Toby Perkins
Main Page: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the policy needs to protect the most vulnerable and to introduce fairness into the system. The expansion of housing benefit to £21 billion—a 50% expansion in the bill—over just a 10-year period is unsustainable; it is more than the police and universities budgets put together and it simply has to be brought into line. It is not fair that people can be in receipt of £2,000 a week to live in areas of London that other people are unable to live in when they work. I am quite certain that Ministers will be very happy to meet such a group.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
19. What assessment he has made of the effect on third sector organisations of the reduction in local authority funding announced on 10 June 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
Councils have complete flexibility in where they find savings to ensure that costs are reduced while they continue to support key front-line services. The voluntary sector is an important part of that.
Toby Perkins
I am grateful to the Minister for his answer, but is not the reality that, as in Chesterfield, many of our voluntary sector organisations rely on core funding from the local government sector, and that the cuts in the local government sector will inevitably lead to a reduction in that core funding that will fundamentally undermine any possibility that the voluntary sector can play a part in this big society?
Andrew Stunell
Well, it is not inevitable. I have just said that councils have complete flexibility in how they set priorities, and local authorities will need to prioritise. I say to the hon. Gentleman and the whole House that just as Ministers here have made sure that the £6.2 billion reductions hit just as hard at the centre as on local authorities, so local authorities need to have the same regard for the voluntary sector.