Local Government Finance

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I first congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government on this settlement; it is a welcome change. I also thank the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), for his work in both opposition and government to get us to this better place.

I am now the deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and we recently produced a report on local government funding. I want to read out our cross-party conclusions:

“Local government finance is in a perilous state…Funding has not kept pace with population growth, demand for services, complexity of need, or the rising costs of delivering services. As demand for targeted services such as social care, special educational needs, and temporary accommodation has grown, there has been a significant reduction in spending on commonly used discretionary services, such as street cleaning and lighting, parks and gardens, and leisure services.”

That is a truth that councils up and down the country have experienced and dealt with for many years.

I congratulate councillors of all parties, in all councils across the country, for how they have performed during the years of austerity—they have continued to work, and to deliver efficiencies that some central Government Departments, as the PAC can testify, would do well to emulate.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State and his ministerial team for listening to my representations and those of my council. My experience of Tory Secretaries of State is that having them listen, let alone act, is about as rare as rocking-horse dung. The Opposition, who did not properly fund local government for 14 years, are now complaining and whinging about the position we are in. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is their responsibility, not the responsibility of this Government?

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely. I think that goes for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as my hon. Friend will understand.

This Government clearly face a serious situation, and we must say that they have got some things very right indeed. First, we have the multi-year settlement, which has been called for, cross-party, for many years—it was certainly something that we called for when I was on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and the Committee is again calling for it now. It is good that we have one; it gives councils a degree of certainty, so that they can look to the future and plan ahead.

Fair funding has always been a subjective term; one side will say that something is fair funding, and the other will say that it is not. I just point out to the Opposition that Greg Clark, when he was Housing Secretary 10 years ago, promised a fair funding review on behalf of the then Conservative Government. However, we are still waiting for that review in 2024. The Opposition had their chance, but they did not take it. We now have a review to deal with the simple matter of some figures and data in the funding settlement being at least 20 years old.