Brandon Lewis
Main Page: Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
I beg to move motion 3,
That the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2013-14 (HC 948), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this we shall consider the following:
Motion 4—Local Government Finance (England)—
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Alternative Notional Amounts) Report (England) 2013-14 (HC 928), which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.
Motion 5—Local Government Finance (England)—
That the Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) Report (England) 2013-14, which was laid before this House on 4 February, be approved.
Brandon Lewis
This settlement is a landmark for local government. After years of doffing their cap to Whitehall, councils throughout the country can now take charge of their destiny. That message has been in danger of being lost amidst the fog of deficit denial and doom-mongering coming mainly from Labour Members, who are mumbling right now. There are real reasons why people will soon see the benefit of this settlement as plain as day—despite the doom-mongering work of the Labour party.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
It is generous of the Minister to give way at the start of his speech. He talks about councils being able to control their own destiny, but how can they do that when he is implementing these vindictive cuts, which are hitting the most deprived councils?
Brandon Lewis
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention, as it gives me a chance to highlight exactly the Labour party’s problem with local government. It is not about how much is spent, but about how it is spent and about how local councils have the power to make decisions for themselves—something that local government never had under the Labour Government.
Brandon Lewis
Let me make a little progress and I will take more interventions later.
Change was inevitable, so let us not forget the mess we inherited and the size of our economic overdraft, with Labour spending £4 for every £3 they raised. In such circumstances, local government simply could not remain immune. It is one of the biggest players in the public sector, accounting for a quarter of public spending, and it has a budget twice as big as the defence budget and bigger than our budget for the NHS. This year it will spend £114 billion.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
In response to the point put by the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), my hon. Friend was entirely right to say that it is all about the choices councils make. I commend to him North Lincolnshire council. It inherited from Labour in 2011 a council that was committed to reducing library services and to closing tourist information centres. In fact, it has done the opposite—built new libraries, extended library opening hours and saved the tourist information centres, as well as replacing mobile classrooms.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend highlights exactly the point I was making—that good councils with good leadership making the right decisions are good for their local residents.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Let us assume that we accept the Government’s financial envelope for this settlement. Why, then, did the Government not award the grants in proportion to need or at least fairly in accordance with need? The local authority I partly represent had a £300 million budget, but £100 million of it is to go within three years. In those circumstances, how does the Minister envisage that local authority expanding services along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)?
Brandon Lewis
There is a range of ways in which local authorities can make a choice. This is the key issue: it is about trusting local government, with good local leadership, to make decisions, such as those my hon. Friend outlined, for the benefit of their communities. I will touch on the fairness of the settlement in a few moments.
Brandon Lewis
I am happy to give way one more time, but then I want to make some progress.
Mr Ellwood
I echo the thoughts coming from Government Members, which differ from those on the Opposition Benches. It is possible to balance the budget. It is possible to see increases in fire and police services, as we have seen in Bournemouth borough council. Will he join me in congratulating that council on freezing council tax for the third year in a row?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are some really good councils throughout the country, doing really good work in protecting and making the right decisions for their communities and freezing council tax. I congratulate Bournemouth borough council on doing just that.
Councils clearly have a part to play in reducing the deficit. Opposition Members should not kid themselves, residents or us about their position. They would not have done anything different. In fact, their party was planning to make spending cuts of £52 billion by 2014-15—and, given that they have opposed every single saving that the Government have made, they still have £52 billion of cuts to outline. I hope that they will do so today.
Another point that Members should consider, which is relevant to the question from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), is that this is a fair deal. It is fair to north and south. Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Newcastle all have more spending power per dwelling than the national average. They are all at least £500 better off per household than, for instance, Wokingham in the south-east. The settlement is also fair to all councils, even those that Labour left facing a massive financial cliff edge, such as Great Yarmouth and Pendle. Thanks to the new efficiency support grant, the seven authorities that face the biggest hit to their budgets—Burnley, Barrow-in-Furness, Bolsover, Hyndburn, Hastings, Great Yarmouth and Pendle—will be protected.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Will the Minister explain why the Government took £573 million out of the relative needs block of the settlement to distribute it on a per capita basis? Is it not the case that they are taking no account of the differing needs of local authorities?
Brandon Lewis
That is simply not correct. The settlement does take account of needs. The areas that would have been most heavily affected—such as my constituency in Great Yarmouth, which would have lost more than £3 million a year thanks to the position left by Labour—have already benefited from a two-year transition grant, and now we are introducing the efficiency support grant.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend not realise that the fairness of the settlement is undermined by the damping system? Northumberland county council, which has kept its libraries and its Sure Start centres open under a Liberal Democrat administration, is being told, “You ought to have more, but we are not giving it to you this side of 2020.”
Brandon Lewis
There have been queries about damping in relation to some councils, but this year’s settlement is based on the results of consultation undertaken last year. No overwhelming desire was expressed then for a change in the damping arrangements, and we wanted to ensure that there was stability in the system for the business rate scheme. However, I appreciate that Members have a view, and I will continue to talk to them about it.
Brandon Lewis
I will take more interventions in a moment. Let me first finish what I was saying about the efficiency support grant.
Thanks to the grant, the councils that I listed will not face the cuts that the Labour Government left them to face. Councils that deliver extra efficiencies by the end of the financial year will not just receive the efficiency support grant money that was outlined in the provisional settlement of 19 December, but will gain an extra 25% on top of the money that they are expecting in year one.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I appreciate the effort that the Minister has put into the efficiency support grant. Hyndburn borough council faced a cut of 17% at a time when, according to the Secretary of State, the average was 1.2%, However, I am worried about the cliff edge that faces us. What will happen after two years? Will it be back to 17%? This sounds like a capital sum rather than a revenue payment.
Brandon Lewis
I thank that hon. Gentleman for his question, which gives me a chance to explain again why this came about. Because of the state in which Labour had left local government finance, 20 authorities faced a massive cliff edge. We introduced a transition grant which, during the last two years, allowed those authorities some leeway and enabled them to get into a position that would allow them to move forward. Seven are still heavily affected, including the authority in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, as I know from an Adjournment debate that took place not long ago.
The efficiency support grant involves a two-year programme. As I have said, in year one councils will potentially receive 25% more than they were expecting from the provisional grants. In that first year, they will work with the Department to increase their efficiency across the board by means of, for instance, shared management and shared services, so that at the end of the two-year period they will no longer need the grant. We made the position very clear to the councils, and they have been sent information describing the kind of work that they need to do in order to receive year two money as a result of the efficiencies that they are achieving in year one.
In December we said councils were facing an average cut of about 1.7%. We now know the impact of the public health grant, however, because that figure has dropped to just 1.3%. People would expect us to say the settlement is even-handed—[Interruption]—and the mumbling from the Opposition Benches confirms that, but a report produced by this House concurs with our view. It says:
“Excluding London, northern regions have larger start-up funding assessments and revenue spending power per dwelling than their southern counterparts”
and
“the more deprived areas generally receive higher per dwelling allocations than less deprived areas”.
The heat maps we are publishing today back up the fact that this settlement is fair for all.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is hard to see the settlement as fair to all when there is a rural penalty, with 50% more per head going to support councils in urban areas than those in rural areas, where people on average earn less and have a higher council tax, and therefore have lower spending power. In the period up to 2020, we will need to move towards a more just settlement that genuinely reflects need, whether in the inner cities or rural areas.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes his point as passionately as he and other colleagues did on Monday, and I know from the meetings I have had with him on this issue that he will continue to do so. I shall talk about rural funding shortly.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister’s party colleague, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), has criticisms, and so too does Baroness Eaton, Conservative former chair of the Local Government Association. She said of the Department, and specifically the Secretary of State, that in terms of the local government cuts he was
“detached from the reality councils are dealing with”.
Why did she say that?
Brandon Lewis
I will explain shortly exactly how we are in touch with local government. The previous Government were so busy doling out grants without a care in the world—handing out money hand over fist in different bail-outs—that they failed to pay attention to local people and local authorities. By contrast, we are listening, learning and improving. We have received 200 written responses to our consultation on the provisional settlement. I have met individual authorities, leaders, chief executives and treasurers, and the LGA, London Councils and other representatives, and I spoke to about 200 councillors in a telephone conference call the day after the provisional settlement. Because we are listening, we are going to do more to support rural areas and manage the extra costs of delivering services in those areas.
As well as confirming the increases to the sparsity weighting and top-ups proposed in the provisional settlement, we have announced £8.5 million of additional funding for 2013-14 in a separate new grant for areas with the sparsest populations to get some extra help to achieve the efficiencies they want.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Will the Minister explain why Nottingham city council is increasing tax but cutting its library services while the county council is not putting up council tax but is keeping its libraries open, investing in its highways department and improving the county’s infrastructure?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that highlights how, with good leadership, a good Conservative-controlled county council is looking after its residents, while the Labour-controlled city council is simply lining its pockets.
Council areas such as Breckland, Mendip and South Lakeland will feel the benefit of the increased opportunities for rural areas in these changes, and I know Members representing rural areas will want to continue talking to us about the future over the summer.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
Is the Minister confirming to MPs representing rural areas that he is open to having further discussions about the perceived disparity between rural and urban funding? If he is inviting me to join him in the Lobby this evening, I will want to hear a clarification that he is up for such discussions.
Brandon Lewis
As I said in the debate on Monday, I have an open-door policy and am very happy to continue discussions, and I hope rural areas will be able to put together evidence—perhaps through their rural services network—to back up some of their figures and prove their case. I will happily continue to talk to my hon. Friend in the year ahead.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has been involved in a lot of discussions with various local authority representatives. Is he willing to reopen discussions with Liverpool city council? It covers the most deprived council area in the country, yet it has suffered the greatest cuts. How can that be fair?
Brandon Lewis
Actually, Liverpool has had a reduction of minus 1.3, so it is no different from anywhere else. However, I will happily meet people from Liverpool council, just as I will those from any other authority and any hon. Member who wishes to see me.
Brandon Lewis
I will make a little progress and then take more interventions.
As I said, areas such as Breckland, Mendip and South Lakeland will feel the benefit of this grant, and that brings me to my next point. This system now works in favour of local councils. Through the Localism Act 2011 and the financial reforms in this settlement, which mean that 70% of local authority income will now be raised locally, councils have more power than ever before. However, they need to understand the implications, act in their residents’ best interests and work hard on their behalf, as I know many authorities across this country do. That could be done by redesigning council tax benefit to cut fraud, promote local enterprise and get people back into work, or by redesigning services to make them more efficient and sustainable. Town halls should not be constructing Maginot line defences against the deficit.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The figure the Minister used of councils now raising 70% of the money they spend is obviously going around the Government, because the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned it in the Liaison Committee the other day. Is not the real reason for that percentage increase simply that the amount of money going from central Government to local government has fallen, and therefore the council tax money, which has remained basically the same in most authorities, has risen as a percentage? That is the only reason why that percentage has increased.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman needs to look at the new business rates retention scheme, which I shall discuss in a moment, as it gives authorities the chance really to be in control of their destiny, and to drive economic growth for their communities and, as a part of their communities, for the country. I thank him for giving me the chance to highlight that we need to get control of the horrendous deficit left by the previous Government.
Brandon Lewis
I am going to make a bit more progress. We need to move away from what we have seen from local authorities such as Lambeth council, whose residents must have wondered what on earth it was doing with their hard-earned money when it wasted thousands of pounds on propaganda posters attacking cuts. Unfortunately that council is not alone.
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Is not one way in which councils could quickly save a lot of money by reducing the astronomical salaries of some of their staff? More than 114 town hall chiefs now earn more than the Prime Minister. The chief executive of Essex is on £289,000 a year. The chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham earns £281,000. Even in my constituency, the chief executive of Cannock’s council earns £113,000 a year, nearly twice what the hard-working MP who represents that area earns. Will the Minister explain why council chiefs up and down the country need to earn six times the salary of an MP?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. If the hon. Gentleman wanted to speak, he should have saved his speech and not used it in an intervention. What I am bothered about is that we have a lot of Members who wish to speak in this very important debate, so we need short interventions. Let us try to get through.
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Authorities across this country, particularly small district councils, have to start looking carefully at how they structure their management and how they share management to get best value for their residents’ money. I will come back to that issue in a few moments.
Brandon Lewis
I will make a bit more progress, following Mr Deputy Speaker’s comment.
I have been appalled by things such as we have seen in Lambeth, especially where there are still savings to be had. Last year, local government showed commendable skill in reducing its budget in many areas while protecting front-line services; many residents actually reported that their services had improved. That goes back to this core point about how we spend money rather than just how much we think we can get from a begging bowl. It is not about how much we spend; it is about how we spend it.
Let us examine our approach to troubled families. Instead of having multiple people dealing with a family, we now have just one no-nonsense worker telling them how it is. For example, Barnet council has worked out that the cost of an effective intervention for an average troubled family has reduced from almost £100,000 to just £10,000, so through our community and neighbourhood budgets we are rewiring the system.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for giving way on that point about how the cuts are having an impact on children and families. He may not agree with Baroness Eaton, although he was not clear on that point, but has he read the evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation? It says that the
“evidence points to the distinctive impact of cuts on services for children and young people”.
What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of these cuts on children and young people, particularly the poorest?
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman is forgetting that most of these cuts are Labour cuts, and that this is about designing services. It is about moving away from the approach taken by too many authorities, including Corby’s, where they do something because they do it because they do it. They should be looking at the outcome they want for the residents and how best to provide it with the best value for money.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
On behalf of the residents of Hastings, I warmly welcome the increase in efficiency grant, which is wisely accompanied by requirements for efficiencies from the council. Is there to be any increase in the efficiency requirements, or do they stay as they are?
Brandon Lewis
The requirements will stay as they are, and over the first year we will work with authorities to help them to deliver efficiencies for the benefit of their residents. The money is coming from residents in councils across the country, so we have a duty to make sure that it is well and properly spent on finding the efficiencies they need for the longer term.
Brandon Lewis
I want to make a little more progress.
Our community and neighbourhood budgets are rewiring the system and bringing people together across the board—local authorities, the police and the health service. They are a new way of looking at the public sector, and they stop duplication so that money is spent wisely for the benefit of residents across the country. They are making local savings in millions, which could nationally add up to billions. Ernst and Young said that the potential five-year net benefit of community budgets is between £9.4 billion and £20.6 billion. Community whole place budgets provide an opportunity to align the public sector and make it more streamlined and more efficient and, most important, to give a better service for our residents. We want to do everything we can to help councils to spend the cash of hard-working taxpayers more wisely.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Minister must understand that boroughs such as mine have had a 40% cut in their grant from Government. That is a reality. He cannot hide the fact that the money has gone, or is about to go, and that it will have an effect on front-line services. The Local Government Association graph of doom predicts that councils such as Sefton and many others will only be able to deliver adult social services and waste collection. Will the Minister tell me why the LGA’s figures are wrong?
Brandon Lewis
I hope that in his speech the hon. Gentleman will tell us about the cuts for local government of £52 billion that Labour have not even announced yet. How will they deal with that?
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
To put it as politely as I can, some of the figures the Minister has been using today are questionable to say the least. He emphasised his willingness to talk. Core Cities twice wrote to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to ask for a meeting. There was no response. The Secretary of State is sitting alongside the Minister. Will he tell us through the Minister whether he is prepared to meet Core Cities—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We have to get the message across. There are going to be short interventions. The hon. Gentleman has been here even longer than I have so he should know. Short interventions help the debate. The Minister is desperate to get on.
Brandon Lewis
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am slightly surprised by the comments of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). Not only is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State happy to meet representatives from Core Cities, but I met them myself during the consultation process. They were part of it, so I am not sure where the hon. Gentleman gets his facts.
To help local authorities, we published 50 ways to make sensible savings. [Interruption.] As I might have guessed, the Opposition scoff at the idea that looking after the pennies will take care of the pounds. That is probably why they got us into an economic mess in the first place.
The Opposition should take a leaf from the book of an Olympic hero—Sir Dave Brailsford, the head of British Cycling. His philosophy is the aggregation of marginal gains; tiny changes across the board that add up to the difference between silver and gold. That is what we should be doing. We should not scoff at small savings, because they add up to large amounts.
Thanks to the autumn statement, which exempted local government from the 1% top-slice in 2013-14, councils have time to put their house in order and put people first. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) suggested, they should start by freezing council tax, as Nottinghamshire county council and many others are doing—we know of about 150 already.
Once upon a time under the previous Government, council tax rose exponentially: it more than doubled. We have put money aside to put tax rises on ice for a third successive year. Councils should take advantage of that for the benefit of hard-working people who can ill afford to pay more. Already, 150 councils are taking that high road—councils from Derby to Dorset, from Northampton to Norfolk and Wolverhampton to Watford; but if councils take the low road and put up taxes, they should be aware of the wrath of the taxpayer. We are setting a 2% referendum principle for all principal local authorities, police and crime commissioners and fire and rescue authorities. That is direct democracy in action.
If an authority wants to raise council tax by more than 2%, the local electorate will have the right of veto in a binding referendum. I am sure that some councils may have a case—personally, I cannot see it—but if they do they should put it to the vote. They should stand up before residents and state their case. If they win the argument, so be it, but we will take a dim view of democracy dodgers trying to sneak in under the democratic radar, especially those using levies as places such as Manchester and Rotherham are doing.
I urge hon. Members to think about what we are saying. The Government grant is equivalent to 1%, so councils that are seeking to increase council tax and avoid a referendum are doing so, in effect, for at most 0.99%. What a kick in the teeth for local taxpayers. Any council leader that cannot get their officers and members to work together to find 0.99 % of savings should look again.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Surely the Minister knows how council tax is calculated. The issue is not just about one year—it is about the erosion of the council tax base, which has had a devastating impact in local authorities such as Tameside.
Brandon Lewis
I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman does a bit more research, because the Secretary of State stood at the Dispatch Box at an earlier date to say that it was in the base. The hon. Gentleman misses the point about the settlement. Council tax money is not about lining councils’ pockets—it is hard-working taxpayers’ money. Many councils already have more in reserve than they are losing through cuts. Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds have reserves twice the size of their spending power reductions.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Is it not the case that if councils take up the offer for the next two years they will face bigger cuts and higher council tax at the end of the period?
Brandon Lewis
Yet again, we see the difference between the Opposition and the coalition Government. We are protecting the pockets of hard-working taxpayers, and the councils that the hon. Gentleman is talking about should look again and freeze their council tax.
Brandon Lewis
I want to make progress.
This is a new dawn for local government. The local funding settlement used to be the end game, but this year it is just the starting point. Councils are no longer tied to the settlement figures, and they can earn their keep and retain £11 billion of business rates, which could deliver around an extra £10 billion to the wider economy by 2020. In recent years, Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool all saw their business rates rise above the national average of 4.8%, but thanks to the old begging-bowl system, they missed out on the opportunity of making the most of that money. The old formula grant paid to fail, but from here on in, it will be what councils make, not what they take, that counts. If they bring in more business and more jobs, they will be rewarded. If they build more homes they will get the new homes bonus, worth more than £650 million this year and even more in 2014-15. Almost two thirds of authorities are expected to gain from the scheme in the first year alone.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
Is that not a slight sleight of hand? The new homes bonus money is not new money; it has been derived from top-slicing local government funding at national level, as my borough finance officer confirmed to me yesterday.
Brandon Lewis
Yet again, an Opposition Member highlights the fact that they simply do not get it. This is about local authorities getting money for what they do; we are moving to a new way of working. Under the business rates scheme, they will get more money if they bring businesses and jobs in. If they build houses, they will get more money from the new homes bonus. The message to authorities that do not like it is that they should go out and build some houses. Two thirds of authorities are expected to gain, so the message to councils is clear: if they oppose the settlement, they oppose the opportunity for a brighter future. However, if they are self-reliant and ambitious, and work hard on behalf of local people, they will win the day.
This Government are keen to do everything they can to reward radical, forward- thinking councils, so today I am pleased to announce a new incentive for councils to join forces to bring management together, not just sharing the usual back-office functions and services that we hear of, but real front-line changes for the benefit of citizens as well. This is about looking at some of the excellent work done by great authorities and following in the footsteps of some—for example, the tri-borough initiative. Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea are on track to save around £40 million by 2015-16. We are bringing in a new £9.2 million challenge award to help other councils to follow their lead.
I want councils such as West Somerset, which was mentioned on Monday—
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
May I thank my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State for making that possible? The House is well aware of the financial difficulties that we have there. A protocol was signed between Taunton Deane and West Somerset to alleviate the problems. This can now happen, at nil cost to either council. I am incredibly grateful on behalf of the people of West Somerset and the people of Taunton Deane. Thank you very much.
Brandon Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that he has worked hard in Somerset to bring the authorities together and to get the right result. I hope that areas such as West Somerset will move forward and see this as an opportunity to help them to do the right thing. The same applies to other authorities as well, particularly small district authorities, which should be looking at bringing together their management to make sure that they are spending the money in the best way possible for their local residents.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
What my hon. Friend is suggesting is what we in High Peak did several years ago with Staffordshire Moorlands, when I was a councillor and the council was under Conservative control. The Labour opposition were not keen on it but now that they are in control, they have not rolled it back, so I am pleased with the incentive that he is introducing. May we have that fund back-dated, please?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Through the consultation process we were looking at how we reward councils that are doing the right thing for their residents and moving away from the begging bowl of the past, highlighted by some of the questions and interventions from the Opposition Benches. I am happy to look at bids and will be announcing details of the scheme next week for authorities which are doing this or have done it. It is an opportunity for small authorities that have done good work.
We want authorities to go further and faster so that residents see and feel the benefits. We want to help and reward those who are doing things right. The evidence shows that it is good to share. South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse have a joint chief executive and management structure. South Holland is sharing its chief executive and officers not just with Breckland but with Luton, showing that this works well across different counties without shared boundaries and across parties, despite the views of some Opposition Members. Babergh and Mid Suffolk are sharing not just a chief executive but service delivery across the whole range of their councils’ functions and looking to go further. Those who follow suit will now get extra credit—literally.
This settlement should silence deficit deniers. It is fair to north and south, fair to urban and rural, fair to poor and rich authorities. It is a settlement that rewards innovation, imagination and delivery for residents. It is a settlement that gives councils more power than they have ever had before. It is a settlement that captures a new ethos within local government, generating more income through the new homes bonus, business rate retention and a challenge fund. If councils are willing to put people above political grievance, as Luton has done—I hope Opposition Members will join me in supporting it—and if councils are willing to look to the future, not in the rear-view mirror, they have a once-in-a-generation chance to step out from the shadow of Whitehall, and to expand, energise and electrify their local communities and their local economies. I hope they will grasp the opportunity with both hands and deliver on it. I commend the motions to the House.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and for the additional time to present a deeply concerning issue for the people of Newcastle upon Tyne.
The coalition Government talk about localism and devolving power, but they are clearly trying—and they are fooling no one—to shift the blame, claiming to give power and responsibility to councils while savagely and disproportionately slashing their budgets and ability to do what they do best. That is exemplified by changes to council tax benefit, which devolve responsibility for administering the benefit while cutting funding by 10%, which is effectively 11% in Newcastle, forcing local authorities into the invidious position of having to pass that cut on to local people who are struggling with the rising cost of living. It is also exemplified by the bedroom tax that is coming, as councils will be forced to absorb that into their budget or pass it on to people who are struggling, having been hit by the Government’s economic mismanagement.
I want to focus on the disproportionate cuts imposed on local authorities such as my own, Newcastle city council. My right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State referred to the comparison between his local authority, Leeds, and Wokingham, but we are all familiar with the comparison often made between Newcastle upon Tyne and Wokingham. Over the period of the 2010 spending review, the Department will see a 33% cut in real terms in funding. True to form, Conservative and Lib Dem Ministers have passed those cuts on to the most deprived and vulnerable areas in the country. Those who can least afford it are shouldering the greatest reductions in funding.
As hon. Members may be aware, I have raised this with the Minister both in an Adjournment debate and yesterday in Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, because my local authority, Newcastle city council, is in a dire financial position as a result of a combination of ever increasing cost pressures and hugely disproportionate reductions in funding from the coalition Government, which has created a budgetary black hole. The city treasurer has revealed that the funding gap in Newcastle by the end of 2014-15 will not be £90 million, as originally thought. Following further announcements by the Secretary of State at the end of last year, that will increase by an additional £10 million, so the black hole will now be as large as £100 million over the next three years. Around half of this is a direct reduction in central Government grant funding, with the rest being unavoidable cost pressures that the council must absorb. Based on the Department’s own figures, the cut in Newcastle’s spending power between 2012-13 and 2014-15 will be £218 per person, compared with a national average cut of £134 per person. At the same time, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State set out, the Prime Minister’s own local authority is getting an increase in spending power of 3.1% in its local government finance settlement for 2013-14. The claim that we are all in this together would be laughable were it not such an insult to the reality that people are facing.
The most deprived areas where the needs are higher are once again being punished by this Government, willingly assisted by Liberal Democrat colleagues. Newcastle city council has produced research that reveals that the 50 worst affected councils will receive a reduction of £160 per head on average, with the 50 councils least affected receiving a cut of £16 per head. Yet the 50 most affected have, on average, a third of children living in poverty, whereas the 50 least affected have child poverty rates of 10%. It is truly shameful.
The excellent heat maps produced by Newcastle city council clearly and easily illustrate where the Government are aiming their cuts: at the most deprived northern areas and inner London boroughs. Put simply, the areas that are being hit hardest are the areas that are most in need and require the most support—the areas where more children are taken into care, the areas where fewer adults are able to fund their own social care, the areas with higher levels of statutory concessionary travel, areas with more specialist housing need and higher levels of homelessness.
When we raise the situation currently faced by Newcastle and many cities like it, Ministers are fond of touting the tired comparison between my city and the town of Wokingham. Let me continue in that vein. By 2015 Newcastle will receive funding cuts of £218 per head. In the same period Wokingham will receive cuts of just £27 per head.
Catherine McKinnell
I will gladly give way if the Minister can explain how that is fair.
Brandon Lewis
Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that her authority will have a spending power cut of just 1.1%? That is below the national average.
Catherine McKinnell
The Minister is well aware that he is talking at cross purposes with what I am setting out, which is the impact over the next three years, not in the next financial year. I hesitate in case it is out of order to say that it is very disingenuous for the Government to present these figures in a way that does not match up—
Mr Marsden
Well yours might be, but I am not sure about the Minister who opened this debate.
If the Minister got away from that distorting mirror and went back to his constituents in Great Yarmouth—to some of the houses in multiple occupation, the people living in bad private housing or some of those groups of his constituents who will be most affected—perhaps he would not come to this House with a speech so full of complacency and smugness.
Brandon Lewis
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is talking about the same people who will now benefit from the £7 million transitional grant or the next £4 million to £5 million of efficiency grant that the council will get, following the cliff edge left by the last Labour Government, leaving them without that money.
Mr Marsden
I am interested that the Minister has turned to the transitional grant, because in percentage terms the average transitional grant will cover only a quarter of the original 10% cuts. It just so happens that my council in Blackpool will receive the lowest proportion of the transitional grant, so I am afraid the Minister will win no plaudits from Opposition Members or, I suspect, from many of his own constituents for the settlement he has imposed on them. The reality of this settlement is that it is unfair and unjust for some of the poorest people who are working hard as carers, part-time workers and single mums. Such people in Blackpool and many other places can ill afford to pay this money, and the Government should be ashamed of the incoherent and unequal settlement that they have put before the House.