Merseyside: Funding of Local Authorities

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for calling this important debate. It is timely, because the Secretary of State is in Liverpool today, addressing northern leaders at the convention of the north.

Last week, we heard the Government fanfare around the levelling-up White Paper. As one commentator put it,

“the Government is like the arsonist turning up late to the scene of their crime with a fire extinguisher in hand claiming to help put out the fire they started”.

So hollow is the Government’s plan that this year—the year of levelling up—councils are being forced to increase council tax precepts yet again, while at the same time making deep cuts to local services. The degradation of local government finances since 2010 has exacerbated geographical inequalities, held back our regional infrastructure and limited the potential of our people and communities.

In this coming financial year, Liverpool City Council will see a starting revenue gap of an eye-watering £34 million. Inflationary pressures and the increase in national insurance—not to mention the insult of having to increase the pay of central Government commissioners by 50%, which is nothing short of a disgrace—are making the picture even grimmer. All that is on top of half a billion pounds-worth of cuts since 2010.

The picture is the same across the Liverpool city region. Even after the Prime Minister’s non-plan for adult social care, councils across Merseyside are still having to make swingeing cuts in that area and raise the adult social care precept, with a starting position of £12 million of cuts for Liverpool in adult social care alone. All the while, demand for services increases, and the recruitment, retention and workforce crisis rages on in the sector. We cannot go on like this.

Such is the arrogance across Whitehall that shuffling deckchairs is the modus operandi, with no real plan for municipal revival and no plan to restore local government to the pinnacle of achievement. Most insulting of all, there is no acknowledgement that the decisions of the past decade have contributed to the growing divide between the north and more affluent parts of the country. It is not rocket science why communities in places such as Merseyside, which have some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country and have been subject to some of the most brutal cuts, have become dirtier and less safe, have lower life expectancy, suffer from increasing food bank usage, and see widening education attainment gaps.

Forgive me for thinking that that has been a deliberate political ploy to re-engineer politics across the north of England, which lets Labour councils, as local establishments, shoulder the blame and burden for austerity and higher taxation, while the Conservative Government come along at the eleventh hour to save the day. Pay more, get less —no wonder our residents are fed up. It may benefit the Conservative party, but it is bad governance, and it is our communities that pay the price. The perverse nature of the centralised British state means that we now have Treasury announcements on filling potholes. Guess what? Local councils used to just fill potholes without the need for a Whitehall press release.

The Government cannot and will not level up this country while our councils are scraping around year after year to produce balanced budgets against a backdrop of sustained cuts. Across our city region, we simply cannot take any more. I hope the Minister has some real ideas for how that is going to be addressed.