Jack Dromey
Main Page: Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)
Greg Clark
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I was grateful to my colleagues from Gloucestershire for the representations that they made. He will be pleased to hear that the pressure on them will ease for the first two years—it will be to the tune of about £2.5 million next year—which, knowing the pressures on the council for exactly the reasons that he said, will be welcomed locally.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
At £0.75 billion, no council has ever suffered the same level of cuts in local government history as Birmingham. No city has ever been treated so unfairly. Does the Secretary of State begin to understand the dismay that there will be over today’s announcements, which will put at risk school crossing patrols, deepen the growing crisis of health and social care in the city and threaten dozens of community groups supporting the most vulnerable in Birmingham? There will be utter dismay in Britain’s second city.
Greg Clark
The figures that I have published today include an extra £800,000 from the new homes bonus for Birmingham that was not included in the provisional settlement. I should have thought that that was a cause of some pleasure in Birmingham, rather than the opposite.