Funding for Local Authorities

Debate between Robin Walker and Stephen Phillips

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), not only because he made a powerful speech, but because he is the co-chairman of the rural fair share campaign. I am sorry that he is still co-chairman: I had hoped that by now he would have lost his job. I say that not because he does not do a great job, but because I too remember the magic of last summer—the sun shining in the sky, the London Olympics, and the promises from the Government and their recognition that communities such as the one I represent have had a raw deal for far too long. Public services in Lincolnshire and many other shire counties cost at least as much, if not more, to run than they do in urban areas, but urban areas receive this fantastic extra grant from the Government of 50% more per head, while those on the lowest incomes can be found in the rural communities we represent.

Like every other MP with a rural constituency who has spoken, I tell the Minister that we have to do something about this. It does not matter who has been in government, this injustice has gone on for far too long. Our constituents do not deserve the thin services that the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) mentioned, any more than constituents in urban areas deserve them. We deserve precisely the same public services and I therefore support in full the campaign that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are running and to which I have signed up. It is time that this injustice was removed.

I have nothing new to say to the Minister other than what has already been said. Every hon. Member has recognised that we are in difficult financial times—times of austerity—and has taken solace from the fact that the vast sums of money that were poured into local government evidently did not deliver brilliant public services because the removal of those sums, as we now know from the BBC/ICM poll today, has not made people dissatisfied with the local public services they receive. In those circumstances, in which local councils—especially in rural areas—have made the sacrifices, efficiencies and economies that they were asked to make, is it really too much to ask the Government to give them the settlements that they deserve year on year so that they can deliver the public services that constituents who live in rural communities deserve?

I venture to suggest to the Minister, sagacious as he is—

[Mr Robin Walker]

Good-looking!