Tim Farron
Main Page: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Mr Pickles
My local council has a budget that would have been lost in the sub-committees of Manchester city council. Labour’s Budget in March 2010 admitted there would be cuts to regional development agency regeneration, the working neighbourhoods fund, the local enterprise growth initiative, the housing and planning delivery grant and time-limited community programmes—and that was just the start. The front-loaded cuts from the Labour party would have meant £14 billion-worth of cuts falling in this year. Under Labour cuts, unprotected Departments would have received an average real-terms cut, over the spending review period, greater than those under the coalition’s deficit reduction plan.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
T2. Because of mistakes made by Cumbria county council in its single status process, Cumbria’s outstanding teaching assistants face a 30% drop in pay and deprofessionalisation. Will the Minister meet me, representatives of Cumbria’s teaching assistants and the county council to find a solution to this impasse so that Cumbria’s teaching assistants can be fairly rewarded and Cumbria’s children can be properly supported?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend, but I am sure he will understand that the role of central Government in relation to local government pay and work force issues is extremely limited because they are rightly for local councillors to decide in local circumstances.