Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Williams and Adrian Bailey

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What assessment he has made of the effect of the local government finance settlement on the most vulnerable communities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

The provisional local government finance settlement for 2014-15 includes protections for the most grant-dependent authorities. Councils facing the highest demand for services continue to receive substantially more funding. No council will see a reduction of more than 6.9% in overall spending power next year.

[Mr Bailey]

The elderly, infirm and immobile are often unseen, unheard and most dependent on local authority social care. My own local authority of Sandwell has been forced to cut £75 million from its budget by 2015 and now faces a further £25 million cut by 2017. The Government’s better care fund is totally inadequate to compensate. What is the Minister going to do about it?

[Stephen Williams]

The spending power in Sandwell is still significantly above that in many other local authorities. The spending power per head in Sandwell, where the hon. Gentleman’s West Bromwich West constituency lies, is £2,481, £900 more than in many districts in the south of England.

Banking (Responsibility and Reform)

Debate between Stephen Williams and Adrian Bailey

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for remembering accurately that my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable) warned repeatedly, in the run-up to the crash, that we were heading for a crash. Does the hon. Gentleman recall—I am sure that he did not do this—that many Labour Members used to jeer my right hon. Friend, saying that he was indeed a doom-monger and that he was wrong?

[Mr Bailey]

I acknowledge that, shall we say, continued repetition on that theme earned the right hon. Gentleman a certain notoriety among Government Back Benchers of the time. Most people would look back and say, “Yes, there was some truth in what he said,” but they would also say, “Let’s see if he lives up to what he said.” That is what my Committee and I will seek to find out.

The situation is profoundly worrying and contravenes the sense of fairness in this country. To most people in the street, there is something perverse about a system that punishes people on low and medium incomes for something for which they were not responsible, yet those who were responsible are rewarded. Even worse, that sense of injustice is compounded when the taxes of people on low and medium incomes finance that reward. It not only offends a deep sense of fairness but, it could be argued, it is socially and economically dysfunctional. That is the context of the debate.