Somerset Council: Funding and Governance

Debate between Simon Hoare and Ian Liddell-Grainger

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I always find—my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh), the Minister and you, Mr Pritchard, all know this—that the best speeches in this place are the ones that you write yourself, and not the ones you deliver in parrot fashion after they have been written by someone else.

As my hon. Friend said, in the last few months we have worked together to try to solve this problem. Let us look back at the history of the situation. I will gently say that it was going on under the coalition Government. We made representations then and I do not remember being completely supported by David Laws, David Heath, Tessa Munt or—I have forgotten now, but I think that is about it. That is a problem.

It is easy to cast aspersions, but let us look at the reality. I am very grateful to the Minister; I must give credit where credit is due. He has worked very hard to make sure that he gives the time that is needed to all these councils to get this situation sorted. The point was made that £5 million is very little. Yes, of course it is, but it is a start.

I do not think it is any secret that tomorrow the Minister is meeting the leader of Somerset Council, Bill Revans, and his team to talk about the next phase. My conversations with the Minister—I do not know how many there have been, but there have been an awful lot—have always been constructive and helpful. We are in a crisis—we must be absolutely frank about that.

I absolutely abhor having in commissioners. Having suffered that, as I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil, who was very noble about it, I know it is an absolute disaster. If they come in to Somerset, I can tell hon. Members exactly what will happen. They will shut the recycling centres, stop the buses and pull back on the funding for roads, for the most vulnerable and for many others, and the money we give to colleges such as Yeovil, Bridgwater & Taunton, and Strode just will not happen. No matter what we do—parliamentarians, councillors or anyone else; parishes, towns or whatever—it will make no difference at all.

The problem we have is that councils such as Taunton, I think Yeovil, Minehead and others are raising council taxes way out of proportion with what they need to do. I am worried that they will raise them so high to take on services that the county has been running up to now, and they will not be able to cope. In all my 23 years in this place, I have seen when councils have taken on assets, and after a while they just cannot cope. That is partly down to the people they have, partly down to the rises in costs that we all have, and partly down to the fact that these things are damned complicated, and that goes not just go for the loos, but for much more.

We really must talk with the Minister about how we make sure that when assets are given to other councils—mainly town councils, because it is more difficult to do for parishes—they are able to deal with those assets in the future. Taunton is to have a 200% increase in council tax, and that is huge, but it wants to take on a lot of things, and Taunton covers the whole of Taunton—not a bit of it, but the whole thing. I am not going to cast aspersions about whether this is right or wrong; I am just making the point that the assets that go over to such councils still have to be managed.

The other issue I have is about the superb colleges we have, and my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil and I have talked about Yeovil College, and Bridgwater & Taunton College. We have come an enormous way in Bridgwater, and these colleges are superb. When I first came in all those years ago—and let us be honest—they were not as good as they are now. There has been a huge amount of work by the teams in both those colleges, and we have created proper colleges for Somerset. The debate goes on, and the conversations between Bridgwater & Taunton, Strode and Yeovil are brilliant. They are really looking at how we move on in the future.

Another point, and the Minister must be aware of this, is that not only are we building the biggest infrastructure project in Europe, which is Hinkley Point, but we are about to start building the Gravity site. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil has been very helpful, with his wonderful workforce at Westland and so on. This is a 423 acre, 11 million square foot battery factory for Jaguar Land Rover under the Tata Group. It is a phenomenal investment in the west country, with 9,500 jobs, and it is crucial to the future of our beautiful county.

In the time I have left as an MP—God willing, and the electorate willing, I will still be an MP, but not for Bridgwater—I will be absolutely dedicated to getting this to the stage where we have the infrastructure, but we need a functioning council. We have to have that. It is going to be difficult for the council, because it has to put in some money, and we will have massive infrastructure costs. I do not want to have to come back to the Government in however long it is—in the next six months —and say, “Look, we haven’t got the money to put in the roads, the railway and the college campuses for Bridgwater & Taunton and for Yeovil.” We must get this sorted.

In the short time I have left, I say to the Minister that this is going to be a partnership. As I have said, I have worked with Bill Revans for a very long time, and I have enormous respect for him. He is trooping on, and not perhaps in the best circumstances, as we all know. He is still there fighting his corner, as he has long done—he stood against Tom King in 1992. He is a long-term, committed politician for whom I have a great deal of respect; as hon. Members know, that is not always the case.

We have to work together to get the funding we need to stabilise the situation, and this cannot wait until after the election. I have no idea about the policy of the Labour party—I genuinely do not know—but I know the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) will be sympathetic because I was in opposition when I came in and I will probably be in opposition when I go out. However, when I had issues when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, they were listened to, and I can only say that I am very grateful for everything, but we need to do this now, Prime Minister—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I am not the Prime Minister.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

Yes, I know. I do apologise. Minister, we need to sort this now, and that conversation is crucial. We need to keep this going as much as we can. We need to take it forward in the constructive way in which it has been dealt with so far. I am one of the worst offenders in this place for taking it to the lowest common denominator and attacking everybody, but this is a time when we cannot do that. There are too many vulnerable people whose futures and wellbeing are at stake, so I say to the Minister: please, just keep talking to us.

Minister, you have been brilliant. I cannot fault you or the Secretary of State. I cannot fault the way in which you have dealt with Bill and his team, Duncan Sharkey and everybody in Somerset. At every meeting I have had, we have talked about how we have work to do, and we will do it. We have discussed what needs to be done. I am conveying that to Bill, the Minister will convey that tomorrow, and we will work on it. In the next few months we have to come up with a formula that safeguards those vulnerable people. My constituency covers Exmoor. The problems we face with things like social mobility and access in one of the most rural parts of England will be devastating if we cannot come to an agreement.

Minister, we are here to do the best for our constituents; we always have been. That is why you do it, why I do it, why my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil does it, and why everyone else does it. If you can come halfway, we can come the other half. That will be most important. You could use Somerset as a guinea pig in order to come up with a formula that will get this working, so that we can work with you and land what we need to do. I am meeting the Chancellor tomorrow. I am going to put the plea to him and ask him to be generous—