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Column 585
House of Commons
Friday 21 June 1991
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. Speaker-- in the Chair ]
Local Government Services
9.35 am
Mr. Roger Knapman (Stroud) : I beg to move,
That this House notes the widespread discontent with the inadequacies of local government services in parts of Britain, particularly in many inner city areas, as demonstrated by piles of rubbish in the streets of Liverpool and the promotion of eccentric minority interests such as gay' advice centres and nuclear-free zones ; notes that a number of councils have not collected outstanding domestic rates and have barely started their community charge collection ; further notes that this civic disarray is confined to councils controlled by Labour and their allies ; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to save the residents of these boroughs by insisting on value-for-money, appropriate competitive tendering and rigorous controls on overspending.
I hope that my hon. Friends will feel that on this occasion I have at least been able to introduce a timely subject, having regard to recent press reports on certain local councils. It was originally my intention to talk especially about rate support grants, local government finance Acts, rating and valuation Acts, and so on. We could have had a detailed debate on those issues. We could almost have taken them clause by clause and in such a way as to suggest that the Mace ought to be under rather than on the Table.
As we have not examined the role of local government for so many years, I hope that my hon. Friends will not be too tempted to detail the activities of individual councils, although that must be very tempting when we see who is here this morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) may feel tempted during the debate to mention Derbyshire council's record. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter) is very close to the scene in Liverpool. If he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is possible that the word "Liverpool" will cross his lips. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes), who has such detailed knowledge of the loonier London councils, may find that the word "Hackney" just drops from his lips between now and some time later this morning.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : My hon. Friend is being grossly unfair to many Labour London councils. If I were to mention only Hackney, a whole bunch of lunatics would feel grossly insulted that they had been left out of the list.
Mr. Knapman : My hon. Friend is probably right. I merely say, however, that I want this to be as productive a debate as possible, in which we examine the full role of local councils--principally as enablers rather than as providers. If, however, my hon. Friend feels that in London there are other examples besides Hackney where they have not got things entirely right, I hope that he will
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feel free, subject to catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, to mention them--and even, perhaps, to mention them by name.I can hardly say that the Opposition Benches are packed this morning, but unless some Opposition Member wants to admit to it now, I do not believe that the Militant Tendency wing of the Labour party is represented here this morning. There is one potential candidate, but he is busy reading the Orders of the Day, so I do not think that he is claiming to be a member of Militant Tendency.
Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : I could send the hon. Gentleman a copy of a pamphlet that I wrote a few years ago called "The Public Face of Militant", which was an analysis and critique of its politics. It criticised them strongly and suggested a socialist alternative. The hon. Gentleman should be clear about the politics of Opposition Members. Despite the fact that there are some things of value in the Militant analysis, there are mistakes in the way that its ideas are presented. We could have a full debate on those issues, but that would reduce the time available for the motion before us today.
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his position clear and for confirming that there are only some things of value undertaken by the Militant Tendency. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's socialist purity is shown by the vivid red colour of his tie. I hope that, while criticising his hon. Friends who are members of the Militant Tendency, he is also criticising them for not being here today. I understand that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) is unable to take part in the forthcoming by-election in Liverpool, Walton.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Why is that?
Mr. Knapman : My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) asks why. A Back Bencher is a very busy person. The by-election will last for only about three weeks, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Broadgreen has many demands on his time. I thought--and perhaps my hon. Friend also thought--that Liverpool, Broadgreen and Liverpool, Walton were some distance apart. I looked at a map of Liverpool and found that they are adjoining constituencies, so the hon. Member for Broadgreen must be a very busy man indeed.
Suffice it to say that the subject of "corpy land" will come to the fore in this debate. "Corpy" rhymes with "Gorby" and both try to look after people from womb to tomb. I read with interest an article by Mr. Ronald Faux in The Times this morning. He said that "Liverpool had a red letter day yesterday--it had a visit from the shadow Environment spokesman, our friend, the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), whose view of Liverpool is rather different from most. The article reports the hon. Member for Dagenham as saying
"that Liverpool had been ill-served by the Tory government as the city struggled with a legacy of a Militant-dominated council that had allowed problems in the city to fester."
So it is not the moderate or the real Labour party, but the Tory Government, who are to blame. That is one point of view but I shall draw attention to a few comments made by Mr. Keva Coombes and others who were formerly in power for the Militant Tendency in Liverpool. Unlike the hon. Member for Dagenham, even they no longer suggest that Liverpool's ills stem from a Tory Government.
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Mr. Anthony Steen (South Hams) : I rise in sorrow rather than in anger, having represented the constituency of Liverpool, Wavertree from 1974 to 1983. I was the only Conservative Member of Parliament for Liverpool at that time. I am a tremendous admirer of the Liverpudlian. He has a wonderful sense of humour ; he is generous, loyal, supportive, innovatory and enterprising. However, despite this Government having pumped more public money into Liverpool than any previous Government have done, the Liverpudlian has been misled by his leaders.They have followed extremism, Militant Tendency and militant trade unionism in the belief that that would provide salvation, instead of pursuing capitalism and private enterprise, and instead of giving the Government, who have given them so much money, an opportunity to make progress. Does not my hon. Friend deeply regret that the decent, working-class Liverpudlian has been so badly misled by the left wing and by Militant Tendency, when he could make progress along the lines suggested by the Government?
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, whose record as the Member of Parliament for Liverpool, Wavertree--as I believe the constituency was called before reorganisation--was remarkable. I am sure that he looked after his constituents well in what was at that time already a fairly difficult area, thanks to the local council's activities. That is proof of what we have always suspected. We believe that, if we are to attract people's votes, people must feel well off and prosperous, but in a Labour-controlled area the reality is different.
I have not been to Liverpool, Walton, but I believe that the theory must be to weld together all the various factions and self-interest groups so that, in the end, everyone relies on the corporation for a job or a house. Unless one is proved to be a committed supporter of Militant or of the Labour party--they are the same thing--one will not get very far. Everyone is sucked into the system, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) for confirmation that that is so.
That leads me to my next point. The Roman Catholic archbishop and our own Bishop of Liverpool were tempted to say yesterday : "We are convinced the present confrontational tactics can achieve only civic chaos and widespread hardship."
In fact, the matter could be cleared up relatively easily. One of the most pressing problems at the moment is that of uncollected rubbish.
Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton) : We get it here.
Mr. Knapman : The Labour party's Front-Bench spokesman says that we get it here, and I acknowledge that Labour are experts on rubbish. I understand that, three weeks ago, the few Conservatives on Liverpool city council moved a motion to allow private companies to be brought in to take away the rubbish. That motion received no support from the Labour party, from Militant or from the moderates.
Mr. Ronnie Fearn (Southport) : It did.
Mr. Knapman : The hon. Gentleman says that it did. All right, we shall leave out any more suggested parties, but I do not see the same nodding from Labour's Front-Bench spokesman. Why did the council not call in a private firm
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to clear the rubbish three weeks ago? I am sure that we shall find out when the the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) speaks later.At the moment, the 450 council dustmen are, if not on strike, not doing too much. In fact, I suggest that, to judge from the size of the piles of rubbish, one would have a job to tell whether they were on strike or not. However, help is at hand.
The article in The Times stated : "UK Waste Control was prepared to interview anyone looking for a job and"--
this is a novel suggestion for the area
"would employ them on their merits."
However, it would not take on all 450 council dustmen even though they do not work very much, because it would need only 250 dustmen to provide the city with a good weekly collection service.
UK Waste Control realises that in the 1990s it is not necessary to recognise trade unions, but said that it would not discriminate against workers who were union members. Perhaps it has the old-fashioned notion that workers are interested in the wages that they will receive, and the 250 workers will be able to share between them the same wages--or similar-- as those of the 450 workers.
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : I had not intended to interrupt the hon. Gentleman's speech because, as he knows, I have only just entered the Chamber, and I apologise for interrupting. However, from what I have heard, the hon. Gentleman's facts are wrong so I can only assume that the earlier part of his speech was equally incorrect. The fact is that half the work force will be employed, and I understand that it will receive a reduction, not an increase, in wages.
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newham, North- West (Mr. Banks) for just walking in. The hon. Gentleman will be flattered when I tell him that I wish to quote him at some length because he makes his point as a result of his considerable experience in London and especially through his proposals for a greater London authority. We note his view that dustmen, and presumably everyone else, should be paid according to his social dimension, rather than according to the price that they can readily command. We note especially that he has no fear that having 450 dustmen to do the jobs that 250 could readily do poses any great problem for the modern-day socialist party led by the great economist, the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), who says that Labour must learn to run capitalism better than the Conservatives do. Labour could make a start by not employing 450 dustmen when only 250 are required.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes : The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) plainly supports the system that was in place in Liverpool until the council meeting on Wednesday. Let us be clear what that system is, which the Labour party supports. It was a system in which, quite corruptly, job nominations were given to the unions in the full knowledge that those unions were completely dominated by Militant. People were given jobs by the trade unions--not on merit and not on job application, but through direct placement by unions. Four years ago, the so-called "moderate" Labour party took over Liverpool, but that system is still in place. Labour left it there and knows that it is corrupt, but did not do anything about it.
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Mr. Knapman : My hon. Friend is absolutely and characteristically right. This may be the time to draw the attention of the House to an excellent article in The Sunday Express of 16 June. It is headed : "Focus on a Sick City", and says :"Rotting Borough. Liverpool's Labour-run council is the worst in history".
My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South may have something to say about that. Certainly Liverpool is among the worst councils. In the article, Mr. Bruce Anderson says :
"During most of the past two decades, the Labour party has run Liverpool."
That is the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West.
The article continues :
"For a time, the Militant Tendency effectively controlled the city's Labour Party and therefore the city's government, but in recent years the so- called moderates have reasserted themselves. That has made no difference to Liverpool."
That is absolutely right. Is the situation in Liverpool now any different from that of 1979?
Mr. Richard Holt (Langbaurgh) : It is worse.
Mr. Knapman : My hon. Friend says that it is worse, but it must be a close thing. I agree with all the excellent article by Mr. Anderson--except one point. He says :
"If Militant had their way Liverpool would quickly resemble Albania."
That is not fair to Albania, because in the past week or two, the ruling Albanian Labour party has had a three-day congress. The subject of the congress was to debate whether to change the name from the Labour party to the Socialist party. That is making rapid progress and will leave that lot on the Opposition Benches as by far the most left-wing party in Europe.
The hon. Member for Broadgreen is not here to advise us on Militant Tendency. I regret that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) is also not here. They were here yesterday during Business Questions, when I asked my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House--this is no criticism--to use his endeavours to see that one of them was here. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East would have been so helpful this morning. We could have heard a few emollient words from him, drawing on his experience as industrial relations officer with the Alvis car company. That makes me grateful that I never bought an Alvis car, and I am not in the least surprised that Alvis went bust.
Mr. Holt : Does my hon. Friend think that the absence of the two illustrious Members is accounted for by the fact that they have taken their place at the front of the massing crowds for the victory parade today after the gallantry of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians in the Gulf war?
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In view of his comment, I am tempted to suggest that someone goes out to see whether that is true. Having regard for the number of hon. Members on the Benches this morning, I think that we had better rely on press reports in due course. There were enough who dissented in the voting Lobbies to show us that neither the hon. Members for Broadgreen and for Coventry, South-East, nor 52 or 53 of their colleagues are likely to be interested in military victory in the Gulf area.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : Does my hon. Friend consider that there is any significance in the fact
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that today, not a single Labour Member for the city of Liverpool is present for a debate on Liverpool? May not it reflect their sheer embarrassment that Labour government in action is being paraded? They would rather keep a low profile and keep the Liverpool Labour government unexposed.Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I do not entirely agree with him that it is a disgrace that none of the Liverpool Members is here this morning. I have every confidence that, when we read the Monday morning papers, we shall find that they suddenly realised the enormity of the problems of Liverpool and will be pictured with shovels in their hands helping to clear the rubbish away from the streets of Liverpool. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his suggestion, but I believe that the reason that I have given is the only reason why Liverpool Members could not be present for our debate.
I should hate the debate to be conducted along what might be termed party political lines, and I want especially to mention the rating and valuation Acts. I leave it to my hon. Friends to make political points about individual Labour councils.
One of the most important aims at present is to control inflation. Some £1 in every £4 is now spent by local authorities. Neither this Government nor any other would have the slightest chance of controlling inflation unless they had some control over expenditure by local councils. For 40 or 50 years, we have not looked at the real role of local authorities--what they should provide in goods and services and what they should not provide. In 1946 and 1947, with hundreds of thousands of troops coming back from the war, it was necessary to have a crash building exercise. The laws of supply and demand were so separate then that even a certain amount of Government planning was necessary to meet the demand. Large council estates were built.
For the next 30 years, no one questioned whether councils should be not only the enablers of Government legislation, but the providers of such houses. There were Parker Morris standards, under which a family of two was entitled to 802 sq ft of accommodation. If there were three people, it might be 846 sq ft. It was incumbent on the local council to tell people precisely what colour the front door should be. There was no question of trusting the people to make the really big decisions that affected their lives. None of that has been questioned.
We have had debate after debate about finding some popular form of tax. The reality is that people pay taxes in sorrow and rates in anger. Whatever, form of rates, council tax or community charge that we come up with, there will be people who are not happy because they have been losers. It is time that we addressed not only the way in which councils are financed, but the role that we expect them to play.
Mr. Holt : Was my hon. Friend here in the past few days? If so, he would have heard the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) say that a Labour Government would not cap any local authority unless fraud was involved. Does not that mean that the Government's announcement yesterday about the potential £35 billion overspill in spending was a gross underestimate because they did not include the environmental increases that would result from a return to the rating system?
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Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The sayings of the hon. Member for Dagenham never cease to mystify me, although I would not wish the hon. Gentleman to know what an interest I take in them in case he should consider it a form of flattery. Having consulted the hon. Gentleman's collected works, I can only come up with one suggestion, although I should first point out that I have relatives in New Zealand and Australia. It can only be the fact that the hon. Gentleman was born down under that enables him to turn the truth on its head with such ease.I was saying that local councils need to be enablers and not providers. We have debated the various methods of funding local authorities but not what we expect them to do. I look forward to hearing the Minister's speech in due course. I know that he and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be considering not only the financing of local authorities but the paper recently published on the structure of local authorities. I ask them please not to lose sight of what we expect authorities to do. When local authorities are providers rather than enablers, they are always monopoly providers. That means socialism, and socialism means queues, as exemplified in the case of Liverpool--but I leave it to my hon. Friends to talk about Liverpool.
I am fortunate to represent a most attractive part of the country. There is some lovely countryside around Stroud. I have considerable respect for the vast majority of councillors and council officers at Stroud and it saddens me when they come in for criticism. When they do, it is always for the same reason : it is when they decide to be providers as well as enablers. It is because of that that they are permanently short of money. There is always a reason why they need more money. I examined the council's spending record this morning, and I have to say, that, even in Stroud--which is no Liverpool, thank heavens--the district council has trebled its spending in nine years, while Gloucestershire county council has doubled its expenditure in five years. That is a substantial increase. I repeat that, now that £1 in every £4 throughout the country is spent by local authorities, we must consider the matter very carefully if we are to control inflation.
Criticism of the council saddens me because I believe that the vast majority of councillors and council officers at Stroud and in the shire hall at Gloucester do their very best--although one or two Green councillors occasionally do silly things such as debating until 2 am whether a local park should be called Chico Mendes park. I wonder why no one asks what is the cost to the charge payer of the full council, with all its officers present, meeting until 2 am. That is something that local newspapers could well take up and question.
Mr. Tony Banks : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Knapman : Now that the hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber for several minutes, I shall give way to him again.
Mr. Banks : The hon. Gentleman is making a critical point about Stroud council and the cost of holding council meetings. Has he considered what is the cost of our all being here today to hear the debate that he has initiated? I suggest that it would keep Stroud in council meetings from now until the end of the decade.
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Mr. Knapman : The hon. Gentleman was on his feet within a few seconds of walking into the Chamber and there is no doubt that any shortlist of those who detain the House most often would include him. I remember only one brief speech from the hon. Gentleman, which was when he walked in one day and said, "We need a revolution"--a statement that appeared in the day's headlines. I do not know whether he meant that we needed a revolution in the whole country or just in Liverpool. We may be a little wiser if the hon. Gentleman catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, although personally I doubt it.
Mr. Holt : As the only hon. Member present who represents a constituency in the north-east of England, may I ask the House to note the dedication of the man who was shot and killed yesterday while carrying out his work for his local authority--albeit a Labour-controlled authority? It would be nice if the House took note of that, and I should be grateful if the Minister took it on board.
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Those of us who watched the news simply could not believe that that was happening in this country, and our thoughts are very much with that man's family.
Before I was so rudely interrupted by the hon. Member for Newham, North- West, I was criticising not my council, as the council officers and the majority of councillors have the best needs of the area at heart, but two or three Green councillors who thought it necessary to debate the subject of Chico Mendes. I am sure that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West will remember well who Chico Mendes was, although, happily, many of us do not.
Mr. Tony Banks : Another man who gave his life for a good cause.
Mr. Knapman : The hon. Gentleman says that he was another man who gave his life for a good cause.
Problems with councils arise time after time. In the past day or two, I have read extensively in the Library and have consulted the debates in 1979, when the last Labour Government were going under. At that time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) initiated an Adjournment debate on why it was necessary to have direct labour organisations. If councils seek to be both providers and enablers, their enabling function must involve putting services out to tender, and that process is not very convincing if one of the groups of people who are tendering has a direct interest with the local authority.
On the shortlist of services that should not be permitted to be run by any council are leisure centres, which seem to soak up money at a rate of knots. For the life of me, I cannot see why local councils need to run car parks and shopping malls. If my hon. Friends or I decide that we want to invest in a shopping mall, it should be our decision, subject to negotiations with our bank managers. If we make a wrong decision, it is our fault. But when local councils go into property development and make a bish of things, they merely send the bill to the community charge payer, which is just not good enough.
Mr. O'Brien : What about members of Lloyd's?
Mr. Knapman : Having taken the Killingholme Generating Stations (Ancillary Powers) Bill through the House the other night, I am used to references to the council of Lloyd's. You, Madam Deputy Speaker, have
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been generous in allowing a wide-ranging debate and I realise that wide-ranging speeches can be taken in a number of ways, but the debate would need to be very wide ranging for the hon. Gentleman to bring in the council of Lloyd's. Perhaps he thinks that rather than being self regulating, that, too, should be brought within the ambit of a council, in which case the hon. Member for Newham, North-West will make the case for him, albeit not very well.Mr. O'Brien : The hon. Gentleman said that people who make business deals should stand by their decisions. I was merely asking whether that should not also apply to Lloyd's.
Mr. Knapman : As I have a direct interest, I have not formed a particular view on the subject.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : Boateng has.
Mr. Knapman : As my hon. Friend says, the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) made an eloquent speech on the subject in the Finance Bill Committee. If the hon. Member for Normanton has strong feelings about it, I suggest that he reads that speech, because everyone tells me that it was excellent. As I said, I have a direct interest in the matter, so I do not especially wish to know what the hon. Gentleman said. I see that the hon. Member for Normanton is nodding. I suspect that he has already read that speech, in which case I do not understand his intervention.
Mr. Arnold : My hon. Friend will be interested to know that the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) made yet another pledge on behalf of the Labour party. He proposed to spend more than £50 million on bailing out rich people who had put their money into Lloyd's and accepted the risk. It was very interesting--
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : The motion is wide- ranging, but the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) has just made it even wider. We must now return to the matter before us.
Mr. Knapman : I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I would not put it past the Labour party to think of the corporation of Lloyd's as an essential feature of local government provision. I accept your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Normanton for his intervention. I am fortunate that, in Stroud, we have committed councillors and council officers. Many people want to come to live in the Cotswolds. I wish that I could say the same about other areas.
The right hon. Member for Islwyn is trying hard to get people to believe that Militant now suddenly is one party, and that the Labour party is another. In particular, he want us to believe that about Liverpool. In past months, when the headlines were different, he would have had us believe it about London--that all bad councils were under the separate Militant influence. The right hon. Gentleman may wish to ponder a few facts.
I wonder whether hon. Members remember Linda Bellos, the former leader of Lambeth council. I was surprised to find that, in a speech at Brunel university, she admitted that the people in Lambeth had been
"failed by the education system, failed by the anachronistic rating system, and, yes, failed by municipal housing."
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I expect that that will come as news to Labour Members. Ms. Bellos also commented on education :"The dozen education authorities with the worst GCSE results in maths and English are all Labour-controlled."
On housing, she said :
"The twenty authorities with the worst rent arrears are all Labour- controlled."
All that was best summarised by the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone), who said :
"If you have a council that is as monumentally incompetent as Brent's been in the last few years, it rightly gets a major vote of censure from the public."
Referring to Camden and Haringey, he said :
"I think that people running things now are just like the Vichy regime in France under the Nazis."
That is a nice statement from the Labour party.
Just in case anyone thinks that the hon. Gentleman was not correct, the Queen's counsel report on Islington council stated :
"Having the cash office staffed by the innumerate, the filing done by the dyslexic and disorganised, and reception by the surly or charmless seems to us a recipe for administrative chaos." That has been the position in London for some years.
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