Local Government Finance

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

I do agree. I wonder how much attention the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish pays to his horoscope, because that prediction that has as much accuracy as the figures he has gone through today. Of course, the LGA itself said—in what was an extraordinary intervention from its chairman—that the figures were based on an old formula. It acknowledged that a new formula was being worked on and that therefore no further predictions could be made from those figures.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; the Opposition spokesman refused seven times.

Gloucester City Council provisionally gets 1.4%, compared with 6.3% for the country as a whole and 3.4% for all second-tier councils. While my right hon. Friend is doing the consultation, will he look closely at whether second-tier councils, particularly city councils with small amounts of space with which to benefit from the new homes bonus, could be given special consideration? Also, could he raise the council tax referendum limit from 2% to 3%? That would help us to raise funds locally.

[Jake Berry]

I will get on shortly to the issue of council tax referendum limits. We continue to engage with colleagues across our local government family, on both sides of the political divide. If we have not engaged directly with Gloucester yet, I will ensure that we do so as part of our discussions.

Building on the mandate given in December to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I want to set out how we will unite and level up our nation. We will devolve more power, money and influence back to communities across England. We will restore opportunity to our towns through our £3.6 billion towns fund, and we will work with every single local authority to make sure that they are the engines for economic growth in their community. This will be supported by the most generous financial settlement for a decade, while always ensuring that they have the resources to support the most vulnerable in society.

This Government are proudly the father and mother of English devolution to our regions. In the past three years, we have seen the creation of powerful metro Mayors in Liverpool, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle North of Tyne, the West of England, the West Midlands and Tees Valley. Together, those mayoral combined authorities have access to £6.35 billion of investment funding, more than £1 billion of the transforming cities fund, and £1.5 billion of the adult education budget.

We understand, however, that it is not possible to measure how well devolution is working simply by looking at how much money is being received. The real power of devolution comes through putting power back in the hands of local people, and that is why devolution works.