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Mr. Brandon-Bravo : Is not that precisely the argument against the property tax that you lot want to go back to? How can the Opposition say that because someone lives in a nice house, it follows that he or she has lots of money? The Opposition cannot have it both ways.
Mr. O'Brien : I must put the hon. Gentleman right. He has been misled by the information that he has had from the Tory Central Office. Labour's policy is to introduce a rebate scheme to take into consideration the plight of those who cannot afford to pay the poll tax. Does the hon. Gentleman support the poll tax or does he disagree with it? Does he believe that those who cannot pay should not be included in the scheme? What is he on about?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : The hon. Gentleman ought to return to the terms of the Bill.
Mr. Brandon-Bravo : I wish to stick to the terms of the Bill, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I am sure that you would not wish me to be accused of ducking the question. To the principle that every adult should pay something, I say, absolutely yes. I do not believe that the people in the house that I described fall into the category of people who cannot pay. Their poster said "won't pay". There is a difference between "won't" and "can't".
Those who will not pay impose a burden on the bulk of the population who wish to abide by the law and pay their dues to society. Rumour has it in the city and county of Nottingham that in order to make up for those who do not pay, my constituents will land up with a bill that is £50 a head more than would otherwise have been the case. That is completely unacceptable. My constituents deserve protection from highway robbery.
The Government are seeking to limit spending. What bothers me is that, having limited spending, they will not be able to translate the legislation into a limit on the community charge that the local authority sets. If, for example, the local authority says, "Our spending will mean a charge of £300, but because we do not want to pursue collection we shall charge everybody £350," will the Bill offer the protection that I am seeking?
I understand that if a large excess were levied on the poll tax payer merely to cover non-payers, my constituents may be protected by the district auditor or by an audit of some kind. I am not sure that is such a quick and clean process. I earnestly ask my hon. Friend the Minister to address that problem. If, after we have passed useful legislation that gives local authorities the criteria by which they can spend--we have made generous support
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settlements ; nobody can say that the Treasury has not undone the purse strings and coughed up a fair slice of the cake to ensure that local authorities can meet the criteria--they impose a charge cover the non-payers, we shall have done a grave disservice to all our constituents.7.41 pm
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax) : We all know that the Bill is about the Lambeth loophole, but I welcome any debate on capping, which we in Calderdale lived through last year, despite setting the fourth lowest poll tax in the country. Nobody could have called £297 excessive. Unless we make cuts of £9 million, we shall be in the same position this year. [Interruption.] I am sure that the Minister will get plenty of time to reply to the debate. I hope that he will listen to one or two of the points that I make.
The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities said that he could not understand why councils did not want to reduce the full cap for hard- pressed poll taxpayers. I thought that that was quite a cynical and unnecessary remark. He knows perfectly well that no council wants to set the poll tax higher than it needs. It is daft to suggest that councillors want to do that. He does not seem to accept the reason for the existence of councils. Their purpose is to provide services. For example, if they cannot provide home care services for an elderly person who has no other means of income apart from the state pension and income support, they believe that they have failed that old person, who cannot rely on the private sector to provide what might be a life-saving service.
Last week, I went to see the Secretary of State about Calderdale's budget for next year and to try to avoid capping. We argued that, once again, we had been granted an unfair allocation under the standard spending assessment. Calderdale's SSA has been increased by 17.7 per cent., which compares unfavourably with the average for metropolitan districts in West Yorkshire of 19.2 per cent. It compares unfavourably with the average for all metropolitan districts of 19.1 per cent. and with the average increase for shire districts of 28.2 per cent.
We asked the Minister why Calderdale is receiving less favourable treatment and, more specifically, why the reasonable and long-expanded argument that Calderdale's normal highway maintenance costs are high has been continuously ignored, despite Minister after Minister accepting our case on the highways budget. We were listened to in polite silence but were not given any hope.
I do not want this issue to be confused with the winter maintenance costs. Normal maintenance costs should take into account the high altitude of much of Calderdale's area and the associated gradients, which result in weather causing more rapid deterioration of the road surface. That is never taken into account when assessing the normal maintenance costs for Calderdale. We convinced previous Ministers that we receive an unfair allocation, but we were listened to in complete silence.
The total budget for all councils in 1990-91 has been increased by only 7 per cent., which is almost 4 per cent. less than inflation. There is no getting away from that fact, and I should be interested to hear the Minister's comments on that. For Calderdale to avoid the poll tax cap yet again, it must set a budget within 5 per cent. of its SSA target. That effectively means, given inflation and assuming that what little remains of its reserves are not used, that the Government are prescribing a cut in expenditure on
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Calderdale's services of approximately £9 million. The Minister gave us no hope, but that is the reality for next year if there is no improvement or relaxation in the rule.I shudder to think what will happen if West Yorkshire fire and civil defence authority suffers the effects of poll tax capping. The fire authority provides an excellent fire and emergency rescue service to more than 2 million people across five districts in west Yorkshire--Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees, Wakefield and Calderdale. The county's 51 fire stations are staffed by 1,980 whole-time firefighters and 239 retained firefighters.
Thirty-six of the stations are staffed 24 hours a day, including the one at Sowerby Bridge in my constituency. I mentioned that station to the Minister when I joined a delegation protesting about the threatened cut in the fire authority. The threatened closure of Sowerby Bridge is causing local people much concern. The authority's technical services committee is considering the closure, but I must tell the Minister that there is deep concern in the community and in the surrounding area, because that fire station provides not only a good service to Sowerby Bridge but an excellent service to surrounding villages, industry and remote communities in Calder valley. If we lose that fire station, lives will be placed at risk and property will be unnecessarily damaged.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert Key) rose --
Mrs. Mahon : I know what the Minister is going to say but perhaps he will allow me to finish my point.
West Yorkshire fire service provides a brilliant service. To give some idea of its value to people in the area, in 1989-90 there were 582 injuries, 124 people received burns, 104 people were rescued and there were 45 deaths. If the programme of cuts goes through, those statistics, bad as they are, will treble.
Mr. Key : The hon. Lady will recall that when she came to see me last week I congratulated her fire authority on carrying out its fire cover review, unlike one of her neighbouring authorities. The trouble is that it will not consider what to do about it until next March, some five years after it initiated the review.
Mrs. Mahon : I am sure that the Minister will not mind if I deal with lives and the facts about the service, which we believe is so vital in West Yorkshire. This year and next year, the fire authority is facing a deep financial crisis, which will put at risk the excellent service that it provides. To set next year's budget according to the Department of the Environment's SSA--£44.6 million--would mean sacking 500 firefighters and closing five fire stations. The Minister knows that : he has the facts. If the authority sets its budget at SSA plus 12.5 per cent.--£49.5 million--which is the maximum allowed if it is to escape poll tax capping, it will still be £3.5 million short of the £53 million needed to protect services and just to stand still.
The Minister listened to us with courtesy. Having been on many such visits, I can say that it was one of the better experiences I have had. Being an optimist, and believing the Minister to be a reasonable man, I cannot imagine that he can now contemplate capping that service. We hope for
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some form of de minimis provision. We explained in some detail what we meant by that and I shall not cover the ground again now. As I said, I made a special plea for Sowerby Bridge in my constituency. The closure of the fire station there would lead to loss of life and great damage to property--quite unnecessarily so. With the recession and the loss of so much, Sowerby Bridge is suffering enough as it is. That small town needs everything that it can get and, in my opinion, the loss of the fire station would take the heart out of it.Mr. Holt : Will the hon. Lady confirm that one of the losses to her constituency recently has been that of a Labour councillor, whose seat the Conservatives won on a 14 per cent. swing?
Mrs. Mahon : I can also confirm to the hon. Gentleman that we have just gained a seat from the Conservatives with a 15 per cent. swing, so it is one-all. I should also point out that the results had more to do with local than with national issues and that we will get the seat back in May with no problem.
The police authority may also suffer from capping. Today I received a letter from the chairman of West Yorkshire police authority, who is writing to all West Yorkshire Members to seek our support in asking the Government to reconsider proposals which it says will severely jeopardise the financing of the police service in the county in 1991-92. The chairman writes :
"The Director of Finance reported that the Authority would have to reduce its budget by £8m (gross) in order to avoid the Dept of Environment's present capping' proposals. This reduction is equivalent to a 4 per cent. cutback. As you may well be aware, over 80 per cent. of the Authority's expenditure is on pay and related expenditure. Therefore, any cutback of this magnitude will affect the number of Police Officers and civilians that can be appointed. Initial indications are that, even if Police and civilian recruitment is stopped completely, it will only go half way to meeting the necessary reduction. This could mean that by March 1992 there will be 350 less Police Officers on the streets of West Yorkshire and about 200 less civilians supporting them. This would have to be coupled with no new vehicles, and a complete stop on all repairs to buildings."
I shudder to think what will happen in West Yorkshire if those cuts go ahead. We have suffered increases in crime generally and in the number of burglaries. People are desperate to see more police men on the streets and to have their communities better policed. We shall not get that if the local police authority budget is cut.
Mr. Key : It is a pleasure to be getting on with the hon. Lady so well. No one can say that I do not listen to authorities around the country. When I saw the hon. Lady's local police authority last week, I pointed out a difficulty to it. Although it said that it wanted more civilianisation--that is entirely in line with what the Home Office wants-- in the next breath it said that, in the establishment indicators used to determine the SSA, no account is taken of the level of civilianisation. I fear that the reply to that is that the local authority associations, which are controlled by the Labour party, cannot agree on whether those indicators should include civilianisation. So far, they have said that they think that they should not. They cannot have it both ways.
Mrs. Mahon : I seem to have touched a raw nerve--first on the subject of the fire authority and now on the subject of the police authority. The letter clearly states--the
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Minister is being warned--that there could be 350 fewer police officers on the beat if capping goes ahead. I view that with very serious concern, and I hope that the Minister will, too.As I said, last year Calderdale was poll tax-capped--very unfairly, in my opinion. Tories on Calderdale council now claim that cuts in services are the responsibility of the Labour group, which has only had total control for just over 12 months. That is absolute rubbish. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive the electorate and I believe that the Tories will get their come-uppance in May.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Brandon-Bravo) touched on the services that councils are expected to provide. The Government have placed added burdens on councils but have not given them sufficient money to cope. The Government have been taking money away from councils since 1979. If Calderdale council now received the same rate support grant as it enjoyed in 1979, we would be £42 million better off.
We have had nothing but cuts, cuts, cuts. Responsibility for the provision of services has been piled on to councils under the Government's legislation, including the care in the community provisions, the Children Act 1989, the local management of schools provisions, the reduction in housing benefit subsidy, the Food Safety Act 1990 and the proposed increases in respect of probation reports. Added together, the costs of those provisions to Calderdale alone this year are £2 million.
As I said earlier, to satisfy provisional capping rules, Calderdale needs to reduce its standstill budget by approximately £9 million. Even if we used all our balances, the effects on services would be devastating. The council has struggled bravely to ensure that capping has not hurt the most vulnerable in the community and to try to make cuts where they will do the least damage. Given that fact, this treatment by central Government of local government is disgraceful. The Bill is not necessary. The Minister knows that the new Secretary of State is going to abolish poll tax. There is no other way of proceeding. The poll tax is a gaping black hole. One can pour money into it and throw money at it but one will never make it fair and one will never achieve adequate collection levels. It is a disgraceful policy. It has brought down one Prime Minister and I predict that, if the Government do not get rid of it, it will bring down another.
7.56 pm
Mrs. Edwina Currie (Derbyshire, South) : I support the Government on the Bills before us. I am particularly pleased to see the righting of the anomaly on caravans, and the sorting out of Lambeth will be especially useful.
As has already been said, my local authority--Derbyshire county council--is a collection of unreformed spendthrifts, known locally as "the idiots in Matlock". As I am sure the House will be aware, old-fashioned, stupid, arrogant socialism is alive and well in this country, and residing--indeed, rampant--up in Derbyshire, and it is a very great pity.
A number of examples have been given of what that authority has done. I merely offer a new one : the adult literacy team funded by Derbyshire county council decided to hold a day conference on--would you believe it, Mr. Deputy Speaker--Nicaragua. It was free, and it was paid
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for by the county. The team is entitled to hold a day conference on Nicaragua, but I suggest that those who attend should pay for it themselves and that the council should not use our rate fund money in that way.Mrs. Mahon : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Currie : I should be delighted.
Mrs. Mahon : I imagine that the reason why the team decided to hold an adult literacy conference on Nicaragua is that the experience of that country, and its adult literacy campaign following the revolution in 1979, has been praised by every literacy organisation in the world.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. Nicaragua is a long way from the contents of the Bill.
Mrs. Currie : Absolutely, Mr. Deputy Speaker. They held the conference because they are a bunch of left-wing idiots. That was the only reason.
Derbyshire county council is the largest authority to have been capped recently and the first ever county authority to have been capped. Its budget was cut from £560 million to £520 million and fortunately that resulted fairly quickly in a sharp reduction in the charge--down by £56 from £458 in Derby, which had the 10th highest charge in the country. That produced a sigh of relief in my constituency.
The county budget was reduced by rather more than that. It was reduced not by the £40 million that the capping legislation required but by £45 million. That rather suggests that all the noise made in Derbyshire, both before and since capping, about the effects that it would have was all a load of hogwash. If the authority could cut the budget by even more than was required, why did it not go for that budget level in the first place? There was no guarantee under the previous legislation that the link between the budget and the charge would be made and that is why today's legislation is particularly useful. The uncertainty and fear that was generated when we first realised that the charge might stay the same, was unacceptable. I am also pleased that the uncertainty has been reduced for 1991-92. We now know that next year's budget must be less than 7 per cent. higher than this year's budget or the county will again be capped. Therefore, we know that the maximum will be about £555 million.
Mr. John Battle (Leeds, West) : The hon. Lady just said that we now know the arrangements for the 1991-92 budget. Is that a firm commitment that there will be no review of the poll tax or any change to it before the end of March 1992? Does the hon. Lady not anticipate any change to the basic legislation to which the Bill is attached?
Mrs. Currie : I was merely making the point that the county authority has a habit of spending as much as it can possibly get away with. This year, it got it wrong and it spent too much. The county was capped and there were major court cases, but the Government won. The maximum amount that Derbyshire county council will be able to spend next year, without being capped, is 6.9 per cent. extra. That brings at least some certainty into our lives. I share the view of the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) and I hope that Derbyshire county council spends rather less next year. That is possible and it would be beneficial to the charge payers who have to foot the bill.
The community charge system was recently reviewed, and the Bill is part of the response. I backed the whole
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set-up, the basic principle that everyone uses local services and everyone should pay for them and those who cannot pay should have a rebate system. That is sensible.However, the trouble is that in my county and my constituency, many people believe that there are difficulties and those difficulties show up sharply in the case of Lambeth. If there is to be a personal cost, that is not a charge ; it is a tax. A charge is something someone pays for a service that he wants, such as meals on wheels. A tax is something that someone pays because he has no choice. If there is to be a tax, people expect it to be progressive and not regressive. The rebate system is no alternative to that.
The process has also turned out to be opaque, and rate capping in Derbyshire, and I am sure in Lambeth, has had some rather anomalous effects. Charge capping has led to a loss of rebate, which in turn has meant that in the autumn of 1990, some of my constituents are required to pay to the local authority more then they did at the beginning of 1990 when the charge was higher and they received a rebate. There is no way in which we can say that that is fair. If my colleagues on the Government Front Bench are looking for anomalies to correct, I suggest that they put that one right as well.
I was a councillor in the great city of Birmingham for 11 years. Local government was established in Birmingham more than a century ago when the great Joseph Chamberlain walked the streets there. We should cherish the vital role in the provision of services and the maintenance of standards that local government can provide. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for the Environment shares that view. It is significant that the new Prime Minister was a Lambeth councillor and virtually the first Bill to come before this new Administration is intended to sort Lambeth out--and about time too.
Some principles emerge from the relatively minor changes to anomalies that we are debating under the Bill. We cannot simply return to the rating system. We cannot simply scrap the set-up and return to the rates. A number of points that have been incorporated in legislation are now widely accepted. Most people believe that local government should continue to be supported by locally raised funds, that the local authority should have a tax-raising power and take responsibility. That is the point of standing as a councillor. We must ensure that the local authority has an incentive to improve its area. The trouble with the uniform business rate as it stands is that there is no incentive. A county can simply neglect its land, because that will make no difference to how much money comes in.
Mr. Harry Barnes : The hon. Lady said that those principles emerge from the Bill that we are debating today. How can that be? The Bill ploughs on with the poll tax as it was. It might be redundant by Wednesday and it might be withdrawn. We might have something else to discuss, and that might be the position that the hon. Lady supported during the election for the Conservative party leadership.
Mrs. Currie : If the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), who is my colleague from Derbyshire, would just sit still and pin his ears back, I shall give him a little lesson on the link between the Bill and the
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principles that I am trying to enunciate. It would make a change for the hon. Gentleman to sit and listen--he might learn something. It should be possible for a local authority such as Lambeth or Derbyshire to be encouraged to develop its land. Under the old rates system that was at least a possibility and a council was encouraged to get rid of derelict land and to develop it for housing or industry because that would widen the rate base. As a result, in Birmingham in 1982 we widened the rate base by selling off surplus properties and land and we reduced the charge to our ratepayers the following year by 12.5 per cent. even though our budgets were increased. That is the golden scenario that we should build into legislation.Another principle lies at the heart of the Bill. The tax, charge or whatever we call it should bear some relationship to a local authority's overall spending. If Lambeth chooses to spend a king's ransom or if Derbyshire chooses to spend like there is no tomorrow, that must be reflected somehow in the charge paid by the people who live in the neighbourhood.
Of course there must be an equalisation process. Many local authorities do not have the population or, under the rating system, do not have the rate base to generate enough money for their needs. Wealthy authorities do not need so much and poor authorities--we have heard several examples--have considerable needs. As a principle, the legislation states that the tax should bear some relationship to the authority's overall spending and that means that accountability works through the ballot box sooner or later.
There is also an argument, which I broadly accept, that the tax should have some relationship to relative wealth. That is when we argue about how we measure wealth and whether that is related to the amount of capital someone possesses, to the capital value of a property, and whether it should be related to a roof tax, a floor tax or any of the dozen different alternatives put forward by the Labour party over the past two years.
If the system was based on the capital values of properties and not on the present system, Lambeth's income would be decreased. Property values in Lambeth are perhaps 20 per cent. lower than they were two years ago. If the council's income had been linked to capital values, the amount of income that it would have had to play with would have decreased. That is the opposite of what we want. During a recession or a time of falling capital values, as I am sure the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) would agree as we were both councillors in big cities at the same time, or when things are not going well in the economy, that is precisely the time when local authority services are under most pressure and there is often most need. That is not the time when there should be a drop in a local authority's income.
The Bill is part of a rather crude mechanism for using some national Government power to control what local authorities are getting up to. We have ended up with a dozen different systems, none of which seems to be working terribly well. My plea today is that, along with Lambeth and Derbyshire, perhaps current thinking should consider ways in which local government and central Goverment interact.
At the moment, we have the control system of the ballot box, which is great and I agree with it. However, we cannot get our council out in Derbyshire until 1993. We elected it
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in 1989 under the old rates system. We brought the new system in, in 1990, and we are stuck with the council until 1993. That is not very satisfactory.Mr. Eric Illsley (Barnsley, Central) : When the hon. Lady reads her speech tomorrow, she will note that everything that she has said has been a complete denial of the principles of the community charge. She is talking about ability to pay, accountability, and a local authority being able to raise its own revenue. They are exactly the arguments that were put by Opposition Members during the passage of the legislation.
It is incredible that the hon. Lady is now putting forward those arguments. How can she say that the ballot box will bring about accountability when she agrees with charge capping? The two cannot go hand in hand. The Government either allow accountability to take its course and the ballot box to provide a local authority that the electorate want, or they charge- cap. They cannot have both.
Mrs. Currie : We have both, and it is a jolly good thing that we in Derbyshire have both. Most of the time most local authorities are prudent and sensible. Most local authorities in this country have tried to behave with a degree of prudence. A small number do not, and do not quite deliberately.
I do not regard Derbyshire county council as composed of fools ; I regard it as composed of knaves. They know what they are doing and they do it with great panache and glee. The result is that many of my constituents have to pay far more than they would otherwise have to pay.
We have the ballot box system and we have capping, which is a blunt instrument but it is effective and I hope that any future system continues to have it just as we had it before we had the community charge. We have inspectorates--they are coming out of our ears--for schools, local authorities, social services, old people's homes and so on. My worry is that many of the inspectorates that maintain standards, particularly in respect of child care services, often report too late and when there has been a terrible disaster or tragedy. Somehow we need to make that part of their work better. We also have the district auditor who is an essential part of the entire system. The district auditor in Derbyshire is currently working on several reports about ultra vires expenditure and inappropriate claims by various Labour county councillors. Several reports are floating around and nobody has seen them yet. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will find out what has happened to those various reports by the Derbyshire district auditor and ensure that they are published and that appropriate action, which might include the disqualification of the councillors concerned, is taken as quickly as possible.
We also have other systems, but the whole set-up of control at the moment is complicated and muddled. Sometimes as a result, it is ineffective. If it worked, we would not have a Derbyshire budget of more than £0.5 billion a year. We have very little deprivation--we must be straightforward about it--in Derbyshire. We have relatively low unemployment rates, and they are still falling. We have massive inward investment from all over the world into highly successful businesses. We simply have very few problems in our bright and beautiful county,
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and we do not need to spend half a billion quid a year providing services, administration and conferences that are not needed.Mr. Harry Barnes : Why is there so much concern in Derbyshire about the results of poll tax capping in connection with the disabled? The Derbyshire Coalition for Disabled People has had its budget cut considerably, as has the Ripley Centre for Integrated Living. There was a great shout and concern about that. I blame the Government's rate-capping policy for it, while others blame the county council. It is a matter of great concern, which shows that there are disablement problems in the county that need to be dealt with and many other social problems, especially in working-class rather than middle-class areas of Derbyshire.
Mrs. Currie : I represent one of the best working-class areas in Derbyshire and I am very proud of the local people who sent me here. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well why the disabled have lost their grants. It was because his crass, horrible and cruel friends in Derbyshire cut their grants. That was the first thing they did. The county authority has taken on 8,000 additional staff since 1981 and is still charging local families exactly the same price for school meals as it charged in 1981. We now have 10 years-- [Interruption.] Admittedly we would all regard it as a great success if the Government managed to charge the same prices as they did 10 years ago, but we have not yet reached that stage.
That is why the hon. Gentleman and his friends are wrong. They tried to cut the grant to Age Concern and there was such an outcry that it had to be restored. They are measured by their own actions. If the first thing they did was to cut their publicity department and reduce the number of education advisers, which had been severely criticised by the inspectors, I would say, "Good, they are doing the right thing." When the first thing they did was to cut the budget for disabled people, by their deeds shall ye know them.
Mr. Nellist : Is not it a fact that directors who are earning £70, 000 a year are paying far less tax than they were 10 or 11 years ago, to the tune of more than £1,000 a week? Is not the only difference that Labour authorities, which freeze the cost of school meals or bus fares, are looking after our folk, and that the hon. Lady's Government, with tax cuts for the rich, are looking after her folk? The principle is exactly the same, only we do it for far more people.
Mrs. Currie : Some of the most highly paid people who live in Derbyshire are senior employees of the county authority. They include people such as the current director of education who, two years ago, was a councillor of the same authority. If that is not jobs for the boys and people who are benefiting from income tax cuts, I do not know what is. The previous chief executive, who was appointed a couple of years ago, was a former Member of this House.
Mrs. Currie : I shall say it in the House, and the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) will listen. He does not like it, does he? The previous chief executive was a former Member of this House. He lasted just nine months. He was one of the highest-paid people. He paid a lot of tax on his salary, and no doubt he has paid a lot of tax on what they
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have paid him off with. My constituents will be much happier with fewer senior officers in Derbyshire and with fewer people spending their money as though there were no tomorrow.Mr. Nellist : That is probably one thing on which the hon. Lady and I would agree. I do not like Labour authorities employing people on five or 10 times the wages that local people get. There is an old saying in what is known as the good book about taking a beam out of one's own eye before taking a mote out of anybody else's. The hon. Lady is talking about somebody who was once an elected Member moving on to a paid job. We have 250 Tory Members with two, three, four or five jobs. A previous hon. Member for Hexham, Geoffrey Rippon, as he then was, was a Member of Parliament, a QC and either the chairman or director of 55 companies. I have never been able to work out how he ever found time to come in and pick up his parliamentary pocket money.
Mrs. Currie : The hon. Gentleman forgets that many of my colleagues are able to take on this sort of job because people want them and their talents. The question that I put to the hon. Gentleman about Labour jobs for the boys in country authorities such as mine is quite simple. Would individuals like that get the job at all if they were not the political playmates of the councillors who appoint them? That is the trouble.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Perhaps now we may get back to the Bill.
Mrs. Currie : I am most grateful for your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As you realise, there are issues in Derbyshire that are yet to be resolved. Among them are what the budget is and should be and what level of services should be required. I am therefore glad to support these modest changes in the law, but I hope that we shall see a much more thorough reform in the near future.
8.18 pm
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish) : The performance by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) must be one of the best examples of a schizophrenic speech that hon. Members have heard for a long time. I gather that the main thrust of her argument was that she trusted local democracy, but not in Derbyshire, and that the local electorate is not capable of exercising its judgment in Derbyshire, but that electors in the rest of the country are capable of doing that.
My experience of what goes on in Derbyshire is based on living in the Greater Manchester area and visiting people in Buxton, Glossop and the area on the edge of the Peak district. I have seen those areas. There is considerable deprivation. I noticed that the majority of people there are delighted with the progress that Derbyshire county council has made in the provision of services since 1981 when the Labour party took back control of the county council. The 1981, 1985 and 1989 results suggest that people are pleased with the services that are provided in Derbyshire. The next time the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South is persuaded by the Whips to make a speech, I suggest that she thinks a little more carefully before she starts. I realise that she wants to ingratiate herself and to get back in favour, but I suspect that the fact that the Whips will have
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put down a mark because she spoke for 20 minutes will not do her as much damage as if those from whom she is seeking promotion actually read what she has said.As far as I am concerned, this whole debate has been a waste of time. On some occasions, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you and I have seen the House waste a lot of time, and this is a very good example of that. I do not believe that any hon. Member wants the Bill to be enacted. Opposition Members want a Bill that will abolish the community charge because of principle and because we believe that the poll tax has been a disaster for the country. Conservative Members want its abolition because of expediency. They know that, unless they get rid of the poll tax, they will go
Mr. Illsley : Does my hon. Friend agree that the speech of the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) was a plea for the abolition of the poll tax because it called for accountability and for local government to raise its own revenue?
Mr. Bennett : I accept my hon. Friend's argument.
We must consider the Bill against the background that we want to get rid of the poll tax. The Bill means that, for another 12 months, my constituents and those of other hon. Members will have to suffer as a result of the poll tax. The Bill is also a total contradiction. It is all about capping, which means taking away any measure of local accountability and the choice of local electors to decide the level of their community charge.
As I understood it, the whole philosophy behind the community charge was, first, that it would simplify local government ; and, secondly, that local government is currently spending too much money and that by creating some local hardship local authorities would be encouraged to reduce their charges. The downside, according to the Government, was that more people would pay, and that there would be some problems with collection.
However, all that we have had as a result of the poll tax have been disadvantages. The Government cannot claim that there have been any advantages from it. Let us consider whether the poll tax is more simple than the previous system of local government finance. I cannot find anything about the poll tax to suggest that it is. It is no easier for my constituents to understand whether they are getting a good or a bad deal from local government under the poll tax than under any of the previous systems.
If anyone can explain how any of my constituents can look at the standard spending assessment and see whether their local authority has been treated fairly, I should be interested to hear from him. It beats me. Even the experts cannot see anything fair about it. It is simply a matter of expediency. We all hope that the money is worked out correctly, but on the whole we know that Conservative-controlled authorities have done well out of the SSAs and that Labour-controlled, Alliance and hung councils have done badly. That is the only consistency that I can see.
I turn to the proposition that if hardship is created local authorities will spend less. All the evidence from my constituency and from many other parts of the country shows that local authorities are underspending. They are not meeting the clear needs of the people in their local communities. We should be looking for ways to increase local authorities' ability to meet the needs of local people. Now let me deal with the disadvantages. Some people are not paying because of principle, but many are not
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paying because they cannot afford to do so. I believe that we are creating a new culture among our young people of how to avoid paying the poll tax. I have spoken to a number of young people who do not want not to pay on principle but who are not keen to pay because of financial difficulties. They are reluctant to register anywhere for the poll tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) has highlighted evidence of a decline in the number on the electoral roll. I want the Government to take this Bill away and to replace it with a Bill to scrap the poll tax.I should like to outline briefly the impact that the poll tax has had on my constituency. I am in the delicate position of representing two local authorities, Tameside and Stockport. Although in many ways the two authorities are similar, there are also considerable contrasts between them. However, both feel under considerable pressure because they might be capped. Tameside has been a Labour-controlled authority since 1983. On the whole, it is an efficient local authority which has striven hard in the past few years to improve its efficiency. However, instead of considering how to provide better services, for most of the last year or two it has tried to see how it can get round the standard spending assessment because it is unfair to Tameside, and how it can make cuts that will cause the least possible damage. Tameside has not had the resources that could have enabled it to achieve greater efficiency. Our major problem in the Denton part of my constituency is traffic congestion. Many people now have motor cars, but many streets were not designed for them or for parking. We therefore have parking problems and an increasing problem with rat running. The local authority needs the time and resources to establish proper traffic management schemes. Such schemes would be expensive, but could well save lives. Many youngsters in my constituency are now at risk because of the volume of traffic.
Tameside has an increasing number of elderly people. Time after time constituents ask for a simple adaptation, such as a handrail, or help in getting up the stairs--not necessarily a stair lift, often only an extra rail. However, the local authority is having to say to people, "We are sorry, but we cannot provide that," or "We cannot provide it for some time." That is a major problem because it reduces the quality of life for those elderly people now and makes it more likely that they will need expensive care in the future--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. All this is a long way from the content of the Bill.
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