Local Government Financing

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I want to make a bit of progress, then I shall give way again.

We are going to drive economic growth through local action and initiatives such as the incentive plan, and by replacing Lord Prescott’s and Lord Mandelson’s regional development agencies with locally led partnerships, based on natural economic areas—not arbitrary Government offices for the regions that happen to suit Ministers. We will also drive growth by giving councils new powers to levy business rate discounts for local shops and firms, by finding practical ways to introduce automatic small business rate relief and by abolishing Labour’s unfair ports tax, which threatened to harm the entire manufacturing sector in this country—at least the bit that the party had not already harmed through its economic policies.

We are doing all we can to help local government under difficult and pressing circumstances. No local authority will face a reduction of more than 2% in any revenue grant that has already been allocated.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Why does the council in my constituency face a cut of 1.08%, whereas no Government Member’s local authority is facing cuts of anywhere near that? Is that an act of ideology or malice? Or is it that, as the Minister with responsibility for planning said,

“Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt”.—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 450.]?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, but district councils all over the place are taking larger cuts. If the Opposition are now going to spend their time looking at random distributions, trying to pick out patterns and then playing them back, I am afraid that that just demonstrates that they really have not got it. They have not understood the financial crisis in which they had taken this country right to the edge, or appreciated the depth of the problems that they had taken the country into. That is clearly demonstrated by their input today.