assessment of relative needs, which, as we have heard, dates way back—much of it to the last century.

In his summing up, I hope that the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), who has taken extremely well to his new role, will be able to herald in the long-term strategic approach that local government so desperately needs.