Somerset Council: Funding and Governance

Debate between Ian Liddell-Grainger and Marcus Fysh

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Fysh]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that it is important that responsibility is taken and that some of these decisions—or lack of decisions, should I say—are held up for scrutiny. It is not acceptable for residents, because of the lack of money, to face the potential loss of services that are really important to them, such as the Yeovil recreation centre and the tourist information centres in Cartgate and Taunton. Such services are essential for our communities, and it is not right that those non-statutory services should now be threatened.

It is also right that we protect non-statutory services generally by making sure that the council does not go into special measures, or is subject to a section 114 notice, which is the council version of a bankruptcy. The Minister will know well how that works. These are potentially very threatening to things that are not core or statutory council operations, and we do not want to see bus services being cancelled because a council goes bust. Residents may not know or necessarily care who is in charge and what is happening, but this is a serious situation. The reality is that the current administration has caused this issue and has not taken the decisions necessary to avoid it. Nevertheless, none of us wants to see that happen and to see these services go, because they are really important.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making very powerful points. I have been trying to work out how long it is, but I have worked with Bill Revans, the leader of the council, for over 25 years, and I have a great deal of respect for him. My hon. Friend is quite right that none of us wants the council to go into special measures. The Minister has been very kind to all of us, and he has given us an enormous amount of time on this. I am also grateful to him for the money he has given so far—I thank him very much.

Would my hon. Friend agree that the big trick with this will be our working together, regardless of our personal views or our political views, to make sure that this does not happen? Once, many years ago, I had the commissioners in to West Somerset Council, and it was a complete disaster. We lost our cohesion, and that council disappeared soon after. This is not something we should take lightly, and I ask my hon. Friend to dwell a little bit more on how we can help the Minister and Somerset Council to get what they want, which is to maintain services—schooling, education and children’s services—so that we do not have a complete disaster on our hands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Fysh]

Yeovil is one of those places that is dripping with potential. It has an incredible defence manufacturing industry, people, skills and development organisations. In my opinion, as someone who has been around the world looking at development and business opportunities for many years, I have never seen an environment that is so conducive to partnership working between business and local institutions to make things happen as there is at Yeovil College. Yeovil and the wider area need that vision from the council to back that up, to be the glue to make permissions happen more easily or to put in infrastructure, whatever is needed.

We need that vision from our local council, and that is what we are not getting right now. It is incredibly frustrating, for someone who wants to do the best to make that difference, with opportunities for people in our town, to find that at all stages it has been underwhelming, shall we say, for everybody dealing with the local council. I urge Ministers to think structurally about change, so that local councils have more accountable responsibility for bringing those things forward.

It is extraordinary, when looking around the world, to see how welcoming some other places are to investment, new thinking and different ways of doing things. When I proposed the idea about six or seven years ago of a new town development on the A303, to capitalise on the advantages of investing so much money in the A303 dualling, which we in Somerset fought so hard to get from the Government, we were met with a brick wall when talking to the council about executing those opportunities, and thinking about whether such things should be in the local plan, to excite local entrepreneurs. It has been such a frustrating process. We need to make sure we have well-equipped, local economic development operations of one kind or another, and to make sure we have good access to local and national incentives that attracts business to set up in different places.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. I think what he is getting around to is levelling up. Somerset has not done very well out of levelling up, and my hon. Friend and I have talked about this. I would say to the Minister that levelling up would help immeasurably. What we need to look at is the learning of skills, rural deprivation, helping young people get on to the job ladder in rural areas—that covers the whole of Somerset—and we certainly need to look at the way people are leaving school. Although we have Bridgwater, Taunton and Yeovil, there is not much in between, and therefore young people have not got those opportunities. I therefore make a plea through my hon. Friend to the Minister that we start talking about getting a levelling up bid for Somerset, where we could work with the council to get money to help the most vulnerable.

[Mr Fysh]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. This is all about thinking of a plan for how we join up those urban and rural development opportunities and our skills development opportunities to make the most of what is an incredible area.

Somerset is a rural area, but I have never seen anything like it in my travels of the whole world—there is so much energy and sophistication in what is a rural environment. Yeovilton is in the north of my constituency —it is the home of the Fleet Air Arm, and the site of one of its core operations. We have the manufacturing cluster around Yeovil, and indeed we have north Dorset, which is second to none in the world in its defence manufacturing abilities. We need to support that—it means people come from all over the world to work and raise their families there; it is not an average rural area by any stretch of the imagination. We need to build on that; it is a massive opportunity for the country in exports, high-value engineering jobs, and all the things that we as a nation are supposed to be trying to encourage.

We need to support our local authorities and ensure they are doing the right thing. We need to ensure they are making the right decisions, at the right time, to be able to save money where it is required, and that they are also thinking about ways of making money where it is required. That should not just be through some fly-by-night plan to invest in commercial real estate; local authorities have no ability to judge if such plans are a good idea, and that is something we need be careful they do not do. However, those core activities of working with private industry to make sure the incentives and skills are there for business is the way forward—that is the way to finance any local authority.

There can be endless arguments about who gave what money to who and so on, but unless that core business of getting growth going in an area is there, with proper support and incentives from local and national government, it will be very hard to compete with some other parts of the world that are doing a brilliant job of it. They are rolling out the red carpet to welcome people to those areas, and they are giving massive incentives: 40% or 50% capital incentives are being paid up front to people who want to start businesses and invest in renewable energy generation—or whatever it is.

There are very serious things going on out there, and we need to think about how we match that. This idea that we can just put our fingers in our ears and pretend it is not happening is for the birds. These are real-time decisions being made now that people are having to think about, and we need to make sure that we are on the same page and we are competitive. Somerset is an amazing place with amazing opportunities, and we need to focus on how we can capitalise on those. They could be an absolute driver of economic performance, and the realisation of the aspirations of people in all income brackets across our country. I hope the House will urgently consider this topic.