Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Mary Glindon

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

9. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the social enterprise sector of reductions in Government expenditure.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on the social enterprise sector of reductions in Government expenditure.

Local Government Funding

Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Mary Glindon

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.