Local Government Finance

Debate between Steve Rotheram and Andrew Bridgen

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

When I spoke on local government funding in December, Government Members accused me of pre-empting the final settlement and of scaremongering. They superciliously lauded my passion but suggested that I await the Government’s definitive announcements before jumping to conclusions regarding how Liverpool would fare. Well, I have done that.

The formula has been decided, the figures have been published, the maths has been done, and I repeat vociferously now what I said back then. Not only will the scale, pace and nature of these draconian measures imposed in the name of fiscal restraint have a devastating impact on Liverpool, but in the wider scheme of things, the cuts will prove an utterly false economy.

I stated in December that Liverpool would be disproportionately hit, and I repeat that claim today. I should declare at this point that I am still a sitting Liverpool city councillor, at least until May. At Prime Minister’s questions earlier, a Tory Member had the temerity to say “Shame on Labour councillors” when the Prime Minister tried to blame Liverpool for his big society failures in the city. It did not take long for the malevolent Tories to revert to type and put the boot in to Liverpool, did it?

That comment shows the Conservatives’ lack of understanding, because it is not just Labour in Liverpool that is saying that the Tory cuts will savage our services. The whole council—Labour, Green and Liberal and even the Liberal Democrats, who used to run the council—is up in arms. The books are there for all to see, so I am happy to invite the Secretary of State to come and have a look at them to see the dilemma that he alone has created. We in Liverpool now know that we will have to save a budget-busting £92 million in the financial year ahead, and the council has very little, if any, room for manoeuvre. For all its valiant efforts to balance the books, both jobs and front-line services are to go. As we have heard, some 1,500 redundancies are predicted over the next two years.

Before hon. Members shout me down, I fully acknowledge that Liverpool is not alone. Local authorities up and down the country are facing crippling cuts, but I shall explain what is particularly galling about the situation in which Liverpool city council finds itself. In December, the Minister for Housing and Local Government was reported as pontificating:

“If councils share back office services, join forces to procure, cut out the crazy non-jobs and root out the wild over-spends then they can protect frontline services.”

The implication was clear: profligate and irresponsible local authorities needed to get their act together. The Minister was preaching to the converted in Liverpool. Having long been tightening its purse strings, it has achieved a total of £70.4 million of savings in the last three years, about £40 million of which was saved in the current financial year under a Labour-controlled council.

How Liverpool managed that might be of interest to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). Liverpool did it by making proven efficiency savings in management, administration and back-office services, and through economies of scale achieved by sharing, outsourcing and collaboration. Simultaneously, the authority has managed to reduce and stabilise council tax. In fact, our approach was commended in this very House by the Secretary of State.

Liverpool has been there and done all that, and is both able and willing to continue in the same vein, but it cannot perform miracles. That is why the Prime Minister was wrong today, and why Liverpool city council was absolutely right last week to refuse any longer to prop up the Government’s sham, big society agenda, which was always a cover for a cynical exploitation of community and voluntary tradition to obtain public services on the cheap.

What is most objectionable is the way in which Ministers have banged on about protecting the most vulnerable communities, believing, it seems, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) says, that if they say something often enough, people will eventually believe it to be true. Well, not in Liverpool they won’t.

Our city is a city transformed. We are a great city do a business in, and once again I make the offer to the Tories to hold their party conference in Liverpool so that they can see what a great city it is first hand, just as the Lib Dems did last year and the Labour party will do this year.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has told the House of his scepticism in respect of the future of the big society. However, does he believe that the previous Government’s policy of big government has served either the people of Liverpool or this country very well, considering the devastating economic landscape and legacy that they left for the coalition Government?

[Steve Rotheram]

Dear me. It’s the same old mantra, isn’t it? We have had the debate on the deficit and the argument about whose responsibility it was. The hon. Gentleman will say one thing—I think Government Members get brownie points if they stand up and mention £120 million, and the Whips must be going, “That’s a good girl, that’s a good lad. They’ll go far in the Government”—but I am not going to rehearse the same argument today. That is why I confined my argument and contribution specifically to what is happening in my city. The Government cannot keep cutting without social consequences. My contention is that the formula that is being used is unfair to Liverpool, and the cumulative effect will be devastating.

I have explained the transformation of our city, and I hate to acknowledge this, but it is common knowledge: Liverpool is the most deprived local authority in England. I wish it was not. Seventy per cent. of its areas are classed as falling within the most deprived 10% nationally in terms of health and disability, and 57% of the population has been assessed as “employment deprived”.

What is more, the city relies disproportionately heavily on the now-threatened public sector. If that does not make Liverpool extremely vulnerable in these difficult times, I do not know what does, yet the Government persist in hiding behind averages. The Government told us earlier that the average spending power reduction is around 4.4% nationally. Okay. I will state now—without, by the way, the authority of my local council—that we will accept the national average cut. We will take that now. If we are all in this together, we will take our fair share of the pain, but Liverpool is faced with a maximum spending cut of almost 9%, even after receipt of the transition grant moneys.

It is absurd that while the most deprived community in the country faces the maximum level of spending reduction, the least deprived, Wokingham, faces a cut of just 0.63%. The Government can bandy around per capita figures until they are blue in the face, but the bottom line is that the areas facing the biggest spending squeezes—Liverpool, Manchester and Knowsley—are the poorest. So much for protecting the vulnerable. And so much for facts—not only did the Secretary of State have the audacity to claim on television recently that spending power in Liverpool would not be affected any more adversely than anywhere else, but he said that funding for supported people would be “entirely protected”. That simply is not the case. Liverpool city council has advised that its Supporting People funding has been slashed by 30%. But why let facts get in the way of an unsound policy and a soundbite?

Despite all this, Liverpool city council has sought to work with Ministers in a bid to comply with Government diktat. In a spirit of collaboration and compromise—allegedly so de rigueur with the Tory-led Government—the council has requested flexibility on two specific fronts. First, we are asking the Government to grant us capitalisation permission to help to meet the estimated redundancy costs of £45 million. The council does not hold out much hope, however. As we heard earlier, capitalisation permissions have been capped at £200 million for the whole of England, and a recent letter circulated to local authority leaders held out little promise of a relaxation in that limit. That leaves Liverpool city council in the invidious position of being unable to afford to keep employees on or to let them go. Believe me, it is with a heavy heart that we are making these proposed redundancies—it is not a political game.

Secondly, the council asked Ministers to rethink and recalibrate the front-loaded spending cuts, allowing it to spread them less abruptly and less painfully over the four-year spending review period. The Government are not prepared to budge on this, apparently. Instead, they will magnanimously reduce the maximum spending power cut from 8.9% to 8.8%. Thanks for the crumbs. This is a parlous state of affairs. Those who challenge the severity of local government cuts are the ones who are deficit deceivers. The so-called localism agenda is looking less and less like an experiment in local autonomy and more and more like a monumental exercise in fiscal buck passing—a wily move, but transparent.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that, for all the slick rhetoric, this is not a reconstructed Tory party, but the same old nasty Tories with a Lib Dem human shield. This Government do not give two hoots about poverty, disadvantage or inequality.