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Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) : Will the right hon. Gentleman now apologise to the House of Commons for the mistakes that he made in the 1974 reorganisation?
Mr. Heath : It was before 1974.
Mr. Skinner : It was the Local Government Act 1972.
Mr. Heath : Yes, it was the Local Government Act 1972, long before 1974. One of the purposes of that Act was to adapt local government to the requirements of a modern society and modern technology--
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : It ignored the people.
Mr. Heath : It does not take very much to annoy my hon. Friend.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that the reorganisation that we endured during his term of office was disastrous and proved to be so? It totally destroyed local loyalties, which we are now seeking to restore.
Mr. Heath : It did nothing of the sort. It established local authorities of a certain size for purposes that are required of them today. Where those changes have taken place in the past decade, they have done so largely because of bias and bile against local authorities. I do not want to go into detail, but if we take the case of London, there is now no structure for dealing overall with the problems of one of the great cities of the world. Ours is the only country not to have that. That was done through sheer bile against an authority which, at the time, did not happen to be Conservative. When we examine the issue of the number of tiers in local government, we must give the matter the utmost consideration.
We said that the poll tax would not be acceptable, and it proved not to be acceptable. I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister does not blame the Labour party for that, or those people who said that they would not pay it. The fact is, the poll tax was not acceptable to the public opinion of this country. If we try to put forward proposals that are not acceptable to the great majority of the public, we must remember that we shall get into difficulty again. That is a problem facing us in our examination of new taxes. The problem with the poll tax was that it was based on a fundamental fallacy, which was the result of dogma. That was perfectly expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) who said that, in local government, the duke should pay the same as the dustman. That doctrine is not held anywhere else in the world except, I am told, on one small Pacific island. If we accept that dogma and introduce the poll tax, however many variations we try to make in it, it is bound to be a failure. The 1974 Conservative party election memorandum stated that any change must be in accordance with people's ability to pay. That is the essential principle for the whole basis of future taxation of local government.
The right hon. Member for Yeovil talked about local income tax. I hope that that option will not be dismissed too lightly by those examining the issue. It was recommended at the end of the 1960s by the Layfield committee and it is too easily dismissed. I believe that one
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reason for our present problems is that the rating system was too easily dismissed with bogus arguments--I admit that, at times, I used them myself.We asked how it could be fair to have a retired couple living in a semi- detached house and next door a couple with the husband and two sons at work, with both households paying the same rates. That would not be fair, but the fact is that that can be adjusted for fairness by a rebate system. That led us into part of the trouble which brought about the poll tax.
A local income tax was looked at seriously by the Treasury in the early 1970s. We now have complete computerisation and up-to-date technology, so it is possible, with great economy of manpower, to deal with both a national and a local income tax. The two can be clearly separated, if necessary by having one in the spring and one in the autumn. A local income tax can be implemented without any breach of confidence, because the revenue authorities have both the working and home addresses of everybody who is involved. Therefore, we could produce a simple system and people could see exactly how much was going into local spending and how much was going into national spending.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : How does the right hon. Gentleman overcome the problem that was mentioned earlier--that the yield per person in Eastbourne would be greater than the yield per person in Liverpool? This is a geographical flaw.
Mr. Heath : That problem arises on every form of local government finance which has yet been thought of or practised. It is tackled by the adjustment of local government benefits from central Government. It always has been done in that way and it will still have to be done in that way.
Very well, we may have to accept capping of extravagant local authorities, but if local authorities are extravagant, it must be largely the responsibility of local people to deal with those local authorities.
Mr. Bob Dunn (Dartford) : We have a London authority called Lambeth with massive rate, rent and charge arrrears, yet its people still vote solidly Labour. Can my right hon. Friend explain that?
Mr. Heath : If they like to go on voting Labour and paying those enormous rates--[ Hon. Members :-- "They do not."] They were paying much higher rates than anyone when they were paying rates, put it that way, and if local authorities like to do that, that is up to them. People who live in Westminster do not have the same problem. I see the deputy Leader of the Opposition in his place. I am puzzled why the Opposition particularly asked that this vote of no confidence should be concerned only with the poll tax. I cannot recollect any other occasion in the House in the past 40 years when a vote of no confidence has been limited to one particular subject. I can understand one reason, which is that on previous votes of no confidence the Leader of the Opposition has, sadly for him, failed in his attack. He roamed far and wide and got into great difficulties, and he lost his party's support. I suppose that, if one sticks to one thing, that reduces the chances of the Leader of the Opposition messing up yet another vote of no confidence.
That is one explanation. The other is that the Opposition are just not prepared, on an occasion when
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they are testing a whole Government, wanting to overthrow them, to discuss all the other issues today in modern affairs. Do the Opposition not realise that by doing that they are reducing the value of their own motion of no confidence? The country realises that clearly.Why were they not prepared to give my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister all the credit for what he has done in restoring our situation in Europe? He has changed the whole position. Why were the Opposition not prepared to discuss the part that he played in the crisis in the Gulf? Why were the Opposition not prepared to discuss the dramatic step that he took in saying, within a month of taking office, that haemophiliacs will of course receive proper compensation for being infected with AIDS as a result of bad blood transfusions, something which had been argued about in a petty way for years? My right hon. Friend dealt immediately with all that, so why will not the Opposition give him credit for it?
I just do not understand, except that they are not prepared to acknowledge the good things that have been done in the past 100 days. I am, and I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his colleagues on that.
Mr. Skinner : The right hon. Gentleman has just received a handout as an ex-Prime Minister.
Mr. Heath : I wish to give my right hon. Friend the utmost support. Of course, I immediately acknowledge my particular interest as a former Prime Minister.
Mr. Heath : I do not know. It is not something to which the hon. Gentleman will ever aspire.
5.35 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South) : I do not think that I have ever heard so much nonsense in all my life. The attack that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has just made on my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was nonsense. I am amazed that the right hon. Gentleman should have changed his attitude so radically. From condemning his Government, as he has been doing all these years, he has now turned into an enthusiastic supporter.
A measure of the right hon. Gentleman's failure to appreciate the significance of this debate on the poll tax is his criticism of the Labour party for refusing to widen the debate. If we were to widen the debate, it would allow Conservative Members, such as the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister and others, to escape the consequences of what is really a political disaster for the Government. Therefore, it is our intention today to focus narrowly on the poll tax. There is no question of reducing the value of the motion, as the right hon. Gentleman said. We are increasing the value of the motion by ensuring that we debate the poll tax and its effect. It is significant that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) should start the debate by objecting to its terms. The fact that he too wanted to widen it is a measure of how worried members of the Government are about the House debating the poll tax today.
One thing surprised me about the defence of the poll tax by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup. He said that he did not want to disappoint the Opposition with his support for the Government. I was not so much
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disappointed as amazed that he knew what was happening, because every Minister has a different point of view. Every speech and every broadcast reveals an entirely different kind of poll tax, an entirely different kind of impost. How the right hon. Gentleman can be so enthusiastic beats me. The real clue to his speech was when he said that he commends the exercise in damage limitation. That is what the Prime Minister's speech today was all about. It was an attempt at damage limitation.Let me tell the House what the nub of the Government's problem is. The poll tax is wholly unacceptable to the general public but Tory party activists want to retain the poll tax. That is the Government's problem. They are anxious to ditch the poll tax if they can, but their own activists will not allow them to do so. That is the reason for all the wriggling and manoeuvring, all their strange words and all their problems.
But I wish to concentrate on the effect of the poll tax on disabled people, most of whom are on low incomes. They have a low income and, as a consequence of Government policy, disabled people will have to pay more VAT. That is a serious attack on disabled people in view of their low incomes. Also, they will have to pay a percentage of the poll tax. As the Prime Minister told us this afternoon that that matter is still the subject of discussion, I do not yet know how much, but they will have to pay something. Therefore, they will pay increased VAT and some percentage of the poll tax, yet they will get no benefit from the £140 that has been offered. Disabled people are losing heavily, in all ways.
I remind the House that the average increase in male earnings in manufacturing industry in the past 10 years has been 20 per cent. The average increase in disabled people's benefit has been 1 per cent. There is no escaping those figures. Disabled people are living in great poverty, and this impost of the poll tax and increased VAT will hit them very hard indeed. It is easy for some of us to pay the poll tax--the well-off and Members of Parliament can manage it, but disabled people cannot bear this sort of burden, which is very heavy indeed.
The set of circumstances that I have outlined about increased VAT and having to pay a percentage of the poll tax will hit disabled people because they do not receive any benefit from the concession that is being given to most people. I do not understand how that anomaly can be defended.
The second major effect on disabled people is the impact on social services : the money that has been allocated to local authorities has been reduced and county councils are in chaos and do not know whether they are coming or going. Social services are absolutely vital for disabled people. They are crucial.
I am glad that the Government are seeking to remove mentally handicapped people from long-stay institutions. I commend that policy, but there is no financial provision for it. There is a shortage of beds in hospitals and in long-stay institutions and no proper provision in the community, and disabled people are caught--trapped in a vice. They have neither adequate provision in institutions and hospitals nor provision outside in the community.
Government policy towards local authorities is disastrous for the people who are least able to bear it. It is
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significant that the Government have deferred implementation of their proposals to improve community care and it is potentially disastrous to the people concerned.Yesterday or the day before I received a letter from a Minister saying that the Government did not intend to implement certain vital provisions--I think, sections 1, 2 and 3--of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986, what we call the Tom Clarke Act. That means that the Government are backing off from vital aspects of advocacy and assessment for disabled people. I conclude with this plea. If the problems of disabled people have been overlooked by the Government, as I believe they have been, I should like my short speech to draw attention to them and the Government to think again. I must confess that I am disappointed with the Prime Minister because, as a former Minister for the Disabled, he was active in seeking to help disabled people. He did not do as much as I thought he would. In my view, as Minister for the Disabled he certainly failed to pursue the interests of the disabled as actively as I would have wished, and I hoped that as Prime Minister he would pay special attention to their problems. However, with this controversial poll tax policy he has not done so. Tonight, I make a plea that disabled people should be given special consideration because if they are not, they will suffer even more than they are suffering at the moment.
Mr. Dunn : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As you know, a large number of hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber wish to take part in this debate. Earlier this afternoon Mr. Speaker ruled that between 7 o'clock and 9 o'clock the 10-minutes rule would apply. Do you have any capacity to rule now, informally, that all speeches should be limited to 10 minutes, so that those of us who sit here until the end of the debate may have a chance of giving our point of view on this important vote of no confidence?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : I do not have power to add to what Mr. Speaker has already ruled, but I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will have regard to the matter that has just been raised and will try to reduce their speeches, which may otherwise go on at length. 5.45 pm
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield) : I shall try to follow the example set by the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and keep my remarks short.
First, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on a quite outstanding speech, which both devastated his critics and substantially added to his reputation in the House and in the country. May I also congratulate the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), on his remarks. I agree entirely with his observation that it is extraordinary that this censure motion has been drawn up in such a way as to confine us to one subject. As far as I know, that is almost unprecedented. The only conclusion to which one can come is that the Opposition are afraid to expose to debate the other subjects in question.
Of course, it is true that month after month the community charge has dominated the political debate. There is no question about that--the debate has gone on
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and on. What has been the effect on the political standing of the relative leaders? My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been found by the opinion polls to be the most popular Prime Minister since Churchill. When Gallup asked this month, "Who would make the best Prime Minister?", 13 per cent. thought the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), 23 per cent. thought the Leader of the Opposition and 56 per cent. thought my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would be the best equipped. If these are the bad days, I cannot wait to get to the good days.My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made as impressive a start to his premiership as it is possible to make. I concede that we have a secret weapon--the Leader of the Opposition. The smack of firm opposition will live with him for a long time. In effect, the Leader of the Opposition is our universal comforter--the parliamentary equivalent of worry beads for the Conservative party. There is no row yet invented that he cannot get us out of : Westland, the leadership, the list goes on. He is at the service of successive Conservative Governments.
Mr. Dalyell : Now that there has been a change of leadership, and since he was a senior Minister, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us the truth about Westland?
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not tell us anything about Westland today.
Sir Norman Fowler : I am greatly tempted, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) said, the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the book.
I am not persuaded by those politicians and newspapers that argue that the old domestic rates system was the best and fairest system of local taxation known to man. That is not the view of the public, and we know it. In the 1974 and other general elections, that was a serious issue on the doorstep and the public wanted an attempt at reform. There is no question of that.
There is no doubt that the public deserve some protection from high- spending local councils. I live in two council areas, both, as it happens, controlled by Labour. In Birmingham, I live under a council that has squandered the £70 safety net in this year's settlement ; in London, I live under a council that has lost some £100 million by gambling on the futures market, and whose only defence is that its action was unlawful. The public want to be defended against such activities, and it is surely entirely justifiable for the Government to act to that end.
I make no apology for my membership for a Government who sought to reform the position. Had I disagreed with their policy, my proper course would have been to resign : that is the only right and sensible course for a Cabinet Minister who feels so strongly about a subject. I am not sure that such people should have the luxury of coming back several years later and saying, "The policy may have gone wrong, but you may be encouraged to know that I was secretly against it all the time."
Nor am I over-impressed by the arguments of some of my former colleagues about what should be done now. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) talks darkly about the Ides of March ; my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby quotes Mende s France. Mende s France said that to govern was to choose, but when it came to action the tale was slightly different. The big issue that Mende s France
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tackled in Government was the European Defence Community and the rearmament of West Germany. For that he allowed a free vote, and the Government abstained. That does not strike me as quite the kind of leadership--a leadership of firm decisions--that my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby probably had in mind.We memoir writers must stick together. The purpose of memoirs is to guide present and future actions. I am not attracted by standing pat on the community charge and pretending that nothing has happened. I am even less persuaded that we should raise all the money centrally ; that would recreate the finance system of the health service. Devoted as I am to health professionals, I have never regarded the financial system and the management structure of the health service as the way forward for the 21st century. Such a change would entirely alter, and risk destroying the basis of good local authorities.
Nor am I attracted by the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby of putting 5 per cent. VAT on food, books, newspapers and children's clothing. Unlike him, I shall be standing at the next election, which may explain my caution. I fear that my right hon. Friend is getting a little demob-happy. It is not so much the Ides of March as the September song of a politician who has his eyes on a sunset seat in another place.
The actions taken by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister are correct. Whatever our views on the community charge may have been, the issue is here and now : what do we do about the present position? I support his proposal, and I applaud the local government review. It is right to consider structure, functions and finance together. That is sensible, and I welcome the consultative document that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced. I believe that local councils should be accountable to the local electorate ; I welcome the fact that people living alone will not pay as much, and I believe in controlling the overspending of some councils.
The Opposition say that under their plans seven out of 10 people will gain. I repeat what the Prime Minister said : before the public believe that claim, we must be given the figures on which it is based. Like one or two of my hon. Friends, including the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight), I remember the social security review only too well. I remember the response to the proposals that I put to the House, which was that we should provide the illustrative figures. We did so, and that is now what we require of the Opposition. They must provide the figures.
I strongly support my right hon. Friend's approach. It is a good rule to proceed with a sensible amount of consultation. Governments who do not do that often find themselves in difficulties. What has impressed me about the first months of my right hon. Friend's premiership has been his handling of some of the important decisions that he now faces. At times, the Opposition's real concern seems to be not the decision-making process, but the difficulty of challenging the decisions made by my right hon. Friend. That applies to a range of subjects ; child benefit is just one example.
The Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) introduced many impressive reforms, and the country owes her a debt. My right hon. Friend the present Prime Minister was part of that revolution, and he is now taking it on. He has made an outstanding start. Let me make one prediction : his policies and his style will enable him to win the next general
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election. It is equally certain that those qualities will keep the Labour party in opposition--and looking for a new leader.5.56 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth) : The speech by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) may have led the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) to reflect that at least his Cabinet was rather more dignified and restrained in its utterances than the Thatcher Administration have proved to be. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield has come back to the fold, having left that Administration when he saw the clouds gathering ; the House will know how to assess his speech.
The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, however, is not only a former Prime Minister but a former Chief Whip. I suspect that that is why his speech supported the complaint made earlier that the content of the motion was too narrow. Such an important subject merits the concentration of minds. As former Chief Whip, the right hon. Gentleman will know that a broader debate would have allowed Conservative Members to be dragged in to talk about everything except the flagship that the poll tax was once said to be.
Lest the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup should believe that his Administration deserved great respect, let me tell him that the Opposition are entirely justified in claiming that over the past two decades the Conservative party has continually demonstrated its utter unfitness to have any responsibility for local government. The reorganisation of 1973 was probably the most inflationary exercise that the country has ever experienced.
At that time, we witnessed an example of duplicity. In his announcement of the rate support grant settlement immediately before the 1974 election, the then Secretary of State promised the House that the average rate increase would be 3 per cent., and that nowhere would the increase exceed 9 per cent. In many parts of the country, the increase amounted to more than 100 per cent. In March 1974, an incoming Labour Government had to sort out an appalling muddle ; I suspect that, in 1991-92, an incoming Labour Government will be faced with exactly the same task--a task made unavoidable by the demonstrable incompetence displayed by the Conservative party. That statement can be justified, and I propose to justify it.
Local government reorganisation led to a substantial explosion in local government expenditure. The Labour Government were criticised for failing to control it. In March 1974, I went into the Department of the Environment as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Tony Crosland who set up the consultative body on local government finance. Local finance was very much under control between 1976 and 1981. That was due to a consistency and decency of treatment that led my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) to intervene during the Prime Minister's speech and point out that during the last three years of the Labour Government's life they provided 61 per cent. of local government finance.
Then the Thatcher Administration took office. No Conservative Member can deny that the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) said that the burden
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must be shifted from the backs of the taxpayer to the backs of the ratepayer, with the result that the Treasury now provides 43 per cent. instead of 61 per cent. of local government finance, which more than doubled, in real terms, the burden placed on the domestic ratepayer.Then came the problem. Having doubled the domestic ratepayer's burden, the former Prime Minister then complained about the rates explosion and promised to abolish domestic rates. Despite all the warnings, which have been listed in the debate, not one of the right hon. Members who were part of both the last and the present Administration was prepared to stand up and tell the Prime Minister that there was something in that advice and that it would be stupid to embark upon a tax that would be as unacceptable as the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup described it. He said that it was unfair to tax the dustman and the duke in exactly the same way, but the fact remains that the north country dustman was probably paying twice as much as the south country duke. Whatever may be the other faults of the poll tax, one of the major causes of its unpopularity is the degree of corruption inherent in it.
Some hon. Members will have heard me provide on a previous occasion a detailed comparison of the treatment of the city of Westminster and the metropolitan borough of Rotherham. The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities is well aware of the figures, because he has heard them from me before. In 1990-91, we found that, under the Government's inexplicable and corrupt determination, Rotherham was treated as one of the most prosperous and least deprived areas in the country. I have the largest area of dereliction and, in parts of my constituency, perhaps the highest unemployment to be found anywhere in the country, but Rotherham was regarded as more prosperous than anywhere in the affluent counties of Surrey, Kent, Hampshire and Sussex.
The result of Rotherham being told that it was prosperous was that that metropolitan borough, which has no reputation for extravagance or irresponsibility, received per head a very much smaller sum in grant than most other areas. By comparison, the city of Westminster, with a smaller proportion of children in its schools and a smaller number of old people needing care--a more compact area with a smaller population and with all the advantages that accrue to an area that enjoys the double poll tax revenue that many hon. Members, and others, had to pay--received last year 455 per cent. more per head than the metropolitan borough of Rotherham.
Despite all our protestations and the clear evidence that we provided of the problems that face the borough, in 1991-92 the proportion of support would have risen to the extent that the people of Westminster would have received 475 per cent. more per head than the people in the metropolitan borough of Rotherham.
Mr. Dunn : The hon. Gentleman puts his case with his usual force, robustness and clarity, but we are debating present policies rather than what happened in the last few years. A motion such as this focuses attention not only on the policies of the Government of the day but on the policies of the Labour party. Is the hon. Gentleman convinced by the statement made by Opposition Front Bench spokesmen that seven out of 10 households will benefit from the Labour party's proposals, and has he seen the documentation and figure work that led them to that conclusion?
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Mr. Hardy : I must confess that I cannot say that I am absolutely informed of all the details of my party's policy. However, I intend to respond to the hon. Gentleman's question. I had intended to do so, anyway, because it would have been utterly unproductive and unprofitable to sit down without referring to the alternatives. No Opposition Member can refrain, however, from uttering critical comment about that most appalling, wasteful and foolish exercise in British politcal history, the poll tax. It is an example of complete lack of wisdom and complete absence of judgment. It was an exercise which was cynical in its approach. It inflicted on the country and on the world of local government in particular an arrangement for the determination of support that was insanely and impossibly inexplicable.The fact remains that a return to a property-based tax such as the rates has a great deal to commend it. It is economic. Vast sums of money have been spent during the last two years and will be spent during the next two years, whatever the outcome of the consultations. Therefore, I ask myself what could have been done with that money. Despite the fact that my local education authority is responsible and good, as the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn) will recall from his days in the Department of Education and Science, I find when I visit primary schools in my constituency that this year they can afford to buy only one paperback book for every 25 children. Then the Secretary of State for Education and Science has the gall to talk about standards. While such glaring needs exist, money has been thrown away on the poll tax. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield left the Cabinet, but the whole lot should have gone ; now they cling to office and will also cling to the son of poll tax with the enthusiasm that they displayed for its father.
The Conservative party claims to have an interest in and a knowledge of local government. That claim has been exploded during the last 12 months. It claims to represent the rural shires of our islands. Only the other day, I received a letter--the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) may find this interesting--from Wentworth parish council--not a hotbed of socialist belief--asking me to speak and lobby fiercely in its interests and those of other parish councils. They appear completely and utterly to have escaped the attention of the Department of the Environment during the last three years.
I hope that at some stage--whether at the end of this debate or later--the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), or his more senior colleagues will relieve the anxieties of those who are deeply offended and disappointed by the Conservative Government's attitude towards the leaders of our rural communities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert Key) : I shall seek to put the hon. Gentleman's mind at rest right away. I believe strongly that there is an important role for parish councils. However, we must remember that only 50 per cent. of this country has parish councils, that there are community councils in some parts of the rest of it, while in other parts there are not. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment said in his statement that he is looking at the parishes. When we publish our consultation paper in the near future, we hope to listen to the voice of the parishes which represent not only rural but urban England.
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Mr. Hardy : But the Government have not listened to them so far. When the last local government reorganisation took place, the Government said that they were prepared to establish successor parish councils in urban districts, especially in those with a population of between 10,000 and 20,000. What they did, in effect, was to grant successor parish council status to every Tory urban district, especially if it was above or below the parameters that they had established, but they refused to give successor parish council status to Labour urban districts that did fit in with the Government's criteria. I could go on at length about that, as I did at the time. The Government's approach to and handling of local government have been deplorable. They should learn to co-operate with local government because there is no more efficient way of administering services. They must resist the temptation to follow the advice of hon. Members like the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) who would centralise education. Centralisation is extravagant, inefficient and wasteful. It is probably too late for the Government to begin to work with local government in the way the Labour Government did between 1974 and 1979, when control was exercised without a large stick, through consultation and through good faith. The sooner the Government put behind them the appalling record of Boadicea, who is not with us today of all hon. Members, the right hon. Member for Finchley should have been present--the better local government will be. After the experience of recent months I have no faith that those who occupy the Treasury Bench, who were servilely obedient to the right hon. Lady and who bear the responsibility that she conferred upon them, are fit for office. The motion is entirely justified.
6.11 pm
Sir Peter Hordern (Horsham) : I shall follow your injunction, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that of Mr. Speaker to speak briefly, if for no other reason than that I thought the motion was one of no confidence in the Government and I had prepared a wider speech.
I wonder why the Opposition have chosen to restrict the debate simply to the community charge. I do not know what the process of thinking and discussion was during consideration by the shadow Cabinet, but I can imagine the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) saying to the Leader of the Opposition, "Whatever you do, Neil, do not get tangled up with figures." That is no doubt one reason why the subject has been narrowed to the community charge.
Sir Timothy Raison (Aylesbury) : The plot thickens the more one looks at it. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman who will be replying to the debate on behalf of the Opposition has nothing to do with the portfolio of Environment, but is the deputy Leader of the Opposition, whose concern is Home Affairs. Of course, that puts him in the happy position of not being expected to know anything about what Labour would do.
Sir Peter Hordern : My right hon. Friend has elucidated something for me and helped the whole House. I had no idea that that was the case. I had not regarded the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) as a repository of knowledge about the community charge ; no doubt we shall learn a great deal when the time comes.
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There was confusion about the subject for debate. I am not surprised when we realise that we have just had the best trade figures for many years and when we have seen the rate of inflation falling. We know that it will fall much more and that interest rates will come tumbling down during the year as well. Therefore, I am not surprised that the Opposition chose to narrow the debate to a single subject.We are debating a motion of no confidence in the Government, and the Opposition want to defeat the Government by voting us out. It is a forlorn task. If they had chosen a general vote of no confidence, and if the Leader of the Opposition had made such a hash of it as he did on the last occasion, would not the party have tried to get rid of him?
It occurred to me that there might be difficulty about that, given the leadership rules of the Labour party. I do not know whether my right hon. and hon. Friends have had an opportunity to peruse those rules, but I have. It is extraordinarily difficult to get rid of the leader of the Labour party, not just because the trade unions have the largest block vote and the leadership can be changed only during a party conference. If the leader is changed, he has to be replaced by the deputy leader, none other than the hon. Member for Sparkbrook. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir T. Raison) said that the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook is to reply to the debate, I immediately thought that the reason must be that the Labour party is going to get rid of the Leader of the Opposition and is preparing the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook to take his place.
Mr. Allen McKay (Barnsley, West and Penistone) : The hon. Gentleman is not addressing the motion, but that is for the Chair to decide ; I was about to raise it on a point of order. The hon. Gentleman mentioned my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley). If the hon. Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) reads the history of my right hon. Friend and of his family, he will realise that they have been in local government all their lives, and that my right hon. Friend's mother was a great lady on Sheffield city council for many years.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. Both hon. Gentlemen are out of order. Perhaps they would do the House the courtesy of returning to the motion.
Sir Peter Hordern : Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I should have expected the Opposition spokesman on environmental matters to reply to a debate which is confined to the poll tax.
I listened carefully to the Leader of the Opposition, and I distinctly heard him say that no more money would be necessary to pay for the Opposition's policy and that there would certainly be no poll tax. He said that there would be no increase in taxes. I do not know how a Labour Government would get more money, unless they borrowed it. That is a perennial problem for the Opposition. They are keen on spending, but they say that they would not cap local councils if they spent more than they should. Therefore, they would be driven to increase taxation or to borrow. That has always been the case with Labour Governments in the past.
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I was interested to hear the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) rightly claim in an intervention that in his time the rate support grant was 61 per cent. I also recollect that that proportion was reached by a drastic reduction imposed by the International Monetary Fund through Dr. Johannes Witteveen's letter--that admirable letter of intent--when he drove the Labour party to make slashing cuts in expenditure. The right hon. Gentleman was forced to reduce the rate support grant from 65 per cent. to 61 per cent. almost straight away.Mr. Shore : There was a reduction from a high of 66 per cent. to 61 per cent., but the impression that it was the long-term policy of the Labour Government to reduce the proportion of Government funding is not right. The 61 per cent. was held for three years. I have discovered that, according to a written reply last year, the Government's rate support grant equivalent was reduced to 38 per cent. from 61 per cent. No wonder the Government are in trouble and will not get out of it easily.
Sir Peter Hordern : The right hon. Gentleman talks about a reduction which was not in his mind. It was Hobson's choice because the Labour Government were compelled to make the cut by the International Monetary Fund. If the Leader of the Opposition were ever to become Prime Minister, a Labour Government would undoubtedly fall into the same trap again. They would spend more, borrow more and fall into the hands of the International Monetary Fund. I am encouraged by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) nodding his head in agreement.
Mr. Dunn : In the lifetime of the Labour Government, the overall percentage might have come down for the reasons just mentioned by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), but is it not also the case that within the figures there was a bias towards metropolitan authorities and against the shire counties which distorted the figures ? Some inner-city authorities got considerably more grant from the centre, and many shire counties got considerably less. The results are still felt today.
Sir Peter Hordern : Under the Government, the county of West Sussex has always done extremely badly by the rate support grant. I fail to distinguish between Labour and Conservative Governments in my disrespect for the rate support grant, which has never been very good for shire counties.
We have had endless debates about the nature of the community charge and about rates before it. What was endemically at fault in both systems was simply that the degree of Government support available was far too low and the bills to households were far too high. That will remain endemic so long as major services such as education are run by local authorities. Teachers' salaries have risen and are bound to rise faster than the rate of inflation. There is no party point in this. As the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney knows, the proportion of the rate support grant fell under his Government as it has under the present Government. We are belatedly realising that the level of grant to local authorities must be raised, and that is what we are doing now. I wholly commend my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on having the initiative to do that.
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