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Mr. Eric Illsley (Barnsley, Central) : I shall not respond to the comments about Basildon by the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), who made an excessively long speech. I am sure that the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) will speak about his constituency some day--if the hon. Gentleman permits him to do so.
The Government's decision to charge-cap Barnsley metropolitan borough council is harsh and undemocratic and removes from the poll tax any notion of accountability. The authority is not profligate or inefficient, yet it will lose about £10 million from its budget in what is left of this financial year. Barnsley set a poll tax figure of about £329, which is lower than the figure set by 250 other authorities, yet it is being charge- capped.
I shall refer to Audit Commission figures which show that Barnsley is a low -spending authority. I challenge the Secretary of State or the Minister of State to point to any aspect of that authority's spending which is profligate or inefficient. Members of the authority met the Secretary of State and the Minister of State earlier this year and so far they have not been told of any service that is overprovided or inefficient.
The Secretary of State has stumbled upon a dubious method of capping only Labour-controlled authorities. He does so by comparing poll tax levels with the standard spending assessments. Capping has been achieved by imposing extremely low SSAs on various authorities, but those assessments are so diverse and unfair as to be totally meaningless and unrealistic. Barnsley is supposed to provide the same level of service as authorities such as Manchester, but we are allowed to spend only half the amount of cash in doing so. I want to dispel the myth that only high-spending authorities are being charge-capped. The capping criteria take into account only the Government's idea of what an authority should spend, and then look at the percentage poll tax level above that. That throws any idea of accountability out of the window, because it does not take account what an authority might need or what its circumstances are. The needs of the authority and the area do not conform to the formula that the Minister has used
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to allocate the SSA. I am sure that he is aware of that and does not need me to tell him again. Our problems--lack of economic development, low educational standards and achievement, decline of industry, and the loss of jobs in the mining industry--have all been explained to the Minister, and all have been ignored.When it set its budget this year, Barnsley budgeted to spend £846 per adult, when the average figure for metropolitan districts is £915. Bradford has set its budget 19 per cent. higher than Barnsley, but has not been capped. From 1983 to 1990, Barnsley's assessed need, on grant-related expenditure assessments or on means assessment, has varied between 70 and 80 per cent. of the average level for England. That is not 70 per cent. of the highest, so for the past seven years we have been below the needs assessment of the rest of the country. Over that period, our needs assessment has risen by 62 per cent. while the needs assessment in Bradford has risen by 93 per cent. If we had increased our assessment by that much we would not have come anywhere near the capping criteria. Over the past year, the needs assessment has risen by 2 per cent., taking account of the current rate of inflation. That is a ridiculous increase, and the Minister knows that, if that needs assessment had been increased properly, our poll tax would have been reasonable, and we should not have been capped.
Of the 418 other authorities, 359 had bigger increases in their means assessment than had Barnsley. Why does Barnsley have to provide all the services at a lower cost than other areas? Why do we have to spend only £394 when other authorities can spend £414? Why is it that we can spend only £86 per adult a year on social services when other authorities can spend £101? On highways, in an area with mining subsidence, we can spend only £37 per adult per year when the rest of the country can spend £44. For all services taken together, Barnsley can spend £669 per adult when the average is £836. The needs estimate for Manchester is £1,170, for Liverpool £1,068, for Birmingham £1,060 and for Barnsley £669. Why is our assessment so far below that of these other authorities, when we have to provide the same level of services?
I shall now set out the needs of the authority. Barnsley's record on education is one of the worst in the country, and always has been. I have fought to change it, as did my predecessor, and the local authority is also fighting to change it. There is a traditional culture in Barnsley and the surrounding area of a low take-up of post-16 education. A new tertiary college has just been created. As a result of poll tax capping, £1 million has to come out of its budget before it has even opened. In the past, when lads left school they went straight into jobs in the mining and glass industries. Both industries have vanished. By working in those industries and attending the local technical college, they obtained their post-16 education.
Our costs for special education are the highest in the country. We have the highest pupil-teacher ratio in the cluster of authorities known as the Webber-Craig authorities. Only three authorities spend less than Barnsley, on books and equipment. There is one computer for every 50 children in the country as a whole. In Barnsley, the figure is one computer for every 70 children. My authority has no modern language teaching assistants. There are 26 in the authority represented by my hon.
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Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy). The figures are there for all to see. They are not my figures which I have plucked out of the air. They have been provided by the Audit Commission and other bodies.As for economic development, unemployment in Barnsley is still double the national average. Since 1983 we have lost 20,000 mining jobs. British Coal's educational provision has also gone. We are desperately struggling to regenerate the area, but if we cut the provision for education, which is what we are being asked to do by slashing £10 million from the education budget, we shall be unable to do so. Two thirds of the authority's budget is spent on education. Barnsley's original poll tax figure was £329--not terribly excessive. Shortly afterwards, Barnsley went to the polls so that the Secretary of State's ideas on accountability could be tested. There were 22 seats to be contested ; nine were unopposed ; three had completely new candidates. That was the highest number of unopposed seats for the past four years. The rest were held by Labour. We increased our share of the vote in 1990, compared with 1986, from 71 to 76 per cent. In five seats, the majority was increased by more than 50 per cent. The number of votes cast for each Labour candidate increased by 35 per cent. while the votes cast for Conservative candidates decreased by 19 per cent. The people of Barnsley overwhelmingly endorsed the poll tax figure of £329.
Barnsley is not a high-spending authority. We accepted the authority's poll tax figure. The council is not profligate ; it does not spend money on this, that and the other. However, an artificially low needs assessment and an artificially low standard spending assessment have been imposed on Barnsley. Local authority accountability, to which the Secretary of State referred, has been transferred to him because he has taken the decision to cap Barnsley.
Some people in Barnsley believe that the poll tax cut will be good for them, but it will lead to reduced services. Moreover, their poll tax bills will not go down all that much. The Secretary of State will eventually have to concede the shortfall in poll tax collection. The authorities will have to ask the Secretary of State for more money to meet that shortfall. The Minister shakes his head, but the shortfall in poll tax collection is greater than the authorities budgeted for when the poll tax was first set.
The cuts that will be necessary in my authority will be as bad as any of those that have already been cited by other hon. Members. I shall refer to only a few. Each week my authority meets in an attempt to phase in certain cuts in the time that it has left to do so. The first cut took £4.9 million out of the budget, mainly for education. Even swimming lessons for primary school children are being cut. The cost of school meals went up on the first day the cap was announced. School transport has been reduced to the absolute minimum. All 24 teachers at the schools' music centre in Barnsley have been made redundant. The nine local branch libraries are due to close. One of them is on a council estate with an unemployment level of 50 per cent. Old people's homes will be closed.
Mr. Stott : Ask the Minister about that. Is that leisure centre mentality?
Mr. Illsley : I could talk to the Minister until I was blue in the face, but he does not want to listen.
The next phase of cuts will involve £6.6 million. There has been no recruitment in Barnsley for the past few years.
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One Conservative Member referred to the number of job vacancies in Avon. There are no job vacancies in my part of the world. There will be redundancies among manual workers such as gardeners in the parks. There will be redundancies among teachers. All those cuts must be made in the current year's expenditure.Joint ventures are at risk. Barnsley has a proposed joint venture with Costain. I hope that it can find the funding for that because it is needed to regenerate the area. It is unfortunate that when Barnsley wants to borrow money, through the usual channels, the City does not want to know because it does not want to lend money to a charge-capped authority. It is worried that the authority will not have the finance to repay the loan. That is what is happening in an area with double the national average unemployment.
Charge capping has removed any vestige of accountability from the poll tax. It is undemocratic and harsh. It will rebound on the Government at the next election, when accountability will be important--but that accountability will be placed at the Secretary of State's door, not at the door of local government.
9.23 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) : I am pleased to speak in this debate because I have been deeply involved in local government for a long time. I was a councillor in Haringey for nine years and I was an organiser for the National Union of Public Employees. During the past 10 to 15 years, there has been an unremitting attack on local government and on the ability of elected local authorities to make decisions that deeply affect the lives of people in their communities.
I represent an inner-city constituency. It has many housing, health and social services problems. It is not unusual for the weekly constituency surgeries held by myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) to last for four or five hours. In the main, people have problems with housing and with community care for elderly relatives. Those problems emanate largely from a lack of sufficient funding either in the national health service or in local government.
Unless more resources are put into local government and unless there is real support in solving the deep social problems in inner London, there will, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and others have said, be a whirlwind.
We are now debating, in the middle of July, a cut of £74.9 million in the budgets of a number of London local authorities, which must be made in the current year. What chance is there for any local authority to plan its expenditure, given that, three months later, we are debating cuts in budgets that were discussed last December, January and February? What possible consultation can there be with trade unions, local community organisations or anybody else, given that seven months later we are discussing how that can be done? We are facing a serious constitutional position. The Government are keen to claim that they are concerned about promoting democracy around the world, yet here in Britain, we have the real vestige of the unitary state and elected local authorities cannot make decisions on matters affecting their own areas because central Government are to cap their expenditure, and because central Government
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control their expenditure in the first place. On top of that, over the past 11 years, the proportion of central Government finance for local authorities--compared to that raised by local taxation--has decreased, while the proportion raised by local taxation has increased a great deal.Added to that, we have had the imposition of the poll tax--the most blatantly unfair and wrong form of taxation anywhere in the world. That is the heart of the debate, and the first priority of an incoming Labour Government will be to get rid of the poll tax. For the past 10 years, the Conservative Government have forced privatisation on local authority services. They claim that it is efficient. In the health service, privatisation has resulted in dirty hospitals, dirty wards, and inadequate standards of health care. In local government, privatisation has meant that there are people on the dole who ought to be working, dirty school kitchens, unswept streets, uncollected refuse and private contractors making a killing by employing a small number of people where many used to be employed. Those are the effects of privatisation.
The Government blithely make allegations about waste in local authorities. There have been plenty of lectures from Conservative Members--who presumably have now gone to dinner--about councillors' profligacy in travelling first class by rail. We should remember that every hon. Member can travel first class if he so wishes and that hon. Members receive the most generous car allowance given to anybody anywhere in the country. The right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson)--the former Chancellor of the Exchequer--is, I believe, earning about £500,000 a year, although earning is not the right word because nobody earns that ; the right hon. Gentleman receives it, merely because he is a former Minister.
Mr. Skinner : My hon. Friend should tell the House the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When the Prime Minister came to office in 1979, she replaced the Rover that Jim Callaghan had with two Daimlers--one for herself and one for her husband to lie on his back and sup his gin in.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. That has nothing to do with charge capping.
Mr. Corbyn : It is not directly connected with charge capping, and I do not want to get away from the subject, but I think that it is fair to contrast the profligacy with which former Cabinet Ministers are paid and the way in which Lambeth, Liverpool, and Clay Cross councillors have been denied civic rights for standing up for their communities--and now a further surcharge of £200,000 is to be imposed on Lambeth councillors who were trying to defend the services available to the people of Lambeth. That is the contrast that exists in Britain today. That is the hypocrisy and sleaze surrounding British politics.
My local authority has been told that it must cut £4 million from its budget in six months. In reality, that cut will be double the £4 million figure, because it has to be achieved quickly. It can be achieved only by serious harm to people in that community. However, at exactly the same time, Islington is told that it must contribute to the safety net that is applicable to other authorities in London. That means that Islington is to suffer a cut. My authority will experience job losses and a lack of services that are desperately needed, while at the same time contributing to the Government's bribe to the voters in Wandsworth. That
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cannot be right. It cannot be right that Islington is being cut while Wandsworth is benefiting from a subsidy paid by the poll tax payers of Islington.Islington has incurred expenditure of £1.2 million on the poll tax, with £7.4 million on capital controls and £4.8 million because of the ring fencing of the housing revenue account, and it has to pay £1.6 million to the London residuary body for the break-up of the Inner London education authority, yet it has been told that inflation is running at only 4 per cent. When I buy things from shops in Islington and when the council buys things, the inflation rate is 10 per cent., not 4 per cent. Whoever dreamed that the inflation rate is 4 per cent. is not living in the real world. The safety net contribution is £41 per head. All those are extra charges.
The housing revenue account has been ring-fenced to prevent any so-called "subsidy" to council housing. However, when we asked last week that the community care budget should be ring-fenced to protect community care clients when the services are transferred to the health authorities, we were told, "No, that cannot be done." We are seeing the greatest hypocrisy and double standards.
I hope that the debate results at least in the public understanding that we are witnessing the destruction of local democracy and local communities' ability to make their own decisions. We have a highly centralised state, a highly centralised media and a highly centralised Government who, in essence, are dictating to local authorities throughout the country.
People are elected to serve on local authorities because they wish to do something to improve their communities and because, for example, they want more nurseries and libraries and more people taking advantage of post-16 education. Local people are prepared to vote for that. I remind the Government of the election result in my borough--we have 51 Labour councillors and only one opposition councillor. We achieved a large swing to Labour at recent elections, despite years of articles in The Sun which vilified individual councillors and attacked the authority. We have also had rate capping and poll tax capping continuously for several years. The people of the borough have expressed their view clearly. They believe in a high level of collectively provided services to cope with the needs of a deprived inner-city area.
The Government have refused to fund the borough to the level that it needs. Local people have been prepared to vote to maintain those levels of services, but the axe is now being wielded by the Secretary of State for the Environment and his friends. I hope that the people of my borough and every other charge-capped authority will realise that the real culprits, the people who are really making the cuts, are that smug lot across the Chamber who have been busy denying people their needs.
It will fall to a future Government--I hope--to restore the level of central Government funding to local authorities and to remove the obscenity of local councillors being removed from office, not for fraud or corruption, but merely for trying to defend their local services. If the same standards were applied to the former Secretary of State for the Environment and to his spending on legal charges when trying to defend himself--or to many other Ministers--there would not be many
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ex-Ministers in the House because they would all be debarred from office. We cannot allow that system of double standards to continue. I want to see real democracy in this country. That means giving local authorities the right to be elected to provide the services that the local people want and giving them the ability to collect the tax to pay for it.Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : Does my hon. Friend know that there has never been a debate in the 20th century either in the House or in Committee on the bankruptcy provision that debars people from local government service, which was used against the Clay Cross and other councillors? The bankruptcy provisions affecting public office are a 19th- century idea, associated with a privileged and propertied electorate for whom bankruptcy has some meaning. There is no sense in the word "bankruptcy" for the ordinary working class people who are involved in local government--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. Once again we are straying from the motion.
Mr. Corbyn : I do not want to stray from the terms of the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but earlier we heard some wild allegations from the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) about former councillors who were debarred from office in Clay Cross. He made the monstrous claim that they were sacked for corruption. In fact, the individual concerned was debarred from office for standing up against the Housing Act 1971 and was dismissed from his job for being a shop steward, active in his union.
I do not want to dwell on that, but I should like it to be absolutely clear on the record that Opposition Members oppose the orders. We do so absolutely because we want to protect the services that are so vital to the people of our communities. We also want something better. We want a nursery place for every child whose parents want it. We want to see libraries well stocked, schools well provided for, housing estates properly maintained and, above all, houses built so that the social crisis in London can be tackled by proper allocation of resources. We do not want tax cuts for the rich, which is the only philosophy that the Government understand. 9.34 pm
Mr. Roger Stott (Wigan) : Mr. Speaker said at the beginning of the debate that it would conclude at 12 o'clock tonight. It is now just after 9.30 and there are four Conservative Members in the Chamber. That is indicative of the way in which the Government have dealt with poll tax capping. My hon. Friends the Members for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) and for Wallsend (Mr. Garrett), and others of my hon. Friends who have spoken, said more in their 10-minute speeches about the real issues than the Secretary of State for the Environment said in an hour-long speech. He did not address the problem that he has created.
The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo) : The hon. Gentleman should recognise that Conservative Members who are affected by the capping proposals have spoken in the debate and that Conservative Members who are not affected have not attempted to speak. They recognise the tremendous pressure on the time of the House and wish to give an
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opportunity to Opposition Members affected by the proposals to speak. The hon. Gentleman would rightly have complained if Conservative Members who are not affected had trespassed on the time of Labour Members who are affected by the proposals.Mr. Stott : I hear what the Minister says. None the less, if Conservative Members regard the poll tax as the flagship of their election manifesto and if they support the capping procedure that the Secretary of State proposes, there should have been more passive support on the Benches behind him.
Mr. Blunkett : Perhaps one reason why the Minister is correct to say that time needs to be given to hon. Members who represent constituencies where the authority has been poll tax capped is that the overwhelming majority--not 100 per cent.--of capped authorities happen to be represented by Labour Members who are struggling to protect services and jobs in their constituencies.
Mr. Stott : My hon. Friend guessed what I was about to say. We have all made that point this evening. I need not dwell on the bogus and spurious formula that the Secretary of State has cooked up to determine the standard spending assessment. It allows him to poll tax-cap authorities which he believes have been profligate. Surprise, surprise, every authority that has been capped under the formula is Labour-controlled even though some authorities controlled by other parties have set a higher poll tax than my local authority or those of my hon. Friends. Therefore, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) is correct. We do not need to dwell on that. My hon. Friends have made precisely that point this evening.
I draw the attention of the House to a point made by the Secretary of State in his opening remarks. He spent some time telling the House that what he has done has been vindicated by the courts because they have said that it is legal. I am not surprised that that is so because the Secretary of State wrote the rules. I should have been surprised if the courts had not ruled that he had the right to cap authorities, because he wrote the script.
My authority is the only one that did not take the Secretary of State to court. We were advised by a QC that the Secretary of State had the whole game sewn up. However, there is still some concern among judges and the rest of the legal profession over the Secretary of State's action. I refer the Minister to an article in the "Justinian" column in the Financial Times, written by Louis Blom-Cooper, the well-known Queen's counsel :
"Information concerning actual budgeted expenditure by all (except one) local authorities was with the minister by mid-March. But notification by the minister of his designation of the local authorities to be charge- capped was delayed until the beginning of April. By that time, it was impossible for any local authority to plan its expenditure so as to avoid restriction on its community charge, simply because no local authority could know in advance what rules or principles were to be applied by the minister. Mr. Christopher Patten was well aware of the consequences late service of his notice would have on local government administration." My hon. Friends have been making the same point all night. It was made by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). We all knew what rate capping would mean because we were told in advance, but the Secretary of State did not tell anybody in advance his intentions in respect of poll tax capping. Mr. Blom-Cooper went on :
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"The Secretary of State did not inform local authorities as to the principle he was proposing to adopt before designating them as excessive spenders. No local authority could be certain as to the size of the field on which they were going to be playing, the shape of the ball, or where the goalposts would be placed."That article is headed
"The Government moves the goalposts."
That is precisely what they did.
Wigan council spent £250,000 sending out letters indicating what the poll tax would be, but then the Secretary of State announced from the Dispatch Box in April that he intended to cap my local authority. We had already devoted considerable resources to that exercise when the Secretary of State announced that Wigan would be capped. Why did councils in Wigan, Barnsley, Rotherham, Derby, Doncaster and Brent--
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse (Pontefract and Castleford) : But not Wandsworth.
Mr. Stott : --arrive at certain conclusions as to the level of their poll tax--as did Wigan, with a figure of £372? In doing so, did they ride gung-ho over the opinions of their ratepayers? Did they arrive at those figures because they are macho lunatic councillors who want to spend on everything in sight? I have taken delegations from my local authority to the Department of the Environment at least three times, always making the point that the Department's formula for grant-related expenditure assessment is disadvantageous for my constituency. I have also said that several times to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope).
Mr. Skinner : The one who is getting the sack.
Mr. Stott : I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that talking to the Under-Secretary of State on that subject is like watching girders rust. You could walk into the deepest recesses of the Under-Secretary's mind and you would not even get your feet wet. We have been there on at least three or four occasions. We said to him, "Minister, we do not have any immigrants in Wigan. Nor do we have a high proportion of lone-parent families. Similarly, we do not have a higher than national average proportion of old people." Therefore, the calculation under GREA does not recognise or understand our real problems. The calculation is based on the prevailing social circumstances of the day, not on the economic circumstances of the day.
Wigan, like Barnsley, Rotherham and other northern constituencies, was the cauldron of the industrial revolution. Mining, textiles and engineering, all of which have declined over the years, were to be found in the area. There is not a single pit, textile factory or major engineering factory left in Wigan. The consequences of that decline are that we are left with pit tips and the pollution of the industrial revolution. We are left with environmental problems and high unemployment.
The GREA formula does not recognise those factors. It does not take into consideration the major structural and economic problems with which my constituency and others must cope.
Mr. Hardy : A few days ago, I spoke at a conference in Blackpool. I sat next to the mayor and asked him what the poll tax was in Blackpool. I discovered that it was £2
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higher than the poll tax in Wigan. I asked the mayor how much the council had been capped and he told me that it had not been capped. Does my hon. Friend believe that that is because Blackpool's poll tax is only £2 more than the poll tax in Wigan, or because there is a Labour-controlled authority in my hon. Friend's constituency but a Conservative one in Blackpool?Mr. Stott : My hon. Friend has made my point. Perhaps it is not unusual for a formula to be constructed which does not catch a single Conservative-controlled authority even though their poll tax levels are much in excess of the poll tax levels set in my authority and in the constituencies of other hon. Members who have spoken tonight. [Interruption.] My colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench have provided me with some information. I become confused about initials. When I referred to GREA I should have referred to the standard spending assessment.
There are special problems in Wigan and in areas like it because they are old industrial areas. My authority, in the face of those problems, had to clearly outline and identify its priorities. It had to ensure that it preserved the services that it thought were necessary. As my hon. Friend's constituencies have done in the past, we had to set about the revitalisation of our area given the decline in coal, textiles and heavy engineering.
We have attracted new industry to the area. Heinz is locating its European headquarters in Wigan. Pennsylvania Glass, the Tote and the Tidy Britain Group are all setting up their headquarters in Wigan and Girobank is providing a new centre there. All that was achieved in partnership with the local authority. In addition, we have prioritised the social provision for our people, including education, schools and home helps.
We have endeavoured to protect our people against the worst ravages of a decade of Thatcherism. Does that sound like a loony council? Does that sound like a profligate one or, to quote the expression used by the Minister at recent conference, a "leisure centre mentality" council? In the past three years, a raft of Ministers have visited Wigan and they have all said what a wonderful job we have done. They all said that Wigan pier is marvellous. We have all heard the music hall jokes about Wigan pier, but since Her Majesty the Queen opened the Wigan pier centre in 1984, it has attracted nearly 2 million overseas visitors. That enterprise was designed and undertaken by the local authority.
As a result of the order, the Secretary of State has decided to reduce my council's budget by £8 million. Originally it was to be cut by £10 million, but we re-submitted our case and the Minister was magnanimous and lopped off two million quid. He and I know that that £2 million has been taken up by administration costs, and interest charges as well as by the cost of re-issuing poll tax bills to a quarter of a million people.
My hon. Friends have already outlined the problems that such reductions in budget will create. My hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) spoke about the meals-on-wheels service, old people's homes, schools and other educational provision that would be hit. All the services that we provide to our people will be damaged. Conservatives talk about democracy and the democratic involvement of local communities. The metropolitan borough council of Wigan is made up of 72 members, 65
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of whom are Labour and only two of whom are Conservative. I have the privilege of standing in this Chamber as the Labour Member for Wigan with a majority of 22,000. I do not need to be told by the Conservatives what my constituents feel.I am glad that the Secretary of State has returned to the Chamber because we are talking not about a bleeding stump, but about real problems. On Monday a constituent came to my office. He is middle-aged and a mature student with a place at Salford university to study for a BSc. The director of education in Wigan has written to that man to say that he is sorry, but, because of charge capping and because that man is eligible only for a discretionary grant, the council is unable to pay for his three-year course. I am not talking about a bleeding stump, but a real person, Mr. John White of 7 Bramble Grove, Worsley Hall, Wigan. His life has been totally destroyed. He is unable to start his university course in September because my local authority has had to cut the money that they were to give him.
Such problems are not the responsibility of my local authority ; the responsibility lies with Conservative Members and, come the next general election, they will pay for it.
Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Speaker : Order. If those hon. Members waiting to be called speak for about 10 minutes each, I shall be able to call all of them before midnight.
9.54 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth) : I shall endeavour to keep to the time limit that you suggested, Mr. Speaker.
I am glad that the Secretary of State is present, because in his introduction he seemed to be fairly confident--almost acerbic--about the fact that so far the courts have found his action lawful. He was good enough to allow me to intervene and suggest that, although the courts might have found his action lawful, local authorities have been entirely justified in showing that what may be legal is not necessarily just. I hope to show that the Government's action has been utterly unjust to the point of corruption.
I used some statistics on 25 April, and I propose to repeat some of them and use two or three others. I remember telling the House that Westminster spends £1,141 per head, which the Prime Minister and her colleagues regard as prudent. Rotherham spends £820 per head, but she regards that as big spending. Unfortunately--this is the argument that the Minister must overcome, but he is not doing so in the north--Westminster receives £865 per head in Government standard spending grant, whereas Rotherham receives £188.
Rotherham must pay more because the biggest single item in its budget, as the Minister knows, is the education of children. As Rotherham will have a larger than average proportion of its population at school, whereas Westminster will have a smaller proportion, the accusation of corruption is certainly justified. It is not only Rotherham that is entitled to be angry. We have carefully analysed the changes that accompanied the introduction of the poll tax. It has been established beyond doubt that there has been a marked and deliberate shift of resources from the areas of need. For example, changes in Government grants to local authorities cost Yorkshire and
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Humberside £373.8 million this year, whereas the south-east of England-- [Interruption.] I will give way to the Secretary of State if he wishes me to do so.Mr. Chris Patten : Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to tell that story to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham or inner-London boroughs. If he looks at the contribution that Government make to education needs, he will see that far more resources are being given to those inner-city areas.
Mr. Hardy : I shall give way again to the Secretary of State in a few minutes because I have not finished.
Mr. Hardy : I shall answer, as the Secretary of State courteously did in his speech, but I will not take so long.
The fact remains that Yorkshire and Humberside received £373.8 million less in grant this year, whereas the south-east received £414 million more. It is no good the Secretary of State shaking his head in disagreement because that is a fact. Including the safety net, the south-east gained £389.3 million.
Unfortunately, the problem is that, in shifting the money from metropolitan districts and shire counties to assist inner London, particularly Westminster and Wandsworth, the metropolitan areas generally, and the Yorkshire area in particular, suffered severely indeed. But because of the nature of the calculations, smaller metropolitan districts such as Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster, Wigan and St. Helens caught a bitter cold. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) said--his area is affected more than mine--the quality of life is likely to be completely destroyed. School music, swimming, and the efforts of individuals to promote the quality of life to compensate for the horrors that we inherited from industrial history will be destroyed. All that will go unless there is an absolute assurance from the Minister that the corrupt distribution of central funds will be amended next year.
There must be an improvement in the calculations as the basis of the Government's assessment is ridiculous. The factual basis for social calculations is outdated, and the assumptions upon which grants have been made are erroneous. For example, much of the social calculation within Government funding comes from the 1981 census. Does the Minister not understand that in my borough we have lost Cortonwood colliery, Wath colliery, Manvers colliery, Kilnhurst colliery, Brookhouse colliery, Orgreave colliery and two or three others that I have not mentioned ; plus steelworks, plus one of the largest glassworks in the country, in Swinton, which Guinness assured us would be saved if a takeover went ahead, plus the railway marshalling yard at Wath ; and the largest coking plant in Europe, and another coking plant at Brookhouse, which one of my hon. Friends may seek to mention tomorrow? We have lost thousands of jobs. Thousands of the losses are in steel because of restructuring in the industry.
All the closures that I have mentioned have occurred since 1981. The economic base of my area has been dramatically changed ; in fact it has been destroyed. None of those changes is reflected in the calculations upon which the standard spending assessment was made. The Minister suggested that I got angry when we debated this issue before. If his constituency had been
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disfigured in the past 10 years in the way that mine has, and then he was robbed, he would understand why we are angry.Mr. Chris Patten : I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way twice in his necessarily brief remarks. He is criticising SSAs. As I recall, although his local authority budget is above the SSA, it also happens to be about 15.5 per cent. above the former grant distribution formula--GREA. The hon. Gentleman is saying not only that the SSA is inadequate but that the last formula was inadequate, too. It seems that the formulae are always inadequate for his local authority, which is rather surprising.
Mr. Hardy : Of course I am. If the Minister wants comments on the previous assessment system, the Audit Commission provided evidence of the defective nature of GREA. In my area, that was compounded because we have the highest level of unemployment in the country and the largest problem with environmental dereliction, which is growing. The Members of Parliament who represent the Rotherham borough and people in my authority recognise that we have to transform our environment to provide our economy with a chance of survival and success. The local authority is seeking to do that. No Minister can argue that my authority is inefficient. The Minister said that we have been to these shores before, but we have never been to these shores as far as the Rotherham authority is concerned.
Rotherham has a particular need and the problems are getting worse almost every day as further industrial closures and economic changes take place.
I am taking a little longer than expected because of the Secretary of State's interventions. The Department of the Environment assumes that the snow lies longer in London than in the Lake District and the rest of Cumbria. That is one preposterous illustration of the inadequate methods of calculation, and the other calculations make me angrier still.
According to the social indicators and the social calculations that the Department has made, the Rotherham metropolitan area is regarded as the least deprived and the best off of all the metropolitan districts. It ranks 98th in the table of deprivation. Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight and such depressed places as Richmond- on-Thames and the royal borough of Tunbridge Wells are all regarded by the Department as far more deprived than Rotherham. Yet Rotherham has the highest unemployment and the worst environment problems in the country. The Minister cannot deny that because it is taken from a recent answer to a parliamentary question.
The Minister knows very well that areas such as Barnsley, Doncaster, Wigan and Rotherham are deprived. They do face difficulties. For his Government to produce calculations which show that the places that I have mentioned are impoverished, poor, deprived and facing dereliction on a scale far worse than my area is sufficient for me to charge the Government with the utmost corruption and the grossest unfairness that anyone has seen in public life in Britain for a long time.
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10.5 pmMr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : I apologise for being out of the Chamber while I attended an important Committee meeting between 4.15 pm and 7 pm and attended to some other business afterwards. As a result, I missed the contributions of the hon. Members for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) and for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim), which I understand were vitriolic attacks on Derbyshire county council. The hon. Member for Amber Valley made a similar vitriolic attack on Derbyshire county council in a recent ten-minute rule application and on other occasions. I have told the hon. Gentleman that I wish to refer to his contribution today. Among the attacks on Derbyshire county council made by the hon. Gentleman to justify poll tax capping is one that he has peddled on many occasions concerning the operation of Derbyshire county council's pension fund and moneys which were used in connection with News on Sunday and were subsequently moved to another company. Something that he said in the ten-minute rule application would, if repeated outside the House, lead to action being taken by David Bookbinder, the leader of Derbyshire county council. The hon. Gentleman has denied in radio broadcasts in which I have been involved that he has said anything inside the House that he would not have said outside. He said that Derbyshire county council was "embroiled with a former estate agent called Owen Oyston in a series of sleazy deals"- -[ Official Report , 26 June 1990 ; Vol. 175, c. 189.]
If the words "sleazy deals" were used outside the House, that would be ground for legal action.
Much of the rest of the hon. Gentleman's speech was taken up by a well-worn list of complaints regularly picked up by Derbyshire newspapers including the Derby Trader . They include complaints against specific individuals and against perfectly reasonable and justifiable expenditure and activities by the council.
The pension fund is one of the most profitable of its type in Britain and Derbyshire county council is adept at attracting industry to the area, including Toyota. In doing so, it has used some of the skills of the business world which Conservative Members regard as their preserve and all Conservative Members can do is groan. The hon. Members for Derbyshire, South and for Amber Valley should tell us what Derbyshire county council should cut in response to the poll tax capping. Should it be its education service? Special, primary and secondary education in Derbyshire--in terms of the pupil-teacher ratio--are the best in any shire county in the country. Presumably, the attitude is that because it is good it can reasonably be attacked, but the people of Derbyshire support their education system. For example, there is a very good special school at Inkersall Green, but unfortunately it has been damaged by coal-mining subsidence and may have to be removed.
A constituent of mine, Mr. Bev Smith, and his wife have been attempting to adopt a mentally handicapped child from Romania. He has mentally handicapped children of his own, and has also adopted two mentally handicapped children in this country ; the Romanian child would be a third. He is worried about the future boundary arrangements for Derbyshire, which could mean some of the northern bit of Derbyshire being moved to the Sheffield area. I am sure that Sheffield provides good
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