Sajid Javid
Main Page: Sajid Javid (Conservative - Bromsgrove)
Mr Denham
I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend, as I have been involved at a local level in working the voluntary sector’s Shopmobility scheme, which the local Conservative council wanted to cut. Here was an organisation that had only a small amount of public money but engaged huge numbers of volunteers, enabling thousands of people to get around the town centre. It is funny, is it not, that that should be the Tories’ first target, despite all the talk about the big society?
Mr Denham
I shall give way again in a few moments, but I want to make a little progress.
What is quite clear is that all this is not an accident; it reflects the values of the coalition. I have talked so far about the Secretary of State’s figures. When he published the written ministerial statement, he said with great flourish that no council would lose more than 2% of its budget this year. That is bad enough; it is not trivial. It feels about 30% worse than that, however, if we take into account the cuts implemented from today. By the time most councils have been able to put cuts into practice, it is going to feel like twice that level of cut.
The truth is far worse, because the Secretary of State consciously withheld the true situation from the House. In the figures that were published, over £500 million of the £1.16 billion of cuts was not allocated to local authorities, so no one could tell what the impact would be: it was kept secret—kept under wraps, kept from this House. A few days before, the centralising, dictatorial Secretary of State had instructed local authorities, under threat of punishment by law if they refused, to publish details of every item of spending over £500. As his hapless Minister told the House, no one had even bothered to work out what that would cost local taxpayers; it was just another diktat from behind the big man’s desk. Yet the same Secretary of State who can tell councils what to do down to the last £500 could not manage to tell this House or local councils where he was cutting £500 million. It is ridiculous.
Sajid Javid
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Why does he treat Members as if they are fools? If he wants the truth, it is that his Labour Government’s funding formula was based on petty party politics and had absolutely nothing to do with the needs of individuals. If we want to use examples, the schoolchildren in my constituency of Bromsgrove get £900 less per annum than those in neighbouring Birmingham. The reason for that is very simple: over the past 13 years areas where there are Labour voters got far more money, and the truth is that what we are doing is, in this terrible economic climate, restoring some fairness in the system.
Mr Denham
I think the whole House should take full note of that intervention, because the statement of principle we have just heard from the hon. Gentleman flies in the face of the commitment made during the general election by the then shadow Chancellor, now Chancellor, who said:
“We are all in this together. I am not going to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.”
We have now heard the authentic voice of the Conservative party, however. Irrespective of any economic challenges faced by this country, the Conservatives would have wanted to hammer the poor, and that is what they intend to do. It will not come as any surprise to Labour Members to know that that is what the Tories stand for. What the Liberal Democrats are doing supporting it, I have no idea.
Caroline Flint
Not enough, actually, and for the reasons I outlined. First, we inherited a situation in which councils where people had sought the right to buy were not getting money back from that in capital receipts. Under the right to buy, the better homes were, of course, sold off earlier, which meant that the housing stock that was left was very poor. We addressed how we might improve the social housing sector by looking at not only council housing but housing associations.
I must say that we also took some tough decisions with our own Labour authorities about how they should improve their approach to social housing across the piece. That included making sure that tenants in both housing association stock and council housing had more of a say. We wanted to get rid of the idea, which tarred the Labour party, that every council tenant had to have their front door painted the same because it was a council home. We brought innovation and reform into the sector, and we can be justly proud of that.
However much the Con-Dem Government pretend otherwise, it is clear that the cuts in local government funding will hit hardest not Tory and Liberal Democrat Members, or vast numbers in their constituencies—although I recognise that there are areas of deprivation in every constituency—but those communities and families who are vulnerable and need support, and which Labour Members disproportionately represent. Doncaster council has already had more than £4.5 million in funding cuts, and we have more to come: 20% of Doncaster funding—almost £80 million—is vulnerable.
As Labour Members have said, that money is linked to deprivation and need. Members on the Government Benches took issue with Opposition Members; they suggested, “You’ve had all the money coming your way. It’s not fair that you’ve had all that money for your constituencies’ families and communities.” I do not take any joy in the levels of inequality in my constituency. I came into politics to make sure that people had a chance to have a better life and to address social, economic and health inequalities. In 13 years, we had improvements in our schools, improvements in health, improvements in housing and improvements in skills and jobs. The danger is that the journey stops here today because of the Con-Dem Government and what they will do, because they will stop that progress in its tracks.
In Doncaster, £800,000 will be cut from careers advice for young people, which helps young people to look for apprenticeships or full-time work. There will also be a cut of £150,000 in funding for activities for young people, including for disabled children and young people. Schemes such as the local enterprise growth initiative and the working neighbourhoods fund, which encourage investment, support local businesses, help to create jobs and boost incomes, and which in the long run save money, all now face an uncertain future.
I attended the Thorne carers forum just a couple of weeks ago. It was a day to get carers to come in, have a bit of relaxation, meet some of the different agencies that provide support and to enjoy themselves—to take some time out from their daily activity, which is filled with love but also with difficulties. I wonder what they are thinking about what will happen, because they will probably not get support for the core funding for that event, as it is discretionary, but it means a huge amount to those people, giving them a bit of respite in their daily lives.
At the weekend, I spoke to Maureen Tennyson at the Edlington gala. She is a key activist in Neighbourhood Watch and in tackling antisocial behaviour in our neighbourhood. One problem we have had is with private landlords who buy up cheap properties and then misuse that responsibility by either leaving them empty, letting them become derelict or not taking control of their tenants. There is concern about the selective licensing scheme we are getting going; people have worries in respect of the work being done to get that under way and to make some of these landlords get a licence or not be allowed to let. That will have a huge impact on neighbourhoods where in one street there might be a mixture of private ownership, private rented and council property alongside each other. This is one of the biggest blights. The people who make the money do not live in those communities, and if there is any action to cut back in this regard, the Government are saying a really big “We don’t want to help you” to people in Edlington and elsewhere.
Sajid Javid
We are all in this House to help vulnerable people. Does the right hon. Lady not accept that in 13 years in power her Government increased inequality between the richest and poorest in our society and reduced social mobility? Does she not realise that the best way to help the very people she is talking about is to help them to find jobs and to create opportunities, not make them live off her handouts?
Caroline Flint
There is a case for arguing that the rich got richer, but at the same time we took thousands of children out of child poverty. I will tell the hon. Gentleman something else: cancelling the extension of free school meals to low-income families has prevented 50,000 more children from being taken out of poverty, so I will not take any lectures on fairness and tackling inequality. The Government could have got some extra money by doing what we suggested—by taking more money off the bankers, out of their bonuses—but they fell short on that. There are plenty of other areas that could be looked at, such as Government support for private education, in order to save some money for our schools. Some £100 million comes from Government to support private education in different forms. Perhaps we could look at making a cut there.
Jack Dromey
There are more bankers on the Government green Benches than there are in the square mile of the City of London.
Those admirable community projects’ money will run out in March 2011, and they are now facing a cut of up to one third. The impact of that on those projects and those communities will be absolutely devastating.
Sajid Javid
I am a former banker. I can see that the hon. Gentleman is probably still a trade unionist, rather than a former trade unionist. Does he realise that his party lost the election because it brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy? We are having to impose these cuts because of everything that you did or failed to do. They are your cuts, and there is no point in complaining about them now.
Jack Dromey
Thank you for owning up to your former occupation. I wonder whether you wish us to take any other offences into consideration—
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
I think I have three minutes to make my speech, and I thank the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) for sitting down.
We have heard so much hot air from the Opposition, it is unbelievable. I am glad to be able to speak at the last minute, so that we can have some common sense. I do not think that the Opposition realise that they lost the general election. They lost the general election because they have no idea of the economic damage that they have done to our country. They have done that damage throughout our economy, including in local government finance. They have done that damage in local government finance because they have not understood that the allocation of local government funding should have been based on the needs of individuals in each constituency and not on petty party politics. When we look at the areas in which local government funding fell, we can see that wherever there were Labour voters, that was where the money went. It was not based at all on the needs of individuals.
As the Government make the reforms, we must ensure that the changes reflect the needs. Let us take one example from my constituency. Local school children got £900 less per head per year than those in neighbouring Birmingham. If anyone from the Opposition thinks that there are not vulnerable people in Bromsgrove, they are welcome to come and visit and I shall take them around myself and show them just how similar parts of my constituency are to urban Birmingham.
No matter what the constituency, none of them are uniformly affluent or poor. Areas of wealth and deprivation exist in them all and the needs of the vulnerable in my constituency are no less valid than those of the vulnerable in the constituencies of Opposition Members. As we are forced to make Labour’s cuts to local government spending, it is essential that we also devolve local decision making and cut bureaucracy. Let me end by saying that we must make sure that never again is local government funding allocated according to petty party politics. It should be allocated according to local need. I support the amendment.