Local Government Funding

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

May I take this opportunity to thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this important Opposition day debate? I am pleased to follow the Secretary of State, who, in his calm Yorkshire way, said not a lot. What he did say, however, will send a chill through communities in my constituency.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government’s cuts will clearly have an effect on all constituencies, but I believe they will impact more unfairly on areas with additional social need, such as my constituency in Greater Manchester. I benefit from representing a constituency that covers two very different local authorities, Stockport and Tameside metropolitan boroughs, and, although both authorities plan major reductions in spending in the years ahead, I fear that the cuts will impact particularly on Tameside, which has been ranked as an area of high deprivation and the 56th most deprived local authority area in England.

People in Tameside earn lower incomes than the national average, and in their time of need they might find themselves calling on council services, just when the council is least able to assist them because the massive reduction in its overall budgets will impact on those crucial services. To be fair, it is a similar story with the two Reddish wards in the Stockport part of my constituency. Although those wards are located in a much more prosperous borough overall, they are also areas of very high social need.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point about how poverty can be localised much more than on the basis of local authority area. Does he accept that that is a shortcoming of local government finance in the past? The assumption has been that an area is either poor across the whole of the local authority or not at all?

[Andrew Gwynne]

For the past 13 years of the Labour Government, Stockport received additional money because of those deprived Stockport wards. It is a shame that the Liberal Democrat council chose not to spend the money in Reddish and in those wards.

It is true that we are facing one of the worst rounds of spending contraction ever experienced. That is likely to have a massive impact on every part of our public services, not just local government. However, we should not forget that local government provides, or co-ordinates, the delivery of some of the most valued public services—from children’s services to adult social care, from leisure, parks and libraries to schools and from fixing roads and pavements to public transport and refuse collection.

I am concerned about how the cuts are being implemented and their unfairness to more socially deprived areas. My constituents in Tameside and Stockport accept that there needs to be a reduction in public spending and that local government must play its part, but it is certainly difficult to see any fairness—as was promised in the comprehensive spending review—in the fact that some councils in the most deprived areas will have reductions in their budgets next year of, as has been suggested, up to 25%, 30% or more, whereas other councils—many in the south—will feel the impact of those reductions far less.

Research from SIGOMA, a group of 44 metropolitan and unitary authorities outside London—I know the Secretary of State’s view on that grouping—demonstrates that the councils that expect to be worst hit by the CSR are in the 20% most deprived areas. Clearly we know that the cuts will hit places such as Denton and Reddish very hard indeed.

Tameside council is planning for a total funding reduction of around £100 million over the next four years—a massive amount for one fairly small metropolitan borough to lose. We also know the cuts are being front-loaded, so Tameside council will need to save more than £37 million next year. It must save more in one year than it has saved over the past seven, despite making extremely tough choices to meet its Gershon savings. There is very little meat left on the bone. These cuts will hurt our services. Ultimately, the proposed cuts will mean a reduction in Tameside council’s work force of about 800 over the next four years.