Rosie Cooper
Main Page: Rosie Cooper (Labour - West Lancashire) Local Government Funding
Rosie Cooper Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) on securing this debate on the far-reaching, deep and savage cuts to local government funding.
My involvement with local government goes back many years. I was elected to Liverpool City Council in 1973 and remained there until 2000. I had a front-row seat during the Thatcher years, witnessing the devastating effects of a Government determined to bring local government to its knees. Today, sadly, I see that happening all over again, but I fear it will be even worse this time. The Government are pushing local authorities to the financial brink, to the limits of their organisational capacity, and pushing even statutory services to the point of collapse. The Government explain the need for cuts and assure us that front-line services should not be affected. We have heard it on the NHS and policing time and again, but the reality is very different.
Lancashire County Council had projected to make £65 million in budget reductions this year, with a £263 million funding gap by 2020. The Government formula, imposed without consultation or any transitional arrangements, means that the council is required to make £76 million in savings, and by 2020 will face a £303 million gap. Those are staggering sums of money, but it is often difficult to know what it really means. Besides cuts in social services, in West Lancashire there is a long list. Vital bus services, such as the 3A and 5, are facing the axe. Schoolchildren and people wanting to go to the doctor’s, the hospital or social events are being abandoned. Eroding the principle and availability of public transport has a direct financial and sometimes personal cost. There is an irony in offering people a bus pass when there are no buses to use them on. It is like giving people a free TV licence and confiscating the TV. Public transport is an absolute lifeline.
The Government talk about choice in education, but there is no choice if people cannot get a bus there. In West Lancashire, the Environment Agency’s budget has been cut, and now there is talk of turning off pumps, which will mean that the area is flooded even more. We have been subject to the most savage and awful flooding in recent weeks.
I do not think it is dramatic to say we are facing a crisis in local government. The Government need to make the right decisions—fair decisions—and they cannot stand by, tie the hands and feet of local government, kick them into the river and stand back and say, “Look, they can’t swim.” Now it is clear that the Conservatives know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.