Hilary Benn
Main Page: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)Local Government Finance Bill
Hilary Benn Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I should like to begin by wishing the Secretary of State—and, indeed, you and all other Members, Madam Deputy Speaker—a happy new year. I am sure that our return to the House has been looked forward to with even greater anticipation than usual, given that the first piece of legislation that we are to address is the Local Government Finance Bill.
The Secretary of State touched on the fact that local government funding has long been debated and much argued over. At the heart of the matter is the age-old question, which was highlighted by the Layfield report in the 1970s, of whether central or local government should take the decisions. That question has never been fully resolved because the answer depends on the decisions involved and on what we are trying to achieve. Partly for that reason, Bills proposing fundamental changes to local government finance have not come along very often. The previous two were the Bill that brought in the poll tax, which should stand as a warning of what happens when a Conservative Government get things spectacularly wrong, and the one that replaced it with the council tax. That experience should remind all of us that how we fund local authorities and the services that they provide to all our communities is a matter of the greatest importance.
The Secretary of State reminded us of what the coalition agreement said about a radical devolution of power and giving greater financial autonomy to local government. Indeed, he also referred to his words of last July, when he said that councils would no longer have to come to him with a begging bowl. He has set a very high bar against which his Bill is going to be judged.
Let me start by examining the way in which the Bill is being handled, which is the subject of tonight’s programme motion. The local government resource review was first announced in the summer of 2010. The terms of reference were published in March last year. I recognise that there has been consultation on the proposals, but that consultation has simply not been carried through into the consideration of the Bill. The Bill was published on 19 December, just before the Christmas recess. We are having the Second Reading debate today, just two sitting days later, and we did not start the debate until 20 minutes to 7 in the evening.
The Government seem determined to take all the stages of the Bill on the Floor of the House, not because of the nature of the Bill but, as everyone knows, because the business managers are desperately trying to fill up time in the Chamber following their mishandling of the long parliamentary Session. They are not scheduling it in this way as a matter of precedent. Neither the Act that created the poll tax nor the one that replaced it with the council tax—the two Acts that this Bill, in the main, amends—had their Committee stages on the Floor of the House; they went into Committee. This Bill should also go into Committee. That is why we will vote against the programme motion.
By not allowing the Bill to go into Committee—[Interruption.] No, I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) will listen to me. If the Bill is not allowed to go into Committee, there will be no opportunity for wider scrutiny of what the Bill—as opposed to the consultation —says. There will be no pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and there will be no evidence sessions. Nor have we seen any of the regulations in draft. This is a pretty shoddy way for a Government who say that they support pre-legislative scrutiny and evidence sessions to deal with the scrutiny of a Bill.
On the substance of the Bill, the Secretary of State has advanced three main reasons for the changes—namely, that the present system is too complex, that it gives Governments too much power and that it does not provide sufficient incentive to local councils to develop their economies. I want to address each of those points in turn.
I accept that the current system is complex, but the truth is that any system will have a degree of complexity if it is to take account of the differing needs and circumstances of different communities. That is why we have complexity in the system. The alternative would be to leave councils and communities to sink or swim, saying, “Right—you take what you can in council tax and business rates; the Government will not get involved at all.” I do not support that.
Many of us, however, are in favour of as much localisation as possible, and, in principle, of allowing councils genuinely to benefit from business rate growth. However, those who put forward these proposals have an obligation to come up with a system that meets a number of tests. Those tests must determine whether the proposals will actually put more power into the hands of the councils, whether they will provide the right incentives, and whether resources will be distributed fairly. They must also determine whether councils will be reasonably certain about the money that they will get, and whether they will get the right help to enable them to meet local need and changing circumstances.
The problem with the Bill, and the reason that we will oppose it tonight, is that it does not give the reassurance that many people are looking for on those five fundamental principles, either on local government funding or on the localisation of council tax benefit. There is no guarantee that any council will not be worse off, except in the first year. It is unclear exactly how much incentive will be offered. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) suggested, the Bill will replace one complicated system with another that is, in the words of London Councils, “fiendishly complex”. One might think that that body would be arguing strongly in favour of these measures, given its position on business rates. Lastly, the Bill will give the Government a huge amount of control over how the money is distributed and how the system works, even though they claim that they want to devolve power.
When we read the Bill, which is supposed to be about putting local authorities in charge, what is really striking is the amount of power that it puts in the hands of the Secretary of State.
Hilary Benn
Will the hon. Gentleman bear with me for a moment?
Under the Bill, the Secretary of State will determine the baseline for every local authority, including, in effect, what he thinks every council needs to spend. He will decide how much business rate income central Government will take and how much will be left with local authorities. He will be able to change the central share from year to year, and to specify the tariff or top-up payment for every local authority in England. He will also decide how much any council must pay him in levy in respect of disproportionate gains in business rate income—and he will decide what “disproportionate” means.
Hilary Benn
Will my hon. Friend bear with me for a moment?
The Secretary of State will determine safety net payments, and decide how much of the remaining balance in the levy account may be distributed to one or more authorities. He will determine how much billing authorities must pay to major precepting bodies. He will designate pooling areas, and decide which groups of people must receive a council tax reduction. He will decide which classes of dwelling cannot be charged extra council tax, taking account of the characteristics and circumstances of any person liable—whatever that means. He will decide which areas are to be enterprise zones, and issue regulations to designate TIF areas. And in case all that is not enough, in clause 14(2) he gives himself a Henry VIII power that will allow him to amend, repeal or revoke any legislation he wants. That does not sound like localisation to me.
Mr Kevan Jones
I agree with my right hon. Friend about the centralisation of powers. The one power that is being given away to local authorities is the administration of council tax benefit, where local councils will have the invidious task of cutting council tax benefit to individuals. The Secretary of State is basically giving away the unpopular decisions, making sure that local people get the impression that local councils and not the Secretary of State are to blame for the cuts.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, anticipating one or two points I intend to make later in my speech.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman really must make his mind up. On the one hand, he rejects a system red in tooth and claw; on the other, he wants the system to be incredibly fair. Can he explain by what mechanism he and his party would make the system fair, other than by some central interference?
Hilary Benn
I would merely say this. First, if councils had a choice between the system under the last Labour Government and the resources made available then, and the cuts imposed over the last two years and the system offered now, I suspect that they would say, “We prefer the old system.” Secondly, the Secretary of State argues that this is all about giving away power and responsibility, but I am pointing out—I can understand why the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) and his colleagues get irritated—the huge number of powers that he is keeping for himself to shape the whole system and how it works. Given that the Secretary of State has all this power, I gently say that I doubt very much whether the local authority begging bowl is going to disappear any time soon. The right hon. Gentleman has form on this, however. In his equally misnamed Localism Bill, he took for himself more than 100 powers. He says that he is passing down the levers of power, but the truth is that he is hanging on to them very tightly.
Ben Gummer
The right hon. Gentleman professes to be in favour of localism and to want to see it in local government, but he was a prominent member of the previous Government who for 13 years produced numerous White Papers, manifesto commitments, and the entire Lyons report, which took three years to compile—yet nothing was produced or brought before this House over that period to localise business rates. He nevertheless stands up here and complains about what is being done.
Hilary Benn
First of all, if we are talking about centralisation, the hon. Gentleman needs to think about who nationalised business rates. It was his party. Who was it who abolished London-wide government and who made a mess of the poll tax? In all honesty, I say that making a change in haste in the wrong way is done at one’s peril. The warning of that is provided in the poll tax. If we look back at the debates when the poll tax was being argued for, we find Ministers arguing that this was the most wonderful thing. The people who have really made a mess of local government financing in this country are the Conservatives. Local government would much prefer to have the resources they had under the 13 years of the Labour Government than what they are experiencing under the current Government.
The point is this. It is not about whether we trust local councils or local communities. The question people looking at this Bill will be asking themselves—and, to judge by the consultation, they are—is whether they trust this Government and whether they trust this Secretary of State to use all these powers in a fair way. To judge by what has been done so far, there is not much room for confidence. We know that this Bill is being introduced at a time when local authorities are facing unprecedented cuts. Cuts do have to be made—[Interruption.] Well, I have said that on a number of occasions, but there is no excuse, no rationale and, so far, no justification for why these cuts are being applied in such an unfair way to communities.
As the House knows, one shocking statistic from SIGOMA—special interest group of municipal authorities —tells us everything we need to know about this Government’s idea of fairness. It is the fact that the 10% most deprived upper-tier authorities are facing a reduction in their spending power that is nearly four times greater than that faced by the 10% least deprived authorities.
Let us take just one example from figures produced by Newcastle city council. For every local authority, it looked at the cuts for 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, transition and council tax freeze grant and the provisional new homes bonus allocations. The figures show that Basingstoke and Deane authority will see a cumulative gain of £6.30 per person, whereas Knowsley will see a cumulative loss of £227.35 per person. If that is not balancing the books on the backs of the poor, I do not know what is. What possible justification can there be for such unfairness? When I asked the right hon. Gentleman about it at Communities and Local Government questions recently, all he could do was bluster, so how can councils have any confidence that they are going to be treated fairly under the Bill, particularly for communities where there is a great deal of deprivation, communities with fewer opportunities for business rate growth and communities where a lot of people cannot find a job?
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman extols the virtues and fairness that there seem to be have been in the local government finance regime during the period of the Labour Government. Can he explain, then, why the gap between rich and poor widened during those 13 years?
Hilary Benn
That is not true in relation to local authorities such as my authority. For example, the number of children in poverty across the country was reduced by 600,000, while this Government is in the process of increasing child poverty, as the hon. Gentleman knows, so I am not taking any lectures from him about how to tackle inequality and unfairness.
The truth is that councils are worried that under this Bill, as SIGOMA warns,
“the gap between more prosperous and less well-off authorities will widen as a result of the policy”.
Local Government Yorkshire and Humber fears that
“the Government’s proposals are...likely to favour urban over rural areas and retail development over manufacturing growth…we could easily lose out.”
Those are the concerns that the Secretary of State must address.
Let me deal with the second argument we have heard—that the changes will incentivise economic development. Here, I have a request for the Secretary of State. It would be really helpful if he could clear up the confusion he has created about the Government’s view on whether local authorities want to see economic growth in their areas.
I ask that because in paragraph 1.16 of his Department’s response to the consultation on business rate retention, it says:
“We know that local authorities are keen to grow their local economies.”
I agree with that, which is exactly what councils up and down the country want and seek. So can the right hon. Gentleman explain why the impact assessment published by his Department at the very same time on the very same day says the very opposite—that
“local authorities are generally reluctant to....promote economic growth”?
These are two completely contradictory statements—
“keen to grow their local economies”
in one document, and
“reluctant to promote economic growth”
in the other. They cannot both be true, so which one represents the Government’s view? I am happy to give way to the Secretary of State for him to explain. Well, there is no answer. It would be helpful if documents were read a bit more carefully before they were published.
On the question of incentives, I note that business rate localisation—the term that used to be used—has now become business rate retention. No doubt that is because it has become clear that the Government will take a proportion of business rate income in the form of the central share payment. In effect, it will allow the Government to top-slice such income and, as the Secretary of State has said, to control local government spending.
Before anyone on the Government Benches says that all that money will be returned to local government, the House needs to be aware that although that sounds good, the money is of course fungible across Government. Using that income from retained business rates to pay for other grants to local government will, in effect, create a saving for the Government because it will relieve the Treasury of having to find the money from elsewhere. So, in effect, we have set-aside by another name and in another form.
We do not yet know what size of share the Government intend to take either in the first year or in subsequent years. Nor has any promise been made—I did not hear it tonight—that the share will not change from year to year. It is, in the words of the Local Government Association, one of the many detailed points that “remain unresolved”. As this is, in the main, an enabling Bill, we will not see that detail until later.
Thirdly, I turn to the question of fairness. The Secretary of State is on record as saying:
“we will ensure that no one will be worse off when the new system is introduced than they would have been under the old system.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 663.]
That sounds reassuring, but it is only valid for twelve months. What about years 2, 3 and 5? Can the Secretary of State guarantee that no council will be worse off then as a result of the change he wants the House to bring in? These are really important assurances, for which councils are still looking. As the Secretary of State’s colleague Sir Merrick Cockell, chairman of the LGA, put it:
“Reform must…ensure that those areas that do not have the capacity to raise huge amounts of funding through business rates do not lose out.”
SIGOMA has asked why Ministers have decided not to restore resource equalisation to its 2010-11 cash level, which could have been used as a baseline for future grant allocation.
What guarantee has been given to councils that the tariff and top-up mechanism will produce a fair result, especially given the coalition’s track record? Why do the Government think—or, to be strictly accurate, have the “aspiration”—that resets should happen only every 10 years? We think that they should be more frequent, as do most of those who responded to the consultation.
What about the circumstances, which were mentioned earlier, in which councils lose a major employer, and hence business rate income? That is a very serious matter. How quickly will such councils be given help, how much help will they be given, and how long will it last?
What about the perverse incentives in the business rate system that encourage retail units and gyms more than manufacturing, and encourage warehouses employing few staff more than factories employing a large number of workers?
Then there is the levy mechanism. Last July the Secretary of State told the House:
“There will be no cap on the amount of business growth from which such councils can benefit. A council will be better off as a result of growth”. —[Official Report, 18 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 663.]
Yet the Bill gives the Secretary of State power to decide how much of any growth in business rate income a council can keep. He alone will decide what constitutes a disproportionate benefit. That is the reverse of the localisation that he promised. The retention of business rates is clearly not all that it seems.
If the purpose of the levy is only to fund safety nets—and that is not clear—why does paragraph 28(1) of schedule 1 make it possible for only part of any surplus balance in the levy account to be given back to one or more local authorities? Does that mean that, in effect, a second top-slicing mechanism is being created by the back door?
All that makes it clear that no one can say at this stage what the incentive from keeping some business rate income growth will be. That is why London Councils said, in its briefing on the Bill,
“'the business rate incentive is uncertain and unpredictable”.
What is more, in some cases there could actually be a disincentive. Under the current system, if a council decides to engage in a big redevelopment and regeneration scheme in the centre of its town or city, such as rebuilding that centre, the loss of business rates for an extended period is not a problem, because it does not affect the resources that the council receives. Under the Bill, however, it could well be a problem. It may cause the council to conclude that it is not sure whether it wishes to proceed with the scheme, although the Bill is supposed to be all about encouraging growth.
Let me now deal with the other main part of the Bill, which concerns council tax benefit localisation. It constitutes a step backwards towards a time when different areas gave different help to people in need. The big question is this: why are the Government making this change, and why, if they are determined to do so, have they not linked it to universal credit, as was suggested by many people in the consultation? The fact that they have not done that will lead to a great deal of confusion.
Rent is one cost that people face in order to live somewhere, and council tax is another. In the first case there will continue to be a national scheme to provide help; in the other the national scheme is to be abolished, and councils will be left to decide what benefit should be provided. However, the Government intend to legislate to protect certain council tax payers, while at the same time imposing a 10% cut in the amount that goes to local government to meet the cost of paying the benefit. In areas where there is a lot of need—for different authorities have different needs and different circumstances —that will constitute an additional cut on top of the existing reduction in local authority resourcing of over 19% in the last two years.
Because the Bill will rightly give continuing protection to pensioners, it is inevitable that, unless councils try to reduce benefit for those who are out of work, people who work but are on low incomes will be hit the hardest. Indeed, that is what the Government’s own impact assessment says. The House of Commons Scrutiny Unit has made an estimate of the impact of the 10% cut with protection for pensioners which suggests that non-pensioners—people of working age, whether working or not—will face an average cut of 16% in their council tax benefit support. Of course, in areas where the number of pensioners is higher than average, the cuts facing everyone else will be even bigger.
The New Policy Institute, which has also looked into the effects of the cut, has found that five of the 10 hardest-hit local authorities are among the top 10 most deprived areas, according to the 2007 indices of multiple deprivation: Hackney, Newham, Liverpool, Islington and Knowsley. Meanwhile, according to the same indices, the two least affected areas, Hart and Wokingham, are also the two least deprived. Does that sound familiar? Of course it does. Once again, cuts are being imposed unfairly by the coalition Government. Moreover, the Government’s policy is completely incoherent. The Department for Work and Pensions says, “Hey! We want to make work pay!” but here is a policy that will end up doing the very opposite.
The Secretary of State has a completely inconsistent attitude when it comes to protecting people from council tax increases. When he announced the council tax freeze in March last year, he declared resoundingly:
“we are determined to protect hard-working families...This is about giving real and immediate help to families struggling with the daily cost of living.”
Yet here he is now, proposing a policy that will result in a significant increase in council tax bills for some people, particularly those who work and try to do the right thing, but are on low incomes. Those are the people who he said, less than a year ago, that he was determined to protect, but now he wants us to vote for a measure that could, in some instances, wipe out all the benefit of the council tax freeze. Furthermore, the cuts are being introduced at the very moment when more people are going to need help with their council tax bills. Why? Because unemployment is rising. Why do we know that? Because the Chancellor has told us so.
Costs could also rise because of increased take-up. What account have the Government taken of that—and what about higher unemployment? How are councils expected to cope with that? Given that they will possibly end up designing different schemes, there is a risk that people will decide to move from one council area to another because of the different levels of council tax benefit. And what about the collection costs? As the Conservatives learnt when they introduced the poll tax, when councils start trying to collect money from people who do not have a lot of money, they have a problem. People who are poor must make decisions about what bills to pay, and in what order. What assessment have the Government made of the practicality of collecting the money? What about all the other benefit changes that will affect the same group of people at exactly the same time? I hope that the Secretary of State realises that that when a lot of people discover that they are being hit with increases in their council tax—for that is what his Bill does—there will be a great many appeals. How much will that cost?
Finally, there is the timetable for the implementation of the change. The decision to implement it from April next year was widely criticised by respondents to the consultation, and the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government has called for a delay to allow councils time to put their schemes, software and administration in place.
We do not support this change, just as we do not support the Bill. It does not pass the tests of fairness, incentive, certainty, and helping councils to meet local need. It does nothing to deal with the unfair way in which the Government have imposed the largest cuts on the least well-off communities. The Secretary of State claims to be the great champion of localism, but he has presented the House with a Bill that gives him all the power to determine what happens, including the power to take and keep a top slice of business rates. No wonder the LGA said in its briefing for today’s debate:
“That is not a localising policy and goes against the Government’s stated commitment to localism.”
Say one thing and do another: that is the story of this coalition, and that is why the right thing to do is to reject this Bill.