Local Government Funding

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

Indeed, and I will return to a couple of examples of my own in a moment.

There is a real need for local councils to work much more closely with third sector organisations in their areas. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has already made the point that we must not encourage councils to take the easy way out, which is to save money by cutting direct grants to local charities.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about reinventing local government and finding new ways of doing things. I am still a local councillor, and I agree with him, but does he agree that front-loading the cuts when we still do not have the local government settlement, but when we have had the CSR, will make it harder to do those things? Councils will have less time and will have to go for easier, quicker cuts to balance the books.

[George Hollingbery]

Indeed. It is difficult to make plans at this late stage, but we have known about the cuts for some considerable time. Most councils have known for at least two or three years that the economic times are difficult. My local councils have been planning for such changes for two or three years. Frankly, it is no great excuse to say at this stage that we do not yet know the level of the settlement. We all know—and we have known for a long time—that it will be difficult.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. This is not something that my council experienced on its own—it happened across the country, as we know.

As I said, we were expected to pay our corporate directors a salary of £105,000, which most people in the city of Hull, and indeed across east Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, can only dream of. Then, in time, we had to appoint a new chief executive. Needless to say, they were not appointed at the same salary as the previous chief executive—there was a massive salary increase that had a knock-on effect on other local authorities in our area, which judged themselves against how much the neighbouring authority was paying. If we cannot get people to work in local government on salaries lower than that of the Prime Minister, we are doing something badly wrong.

I also well remember the settlements that we used to get from the Labour Government—it was a case of giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Nowhere was that more clear than in the best value process, which required us to measure 100 to 200 different things and report back to central Government. One of our best value performance indicators was to measure how many of our park benches had arms. I am sorry, but when I go drinking in the Dog and Duck, or in my real pub, the Percy Arms—[Interruption.] It is conveniently named. People do not come up to me and say, “Andrew, what we want you to do as a local authority is to measure how many park benches have arms.” They want their council to be providing services—over the past couple of weeks, gritting, snow ploughing, and so on. They do not want it to be spending hundreds of thousands of pounds every year reporting back on such silly measures.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that local authorities should be subject to no inspection regime whatsoever?

[Andrew Percy]

No, that is not what I said. I am saying that local authorities should be subjected to an awful lot less inspection, and that we certainly should not be running around paying people fat salaries to go measuring how many park benches have arms. If Labour Members are seriously suggesting that they want to maintain that system, I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman so that he can explain to my constituents why my local council should continue to do that.

We all understand that there has to be some measurement of public services, whether they are in schools, the health service or local authorities, but we have to consider the proportion of time, money and resources spent on that. Under the previous Government, it got completely out of hand—some of it was well meant, but it had unintended consequences. It was alleged at that time that money was thrown at some councils, but it was not always thrown to provide better services; often it was spent on employing more people to sit behind desks and measure things that the public would, frankly, not consider to be a priority. That is what happened in my authority in relation to councillor training. We were suddenly told, following our CGI and CPA inspections, that we had to spend more taxpayers’ money on training councillors to do the job that political parties should ensure that they can do before they stand for office. That is why I refused to undertake councillor training—perhaps that says a lot about me.

One of the most ridiculous things that was produced by our council—no doubt by somebody on a good salary—was a guide to professionally appropriate language for councillors. At great expense to the taxpayer, we were issued with a guide to tell us that we must not call women flower, duck or love. If that is considered a good use of taxpayers’ money, I am afraid that I am in a different camp.

My other recollection from the past 10 years serving as a local councillor is that, although everything was fantastic and rosy, as we have heard from Labour Members, there were considerable hikes in council tax. The last time the Labour party ran Hull city council, it raised council tax by 10%. If that is evidence of good central Government funding to some of the poorest authorities, I do not know what planet I have been living on.

There is a sensible debate to be had about local government funding, but today’s attempts to create division are unhelpful. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness made the point that I was going to make.