Tom Blenkinsop
Main Page: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Secretary of State recently said that councils should use the cuts as an
“opportunity to completely rethink everything they are doing, creating a modern, flexible and innovative council.”
I was a councillor for 15 years in North Tyneside, and that is nothing new to me. The big society and localism are just about reinventing the wheel, because many of us who were local councillors in the past know how hard councillors work and how much they have done to use their budgets wisely.
During my 15 years as a councillor I saw many changes. At first, I was a councillor under the former Tory Government, and when Labour took power in 1997, it was good to see changes such as how we were able to bring houses up to the decent homes standard over 10 years, and to see our neglected schools change, becoming new or refurbished buildings and providing fantastic places in which to educate our children. There was Sure Start, and in my borough there were new swimming pools. We were also able to put in place the “Fuel for kids” scheme, giving children a free breakfast at the start of the school day. For many children, that made a difference to their learning ability, and there is empirical evidence to prove that.
We were able to do many of those things when we moved to a mayoral system and had a progressive Labour mayor, who followed two years of a Tory mayor. Under the Tories many services were cut, and in fact the voluntary sector service in which I worked was closed. When we got our progressive Labour mayor, John Harrison, all the things that I have referred to flourished.
Just over a year ago, the previous Tory mayor was re-elected, and, as he has mentioned in the House, she happens to be a favourite of the Secretary of State. That Tory mayor, when leader of the council opposition, wrote to the then Housing Minister and asked him to withdraw £100 million of credits that were to be given to the Labour council to build older people’s homes for the future—she simply did not want that done. Since taking office, she has drastically reduced that project, which means we will see not new, fantastic, refurbished properties, but old houses simply remodelled not to the standard people wanted. She has also prevented 800 new council houses from being built with money that would have come from the former Labour Government, because she did not want it to happen in her end of the borough.
It is interesting to see how, until tonight, the mayor has fought against so much that Labour put in place and praised the new Government. The mayor I am talking about is Mayor Arkley, and tonight, in North Tyneside’s section of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, she is pleading with her Government to have a change of heart. She has urged Treasury and other Ministers
“to think again about the speed of the cuts”.
Tom Blenkinsop
It is not just in Tyneside and the north-east where Conservatives are vocally opposing the Government’s measures; it is also in Teesside, where the Conservative leader of Stockton council, Ken Lupton, has said that the Con-Dem Government’s position on the cuts is wrong. Also, Mayor Mallon from Middlesbrough —an independent, and not necessarily a loving friend of the Labour party—has said that the Conservative party and Liberal Democrats have declared war on the north.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I declare an interest, because I am still a councillor on South Derbyshire district council and am married to the new council leader. I was leader myself for three years, and was previously a councillor there for 15 years—it seems to be a popular choice. Prior to that, for four years, I was a councillor on Wandsworth council. My antecedents in local government are strong and long. I have an abiding love for it.
I am appalled at tonight’s debate. It is astonishing that yet again we have hour after hour of prime television in which all the Labour lot do is scaremonger—it is hour in, hour out. There is no substance to what they say, because of the appalling way Labour councils have run areas year after year. They have never considered value for money for their taxpayers.
Tom Blenkinsop
By the sound of it, the hon. Lady has a great record in local government in South Derbyshire, so she will be aware of the Gershon savings over the past five years, under which 3% to 5% of council tax spending was looked at in terms of savings across the board. In my area, that has led to significant savings over the past five years.
Heather Wheeler
Of course, I know about the Gershon savings. I also remember the squeals about it and the synthetic savings that were made. The opportunity was not taken to look root and branch at what local councils need to do and should do, at the way they should do it and at the value for money they provide for their residents. It is hugely important that people take an innovative look at the way in which local councils work, and that they take this opportunity. The whole country is in a financial crisis, and nobody should be in position where they do not have to take their percentage of it. That would be completely wrong.
The new coalition Government are going to look at the floors and ceilings, the caps, the huge amount of ridiculous comprehensive area assessment-type targets, and the millions of pounds that all our councils have had to spend on this sort of thing. This coalition Government are about freeing people up to organise themselves in such a way that they provide the vital services that their people want at the same time as having the guts to say, “We don’t want to do that any more. We’ll have a referendum on it. Do you agree with us?” In our council in South Derbyshire, 1% on the rates raises £50,000. Given the floors and ceilings that I have had to put up with for the past 13 years of the Labour Government, we have easily lost £2 million there. The same goes for the fire authority in Derbyshire, and the police authority as well.
Heather Wheeler
What an amazing situation. We are completely blind to the reality of what has been going on. The ratepayers of South Derbyshire also know about how much money comes in. They were used to council tax rises of 9%, 13% and 17%, which was absolutely outrageous for hard-working families. It was completely ridiculous. We were left to fend for ourselves, and it just was not good enough.
The new localism Bill, and the new arrangements for the rate support grant, will have a major effect on what we do. We will be able to do away with the horrendous top-down targets that our accountancy and finance staff used to spend hundreds of hours dealing with. All of that will be swept away, and thank goodness for that. I am really looking forward to the announcements just before Christmas. There is one more Christmas present that the Minister can give me, relating to Gypsies and Travellers, but we can talk about that another time. We have had to put up with scaremongering for the last however many hours, and the debate is to go on until 10 o’clock, apparently, so goodness knows what else the Opposition will come up with.
Tom Blenkinsop
Those were not my words that I mentioned earlier; they were the words of Ken Lupton, the Conservative leader of Stockton borough council. He has said that the proposals were wrong.
Heather Wheeler
If the hon. Gentleman would like to phone me later, I will sort him out.
It really takes the biscuit that we can sit here, having had 13 years of local government being raped by top-down targets, London telling us how we have to do stuff, ignoring local priorities and spending hour after hour on a meaningless load of nonsense including having different languages printed on council papers all the time—
Heather Wheeler
No, I think that I have given way enough. It is a delight to hear the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps another time.
I am really pleased that the Ministers have given robust answers from the Dispatch Box, and I look forward to hearing some quieter comments later on, along with some apologies from the Labour party for what we have had to put up with for the past 13 years.
Steve Rotheram
I would say that it is not just about one specific funding stream; it is about an overall package. Liverpool benefited greatly under the Labour Government —so much so that the hon. Gentleman’s friends on the Liberal Democrat Front Benches used to say that the Lib-Dem controlled Liverpool city council was a flagship council because it had got so much money from the Labour Government. Don’t try to give me lessons about what happened in Liverpool, mate!
In June, the Department for Communities and Local Government wrote about the immediate front-loaded and ongoing savings to be made by local authorities that
“the Government is satisfied that it has adopted a fair approach to making the necessary reductions.”
In the comprehensive spending review, the coalition promised to
“limit as far as possible the impact of reductions…on the most vulnerable in society, and on those regions…dependent on the public sector”.
The Government never tire of reminding us that we are all in this together, in the new age of austerity, and insist that their belt-tightening is fair and progressive. So much for the rhetoric. The reality is that the proposed one-size-fits-all local government finance settlement, with its removal of ring-fenced funding for poorer regions and its top-slicing of the formula grant, is set to hit the poorest councils the hardest—none more so, unfortunately, than Liverpool city council.
Whether the Secretary of State likes SIGOMA or not—he did question its findings—its research shows that of the 20 worst-hit local authorities financially, all but two are in the top 20% of most deprived areas in the country. Conversely, of the 20 councils that do best out of the comprehensive spending review, all but two are in the top 10% of wealthiest local authorities. The SIGOMA report concluded:
“The current finance settlement perpetuates inequality rather than allowing areas to operate on an equal footing.”
SIGOMA is not alone in its findings. Following its own analysis, the TUC has affirmed that the Government’s budgetary policy
“will risk the recovery, increase inequality and threaten social cohesion”.
Tom Blenkinsop
Some interesting facts came out today from the construction industry. The Construction Products Association said that it was going to slip back into recession and the Engineering Employers Federation said that it would not be able to pick up the slack from public sector cuts as the Government have said it would.
Steve Rotheram
I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. Having been a bricklayer and an apprentice, I know the construction sector all too well. I once described myself as the only bricklayer in Parliament; unfortunately, one of my colleagues, who is not present, also did an apprenticeship but he was not indentured, so I can still legitimately claim to be the only indentured bricklayer in the House of Commons.
In addition to the statistics I have quoted and the bodies I have mentioned, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies has noted that the areas most at risk are those with relatively few private sector jobs, high levels of unemployment, poor transport links and high vulnerability to national public sector job losses.
George Hollingbery
Indeed. My favourite was on the time taken to re-let a council house, whereby the better we did in re-letting a difficult-to-let council property the worse the statistic became, because of the longer average period for which we had not re-let the house. Every time we re-let a house that had been on the books for three years because it was in a poor condition, the worse our statistic became.
The work also involved a huge amount of management time. We had specialist employees dealing with just that issue and a specialist computer system just to monitor performance management, so I very much welcome rowing back the amount of information that local councils will have to report to central Government. I also became extraordinarily fed up with the number of strategies that we had to deal with, and I would very much welcome an assurance from the Minister that we will not have to do anything like as many of those, either.
I remember fondly the black and minority ethnic strategy for Winchester city council, an entirely necessary document.
Tom Blenkinsop
I hear the hon. Gentleman’s comments about reporting by local authorities, so does he have any worries about the £500 rule, whereby anything on which a local authority spends more than £500 will have to be documented?
George Hollingbery
The accounts departments already record most of that information, so I see no great difficulty in councils reporting it more widely. It is already on the books, on computers and there to be reported.
George Hollingbery
If I may, I will carry on.
Strategies were piling up and gathering dust on shelves, but the black and minority ethnic strategy at Winchester city council was, I agree, entirely necessary in small amounts. We, like anybody else, had to be held to account for what we did in that area, but, despite only 1.5% of our population having that background, we were forced to put £50,000 into employing consultants, who produced an enormous great report telling us that what we did already was okay. That is the sort of imposition by central Government to which I hope the localism and decentralisation Bill will put an end.
The wretched Standards Board for England has also accorded a vast amount of work to local government, especially to its legal employees. The board has been used as nothing more than an excuse for the petty battering of officials and parish councillors throughout the country.
We can do more imaginative work in-house, as was said a moment ago. Winchester city, East Hampshire district and Havant borough councils now have a choice-based letting arrangement. That comment has been noted by Opposition Members, but I am sure that such schemes exist in many parts of the country. The arrangement has saved our councils an enormous amount, and we have achieved a better result for our clients. East Hampshire district and Havant borough councils share a joint management tier, and the same individuals hold all the senior management roles in the two authorities: there is one team for two different councils.
Hampshire county council now sends less waste to landfill than any other council in the country, and—furthermore—it generates power for 50,000 homes by incinerating the remainder. Hampshire built itself a new headquarters entirely without cost to the public purse, managed to halve its carbon footprint and is selling other Winchester office blocks that are redundant to its needs. It recently invested with the NHS in 10 state-of-the-art nursing homes, so it is no longer fined millions of pounds for being held responsible for bed blocking—another innovation whereby the council invested to save money. On top of all that, it has made £48 million in efficiency savings—I emphasise, real efficiency savings that can be counted—over the past two years.
I leave my final words to Simon Eden, chief executive of Winchester city council, who says that
“our approach in all this has been to avoid salami-slicing, and instead…re-design services, taking into account changes…made to performance reporting and inspection, planning and in other areas. We have also used that process to look at the best way of focusing on delivery of key priorities for the district, cutting out that which might be seen as lower priority.”
I commend that approach to all local councils and hope very much that the House rejects the motion.
John Woodcock
The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I was actually paraphrasing the Secretary of State, who I believe said that local authorities would rue the day that they cut voluntary sector grants. I am sure that they will be delighted to hear how they should be balancing their books, given that the cuts are being front loaded so that a great proportion will fall in the next year.
According to the SIGOMA model, Barrow borough council, which covers the majority of my constituency, will receive a proportional cut in funding in the next financial year that will be exceeded by the cut in funding to only two other local authorities. Despite being in the top 30 most deprived council areas, according to the 2007 indices of multiple deprivation—and if the modelling is even close to accurate— Barrow borough council can expect to lose around 20% or up to 25% of its central Government funding next year. Relatively wealthier local authorities will have levels of cuts imposed that are far less than those that might be inflicted on Barrow borough council.
Although this is an Opposition day debate and many Labour Members have spoken with great passion about the huge damage that could be wrought on their constituencies, Government Members should be clear that this is not simply a partisan issue. Councillors from all parties are concerned about the potential cuts. I hope that the Minister is aware of a letter from the Conservative leader of Barrow borough council—perhaps he will confirm whether he has received it—who I think has written to him or to the Secretary of State to express his concern at the disproportionate cuts that will hit Barrow severely if what is proposed is followed through next week.
Tom Blenkinsop
Conservative leaders in Barrow and in Stockton and an independent mayor in Middlesbrough all say that these cuts are disproportionately hurting the north compared with the south. Does my hon. Friend think that the Secretary of State would consider those people to be the cigar-chomping communists that he talked about in a recent article in Total Politics magazine?
John Woodcock
I am not sure who the Secretary of State would consider to be a cigar-smoking communist. However, my hon. Friend makes a good point. It is not solely Labour councillors or Labour MPs who are speaking up about this matter and it is not just the north of England saying to the south of England that the present funding arrangements need to continue. We are making the case for the broad approach taken by the previous Labour Government. They recognised that areas where deprivation, poverty, unemployment or economic isolation are entrenched need extra resources to improve their situation and to grow the private sector in a way that all hon. Members want to see.
Geographical isolation has always posed economic challenges for the area of Cumbria that I represent. That is never more so than in periods of recession or limited growth. Savage cuts in funding to the local authority at such a time can only exacerbate those challenges. A vicious cycle will be created because not only will jobs directly provided by the borough council disappear—taking with them the multiplier effect that they have within the local economy—but the prospect for investment that will attract new jobs and businesses to the area will also go. Over the past decade, local authority funding has worked well in partnership with funding from the regional development agency to stimulate growth in the Furness area. The situation has not been perfect and we have wanted some things to be more efficient. However, there has undoubtedly been a balance positive over the past 10 years, and there are grave concerns about that being cut.
The people of Barrow are watching anxiously. The Government have imposed added uncertainty on the region through their delay of the vote on the Trident replacement project, which will sustain many thousands of jobs in Barrow’s shipyard for decades to come. Such a severe cut to funding will strike a real blow to economic confidence in the area.
However, this is not simply about Barrow or any one area. The matter is also about more than swingeing cuts to local government funding on its own; it is about whether we make the ideological leap into a funding model and into a public policy world where the funding of local areas is blind to the real needs within those areas. Such a simplistic approach may be superficially attractive to some coalition Members, but they must know that the reality will be neither fair nor progressive. Such cuts will mean that the poorest areas of the country carry the greatest burden of cuts, while wealthier areas escape relatively unscathed.
There is still time for the Government to rethink such an approach. It cuts adrift the most economically vulnerable areas of Britain—Barrow is counted as one such area. These cuts would not only jeopardise economic growth in Barrow, but could lead to a situation where any recovery is geographically lopsided and passes by many of the most deprived areas of the country. If the Government want to prevent a situation in which one sector or one region overheats economically, they must think again on this.
I hope that they will listen to the strong calls that have been made in this House and by councillors of all parties across the country to think again about the settlement that they are about to impose—to think about its level, the way in which it is being front-loaded, and the fact that it seems disproportionately to hit some of the areas which, at this difficult time for the country, need our support the most.
Andrew Percy
Absolutely. That is what we should be doing on an issue as important as this. We should all be working together on the whole way that local government is structured to try to change it for the better.
Andrew Percy
I will give way in a moment to my train colleague; we sometimes catch the same train.
Lots of references have been made to going back to the 1980s, or to the 1970s and “Life on Mars”, but some of the contributions have been like listening to “The Twilight Zone”. In my 10 years serving as a councillor under the previous Labour Government, I seem to recall the picture not being quite as rosy as that painted by Labour Members. We have heard many comments about Conservative and Liberal councillors criticising this Government’s settlement, although we do not know what it is yet. In my 10 years on the council, Labour, Liberal and Conservative councillors tended to criticise the settlement coming forward from any Government. That is the way of local government, largely because the formulae are so complex that there is always something that one is not happy with in any settlement.
When I was a local councillor, our authority went through a number of assessments, first, through the corporate governance inspection regime, and later through the comprehensive performance assessment regime. Labour Members cannot possibly be defending the millions of pounds that went into those schemes. I will explain what those schemes did to a city council such as Hull, which at the beginning of the Labour Administration had some of the most deprived communities in the country, and still had them 13 years later. If hon. Members want to carry out a value-for-money analysis of that, I will leave it to them to do so. The decisions that we were forced to take as a result of going through the CGI process cost our city council millions of pounds over those 10 years.
The council, which was Labour-run, was judged to be a failing council. There was some fair criticism, no doubt, but I do not know whether we needed the expensive regime process that came in to tell us that the authority was not necessarily being run as it should be. One of the most appalling recommendations that followed the CGI process was that we should appoint five corporate directors, but they were not to be employed on the same salary as our previous service area directors—no, we were to employ five corporate directors on salaries of £105,000.
Andrew Percy
No, that is not what I said. I am saying that local authorities should be subjected to an awful lot less inspection, and that we certainly should not be running around paying people fat salaries to go measuring how many park benches have arms. If Labour Members are seriously suggesting that they want to maintain that system, I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman so that he can explain to my constituents why my local council should continue to do that.
We all understand that there has to be some measurement of public services, whether they are in schools, the health service or local authorities, but we have to consider the proportion of time, money and resources spent on that. Under the previous Government, it got completely out of hand—some of it was well meant, but it had unintended consequences. It was alleged at that time that money was thrown at some councils, but it was not always thrown to provide better services; often it was spent on employing more people to sit behind desks and measure things that the public would, frankly, not consider to be a priority. That is what happened in my authority in relation to councillor training. We were suddenly told, following our CGI and CPA inspections, that we had to spend more taxpayers’ money on training councillors to do the job that political parties should ensure that they can do before they stand for office. That is why I refused to undertake councillor training—perhaps that says a lot about me.
One of the most ridiculous things that was produced by our council—no doubt by somebody on a good salary—was a guide to professionally appropriate language for councillors. At great expense to the taxpayer, we were issued with a guide to tell us that we must not call women flower, duck or love. If that is considered a good use of taxpayers’ money, I am afraid that I am in a different camp.
My other recollection from the past 10 years serving as a local councillor is that, although everything was fantastic and rosy, as we have heard from Labour Members, there were considerable hikes in council tax. The last time the Labour party ran Hull city council, it raised council tax by 10%. If that is evidence of good central Government funding to some of the poorest authorities, I do not know what planet I have been living on.
There is a sensible debate to be had about local government funding, but today’s attempts to create division are unhelpful. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness made the point that I was going to make.
Tom Blenkinsop
I thank my fellow travelling companion, on certain days, for giving way. Labour Members are not coming up with scare stories. My information comes from the independent mayor of Middlesbrough and the leader of the Tory council in Stockton. We have also heard the example of the leader of the Tory council in Barrow. Those people have legitimate fears about the Government proposals. Yet again, we hear Back Benchers saying that they are aware of the situation, while the Minister says that he does not know what figures or information we are talking about. That only perpetuates the fears. Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that?
Andrew Percy
One of the burdens of local leadership is to take the information that is provided and decide whether to perpetuate a possible myth that would cause hundreds or thousands of people to fear for their jobs or to disseminate the information differently.
Andrew Percy
I will not give way any more because I have detained the House already and do not wish to whine on for too long.
Division has been created today by the image that many Tory shire authorities around the country are about to get a windfall and are doing very nicely, whereas everybody else faces cuts. No doubt there will be the slaying of the firstborn and all the other extreme language that we have come to expect from Labour Members. Such arguments are not helpful. I represent Goole and East Riding, which have some of the most deprived communities in England. East Riding suffers from being part of a larger authority that has very wealthy areas, with the consequence that its funding settlement has been among the worst in the country for the past decade. The council has tried incredibly hard over the years.
Andrew Percy
The hon. Gentleman has obviously never been to a Hull city council meeting. Forgive me; after he was selected, he did come along. The first hour of most council meetings tends to be spent railing against whichever Government are in power and saying, “We haven’t got enough money. Can we have some more please?” I was no exception. I spent 10 years saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a bit more?” The serious point is that, whenever we put forward an alternative budget, it was fully worked out and contained huge savings on such things as building rationalisation.
Andrew Percy
No, not cuts—building rationalisation. There appears to be an irregular verb: they make savings, we make cuts. Any hon. Member who believes that we can continue to fund local government at the same level as in the past couple of years is living in la-la land. Nobody with a serious agenda would suggest that.
I make one final plea to the Minister on the funding of fire authorities. I have the highest regard for the fire authority in Humberside. In the past couple of years, it has faced challenging times because of changes to legislation made by the previous Government. Although there is an acceptance that savings must be made in fire authorities, I urge the Minister to keep a close eye on them and to ensure that reductions impact on the front line as little as possible.
The message should go out to all councils that there are tough decisions to be made, but that they can be made in a way that protects front-line services if our local leaders are brave enough. Local councillors have the choice of whether to scaremonger and make political points in the run-up to next year’s local elections, or, like my well run Conservative council of East Riding, to get their heads down, get on with it, make savings, but pledge to protect services.
Luciana Berger
Will the Minister therefore reject the analysis of many organisations, including SIGOMA and the Library?
Tom Blenkinsop
I do not think the Minister can question the integrity of my hon. Friend’s speeches, given the bicephalous nature of the debate. Back Benchers are saying that we all knew the cuts were going to happen, and that it was all on the cards, but at the same time the Minister is saying that there are no figures to draw upon.
Luciana Berger
I conclude by saying that I urge the Government to think again and not to introduce these savage, front-loaded, unfair cuts that will have a disproportionate impact on the areas and communities that need the most help.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger).
As other hon. Members have remarked, the debate comes at a crucial time for local government. Many local authorities have been preparing for these tough times because, as others have pointed out, if there had been a Labour Government there would probably have been cuts of about 20 to 25% in local government anyway. Responsible local government leaders and chief executive officers have been making plans over the past two years to deal with the overall fiscal situation that we face. In my previous capacity before coming to the House, as chief executive of Localis, the local government think-tank, I worked with a number of local authorities across the country that were already beginning to make strategic plans to cope with the situation. They knew that whatever the outcome of the general election, there would be significant service transformation.
I think we would all agree that the outcome of the comprehensive spending review is a tough settlement. As has been pointed out, we do not know the exact figures that the Minister will reveal next week, but we know they will be tough. However, the review also provides local government with a serious opportunity to consider how it can transform its services and improve its service delivery.
Some Opposition Members have touched on the hypothetical distribution of the spending cuts around the country and questioned their potential fairness. As the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) pointed out, the way in which the formula grant is calculated is very complicated, and we would all agree that for many years it has been thought to be completely lacking in transparency. I agree with him that there is an urgent need to reform how we calculate the distribution. In fact, in the last Parliament, the Communities and Local Government Committee recommended that the Government increase the transparency of the existing grant allocation process. I hope that will form part of the Government’s review of local government finance, because more transparency in the allocation process is critical.
I represent a constituency that straddles two metropolitan authorities in the west midlands—Dudley and Sandwell—one of which is Conservative-controlled and the other is Labour-controlled. My central focus is to ensure fairness in the grant allocation process. However, there is a discrepancy between these two metropolitan authorities. Dudley metropolitan council receives £60 million less funding than Sandwell metropolitan authority. They have similar levels of population and deprivation, yet there is a £60 million discrepancy. I am not making a value judgment about either authority; I am simply saying that we need to get to a point where this grant allocation does not throw up such significant discrepancies, not just between metropolitan boroughs and the shires—that has been debated tonight—but between metropolitan authorities within particular regions.
Funding shortfalls were not the only legacy that Labour left the country. As my hon. Friends have argued, the previous Labour Government kept local government on a tight leash through centralised control and regional bureaucracy. The changes implemented over the past 13 years have stifled innovation locally, and given local government and communities the feeling that they have limited control and ability to make decisions and effect change. Unaccountable quangos, such as the Standards Board for England, the regional development agencies, including Advantage West Midlands, and the regional spatial strategies, all contributed to this feeling, and I am pleased to say that they are all on the way out. Removing those unelected, unaccountable and unwanted regional structures and bodies is a first step in a vital development for a new era of local government.
Tom Blenkinsop
What will areas without a local enterprise partnership do to get money through the regional growth fund?
James Morris
They will need to make clear arguments to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government about why there should be a local enterprise partnership. However, local politicians should be arguing in favour of making applications to the regional growth fund because, even outside the LEPs, businesses, the voluntary sector and local authorities can make applications to the regional growth fund.
Local authorities will now be given back responsibility from central Government to start making real decisions about how they spend their money. As the Secretary of State said, the Government have freed up, or un-ring-fenced, grants worth £7 billion from 2011-12 onwards, which the Local Government Association described as
“an important move towards a simpler funding mechanism that will help councils do their job”.
However, that should be only the beginning. There is huge scope for the introduction of other levels of financial innovation in local government. For example, hon. Members have talked about the potential productive use of tax increment financing. This lack of ring-fencing, this devolution of financial autonomy to local government, should be only the beginning. We also need a systemic reform of the services delivered and a re-evaluation of how local people can influence the way services are run. This transformation, with the coming presentation of the localism and decentralisation Bill, is at the heart of Government policy. A bottom-up approach to service provision is vital.
Tom Blenkinsop
One small but significant point relates to fiscal policy and taxation. This Government have made large promises about imposing greater levies on bankers and other such people, but they have quickly run away from them. Labour Members would look to have a far more stringent regime to hold those types of people to account.
Gavin Barwell
I note that the coalition Government introduced a levy on banking, which the previous Government did not. If the Opposition want to propose tax increases additional to those announced by the Chancellor, we should hear what they are and discuss them. That is a perfectly reasonable basis on which to debate.
The second main theme in the motion is fairness, which is a perfectly reasonable test. I would like to raise two issues. First, Labour Members have quoted figures, expressing the concern that the authorities most dependent on Government funding will face the most significant reductions in grant. Conservative Members have been concerned about some of the phraseology used, particularly about the implication that these decisions have all been made. They have not. There is certainly an issue that the Government need to look at, and I believe that the Secretary of State said that he was aware of it. If we just salami-slice the Government grant going to each council, that will have a differential impact on the spending power of local authorities around the country. In the interests of fairness, the Government need to address that problem. Labour Members, however, should not have given the impression that these things are all done and dusted; they are not. We have not yet had the statement, and the Minister is not in a position to give the assurances he has been asked to provide until that statement is made.
I would also like to look at the issue of fairness as it relates to the record of the previous Labour Government. I want to make a non-partisan point. People allege that money was shunted from the south to the north, or that under the Tory Government Westminster and Wandsworth were favoured. The reality is that the system is completely broke. If we look at the figures for unitary councils, the London boroughs and the metropolitan districts under the last five years of the Labour Government, we see that about 30 authorities—my authority was one of them—had a real-terms cut in funding of more than 2%. It is not all outer London boroughs, however; it is a completely random mix of authorities, including places such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Liverpool.
At the other end of the scale, we see that Blackpool received an increase of nearly 11%, Telford and the Wrekin 13.3%, Torbay 15.7%, Blackburn 16.7% and Rutland an incredible 25.8%. It is very difficult, I think, to discern a pattern between those authorities. I would like the shadow Minister to explain in her summing-up speech why Croydon gets a 3% real cut, but Rutland gets a 25% increase. [Interruption.] This happened under the Government of the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), so, with respect, the explanation should come from those who were responsible for the changes.
In applying the reductions, it is important that the Government take account of the authorities that have already seen a real-terms reduction in their funding, as opposed to those that saw a period of largesse under the previous Government. I happily acknowledge that local government as a whole did see real-terms growth in funding under the previous Government, but that did not apply to all individual local authorities. It seems wholly unreasonable to impose the same reductions on authorities that have already had to make cuts in comparison with those that have seen significant increases in funding.
I reiterate the point made in the Local Government Association briefing, which many Members will have received. The same point about fees and charges was made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). For a number of local authority services, the charges that local authorities are allowed to levy by statute do not cover the costs. One way for the Government to help local authorities is by giving them the freedom to increase some of those charges. None of our constituents will welcome paying higher fees, but they might well prefer that option to reductions in the vital public services on which they depend.
Let me pick up another point made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark. He was very concerned about cuts in non-statutory services such as support for the voluntary sector and youth services. My local authority is having to consider those services. I hope the Minister will tell us that the Government will think again about what is statutory and what is non-statutory. Surely if we all now believe in localism and believe that local authorities are best placed to make choices, we should allow authorities much more flexibility in delivering services locally. If we do not, many of them will not be able to touch a large chunk of their spending because it is statutory, and the reductions will be concentrated in the voluntary sector.
In a report published before the general election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies spoke of measures to reduce the deficit. According to the IFS,
“most likely it will come from a combination of reductions in the quality and/or quantity of public services provided and families being made directly worse off financially through cuts to welfare benefits and increases in tax. Efficiency savings alone will not be enough to fill the deficit.”
Members on both sides of the House must stop pretending that all that can be done easily. Whoever is running the country—whichever party forms the Government—the job of deficit reduction will be painful. We should stop engaging in a feigned debate about whether it is ideologically based, because it would confront whoever was governing the country. We should focus on the changes that Government can make to support those in the front line who are having to make difficult decisions so that they can do the best job in protecting the vital public services on which all our constituents depend.
Bob Blackman
Clearly, the Government are removing artificial ring-fencing from local government expenditures. Local authorities up and down the country rightly complain about having been given money in very tightly constricted salvos that could be spent only on particular services in particular ways. Often, they could not spend it within the given time frame and so would lose it. That is ridiculous.
We need to look at how money can be saved. There is multiple handling of cases in local authorities. I know of social services cases in which the application for disabled facilities grants has gone through 17 pairs of hands before being approved. What nonsense. We have to streamline systems to ensure that, at most, one person reviews a case and another checks that it is correct. Applications should not go through 17 people.
We should have computer systems that capture data once. People who apply to a local authority for particular services frequently have to fill out a multitude of forms and the relevant information then has to be entered many times by various people in different areas.
Bob Blackman
No I am not. I am saying that when the weakest and most vulnerable people in society are asked to give information to local or national authorities, we can enter the data once, administer the benefits they are entitled to and make sure they get the proper benefits, rather than having the multiplicity of systems that grew up under the Labour Government.
We spend more than £1 billion on administering housing benefit, but why does every authority need a separate back-office organisation for that? Those contracts are administered by a small number of suppliers, so why not combine them, strip out some of the administrative overheads and remove duplication?
Angie Bray
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. Of course, I agree that it is a great thing to get local authorities back to doing what they do best, which is to work closely with their local residents to ensure that they give them what they need.
As hon. Members have said, many local authorities across the country are considering how they can take out costs in their back rooms by working together to run services. My hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) mentioned Kensington and Chelsea borough council getting together with Westminster city council and Hammersmith and Fulham council to do just that. Those boroughs happen to make up my previous London assembly seat and they are all, I should add, Conservative-run. They are doing what local councils should be doing—making efficiency savings in bureaucracy where possible, rather than hitting front-line services.
My local, Labour-led council, Ealing, has been quick to announce plans for a range of cuts, including cutting day care centres, a child protection officer and more than 50% of park rangers. Enviro-crime officers are also to be cut, from 23 to 12, yet it is happy to find £3 million for new computers at the town hall and, quite disgracefully, it is to continue funding full-time trade union officials to the tune of £250,000 a year.
Tom Blenkinsop
Regarding non-statutory duties and youth services, about which we have heard from the hon. Members for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), would the hon. Lady like to condemn the Prime Minister, who is funding pilot schemes for big society youth projects in the summer with people who are not qualified in youth training?
Angie Bray
I am happy to take that point on board, but I am going to make progress.
The spending decisions that I mentioned are clearly not the priorities in which the people of Ealing are interested, and they really ought to be reconsidered. Unfortunately, I suspect that politics has played a large part in them. They were entirely avoidable, but the council hoped to make the coalition Government take the blame. I expect the public to be a little cleverer than that. They know, as we all do, that we are in a black financial hole because of the previous Labour Government, and my constituents will not be impressed by poor spending decisions that allow day care centres to be closed or park rangers to lose their jobs while full-time trade union officials are kept in cushy jobs in which they do nothing to support the local community. I will oppose the motion.