Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Wright Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stunell]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had some stern words to say about local authorities that do not take the hint and has called on those earning high salaries in the public sector to take a voluntary pay cut.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

2. What recent discussions his Department has had with representatives of voluntary organisations providing housing services for local authorities on the potential effects on that sector of future local government funding plans.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

My Department has consulted widely with the voluntary sector in relation to the provision of housing services for local authorities, and we have listened carefully to the points they have raised. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we have, for example, protected the homelessness grant, providing £400 million; protected the funding for disabled facilities grant; and minimised reductions to the Supporting People programme over the spending review.

[Mr Wright]

The voluntary groups in my constituency, such as Manor residents association, together in partnership with Housing Hartlepool and Hartlepool borough council, provide much-needed services such as handyman services, financial advice to tenants and tackling antisocial behaviour. Given that they derive their income from local authorities and the registered social landlord, and given yesterday’s announcement of a real-terms cut of 26% in local authority budgets and the cutting by half of the social housing budget, can the right hon. Gentleman tell the voluntary groups where they will get their money from and how these services can be maintained?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman will know the backdrop to this, which is that when he was a Minister the Government literally ran out of money, and not just money from then taxpayers but money from the future, so some steps had to be taken. Despite that, however, we have still managed to protect all those different budgets, particularly that for Supporting People, which will be very important to his local authority: it is almost certainly where those voluntary services are getting quite a lot of their funding. We also heard the Chancellor announce yesterday a £100 million transition fund. I can further tell the hon. Gentleman that I am today announcing £12.25 million for local authorities and the voluntary sector to help households affected by changes in housing benefits. There is a whole package of services there. We absolutely recognise the need to protect the most vulnerable; it is a shame that his Government did not do the same as they spent all the money.