Local Government Finance

Debate between Richard Burden and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

From a seaside town, we move to an inland city that also has great needs that are not being met by the settlement and the policies of the Government.

I wish to say a few words about a specific issue affected by the settlement imposed on local authorities like mine, and then to make a few points of more general significance, particularly as regards Birmingham. I was in Birmingham this morning, and for once there was some good news. For many months, school crossing patrols—lollipop men and women—have been under threat, as a result of the huge cuts being passed down to our city. It has caused massive concern among parents, schools and everybody who worries about children’s safety, and I pay tribute to the unions in the city for spearheading the campaign and to our local paper, the Birmingham Mail, for highlighting the issue.

The good news is that the campaign has borne fruit. We are not out of the woods—there will still be fewer school crossing patrols, and there needs to be a discussion between schools and the council about what their respective responsibilities should be—but today the Labour city council confirmed that it would maintain school crossing patrols on the busiest roads where there were no other controlled crossing points and where the only other crossing point was a zebra crossing. The council has listened. In a meeting I had with it yesterday, it said it would redouble its efforts to integrate school crossing patrols in an effective overall strategy for providing safe school routes, whether that be 20 mph zones or by encouraging safe walking and cycling to schools. That is the good news, and I pay tribute to all those I have mentioned, as well as my fellow Labour MPs from the area, for spearheading that campaign.

The less good news was the response from the Secretary of State. I too am sorry that he is not in his place. Indeed, I am sorry that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), has been left entirely on his own by his coalition partners—oh, he has now been joined. Anyway, perhaps he will pass on a few sentiments to the Secretary of State, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) mentioned, made a sweeping visit to the midlands last week. When confronted with the issue of school crossing patrols in Birmingham, he said:

“We had to send someone in to look at Birmingham because it’s been so badly run for quite a long time.”

In fact, his party ran it for quite a long time! He continued:

“We’ve made a number of recommendations and it really does need to start looking at the more important things that will bring in quite a lot of money, than start messing around with people who take kiddies across the street and keep them safe.”

How dare he? This is from the Minister who railed against the use of CCTV outside schools to deter drivers from parking where they should not—something that parents know is a problem in front of many schools. To grab a headline, he wanted to get rid of one of the tools that could keep those children safe, and he tried to force it through in his deregulation Bill, but was forced into a U-turn when his colleagues said it was important to exempt schools from his ban on CCTV. How dare he imply that cuts to school crossing patrols are simply a Birmingham problem, when we know, from research we have done, that two thirds—66%—of local authorities have cut the number of school crossing patrols since 2010? That means 1,000 fewer lollipop men and women than when the Prime Minister took office.

In 2013, the shadow Transport team obtained through freedom of information requests the following figures on road safety budgets and staffing levels in 133 local authorities. It found 92% reported having to cut their budgets from 2010-11 to 2013-14. Of those, there was an average budget reduction of over a third—42%—while two thirds of all local authorities responded by cutting staff working on road safety in the same period, and nearly half of all respondents—49%—had cut budgets for walking and cycling. A recent survey by Brake revealed that two thirds of the parents of primary school children think roads are unsafe for walking and cycling, while Sustrans has reported that about the same number of parents say their child has experienced a “near miss” on the school run. The latest figures show that in 2014 the number of children killed or seriously injured rose for the first time in 20 years. Progress on reducing casualty rates is stalling under this Government, with three consecutive increases in road deaths last year.

So how dare the Secretary of State make those comments about school crossing patrols in my city? How dare he do so when our city has lost a third of its budget since 2010—the equivalent of £161 per household compared to a national average of £47, which is far more than places such as Surrey that have seen their spending power increase? A number of hon. Members have raised that point.

For the 2015-16 financial year, we in Birmingham are facing the largest cut in history, of £100 million, at the same time as we need to spend more money on child protection and social care. More than £250 million-worth of savings are required by 2017-18, and the total between 2010 and 2018 will have been £821 million, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) pointed out a little while ago.

We have been urged to spend more—and rightly so—on child protection and safeguarding, but we face a Government who will the end while cutting the means to achieve precisely that. Birmingham is facing yet another above-average cash cut in spending power to 2015-16—as I say, about £161 per dwelling, which is 6%. That is more than three times the national average cut of £47 per dwelling.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

Yes, I will, but this will have to be the only time.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful. Because the hon. Gentleman’s speech is so gloomy, I thought he might like to hear something more positive, which is that the unemployment rate in his constituency has seen a bigger cut still. It has halved since 2010. Is it not true that every Labour Government leave more people on the dole than when they came in, and that it is the Conservatives who put the country back together, put people back to work and put money in their pockets?

[Richard Burden]

I said I would give way only once to the hon. Gentleman, but I will give way again. He has looked at the figures for my constituency, so let me ask him what has happened to long-term unemployment?

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware—[Interruption.] I will tell him. Between 2009 and 2010, the number of people who were long-term unemployed in his constituency went up from 460 to 1,090—more than doubling in the final year that Labour was in power. That was a perfect encapsulation of Labour’s impact on ordinary working people: they get disadvantaged.

[Richard Burden]

The hon. Gentleman has perhaps missed the fact that there was a worldwide recession at that time, as a number of my hon. Friends have had to remind Conservative Members. Another theme in the hon. Gentleman’s statistics is that when Labour was power before the worldwide recession, there were 25 young people in my constituency out of work for more than a year. There are now five times that number. If people are out of the labour market, they find it very difficult to get back in. Frankly, this Government’s policies are doing nothing to address that problem.

Judging by what we have just heard and what we heard from the Minister who opened the debate—who knows whether the Minister now on the Front Bench will say the same when he winds up the debate?—it is clear that they still do not get it. They simply do not get it. Whether in a city, or in a town on the coast or inland, or in a rural or urban area, if needs are greater but areas face percentage cuts similar to those of more affluent areas—or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) who I am pleased to see just back in his place said, if the percentage cut is even greater—the former will be hit harder. Services suffer more, and real people suffer more. That is the reality that Birmingham faces.

We have heard a few times from Government Members that urban areas such as Birmingham were favoured or featherbedded in the past. Government Members are fond of claiming that anything that is not right today is somehow the fault of the Government who were in power before 2010. Birmingham was a Conservative council from 2004 until 2012, when the Conservatives lost power. I do not remember a single Conservative councillor, a single Liberal Democrat councillor or, indeed, a single Conservative Member of Parliament in Birmingham claiming during that time that their city—our city—received too much from the Labour Government. I do not remember any of them saying that we could easily afford to lose another third of our budget, and up to two thirds in the future. I do not remember any of them saying any of that while they themselves were trebling Birmingham’s debt, so let us have no more buck-passing from Ministers now.

We need a funding formula that is fairer—a funding formula that is based on the principle that those in the greatest need receive the most support. My right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has outlined some of the ways in which that could start to happen, but at present we do not have a fair deal. Unfairness is at the heart of the Government’s local government policies, and I am convinced that that will not change in the next few months. It will require a Labour Government after 7 May to ensure that change happens.