"I note that the Secretary of State does not want to talk about what has happened in the past, but my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) raised a point about need. It was no accident that the Government took the needs formula out of …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"The Secretary of State just does not get it. Those were not options; they were political choices taken by the coalition Government. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles and I are making is that on issues such as looked-after children and adult social care—he …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"Does my hon. Friend agree that it is actually worse than that? For local authority funding, in the last 10 years—we continue to have it today—we have had a movement away from central Government funding and on to local council taxpayers, and areas such as County Durham, where 56% of …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government’s fixation on competition for such funding is inefficient and is clearly being used by the Government as a pork barrel? It puts a lot of pressure on councils such as Knowsley Council, which have already faced cuts, to put in the …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"Is not the reason why Dorset has one of the highest levels of council tax that the Government who have been in power since 2010 have reduced the revenue support grant directly to that council and pushed it on to local Dorset taxpayers?..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"We have just heard it in a debate on the police grant, and we have heard it in this debate with the Secretary of State: the Government are treating 2019 like year zero. Anything that happened before then was nothing to do with them. He is increasingly trying to push …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"Yes, I am, and the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) called me an anorak, so possibly I am both.
The White Paper’s analysis is not bad in that it raises the issue that we should be tackling, but it offers no solution to enable us to do that. I …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"I do not disagree with the Secretary of State. County Durham is a wonderful county. It has some great towns and, more importantly, great people. But why did Bishop Auckland get that money as opposed to any of the other towns in County Durham? Well, it has a Conservative Member …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech