House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Feb 1992

Mr. Lawrence Cunliffe (Leigh) : Over the past three years, we have attempted to put before Secretaries of State and Ministers the special financial plight confronting the metropolitan borough of Wigan. Recently, we had extended to us the courtesy of an all-party delegation being received in the very best spirit by the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities and his staff. Its members placed before him the books, as it were, of the metropolitan borough of Wigan, of which my constituency is a part.

For three years, before any rate was fixed, or any capping criteria were set, we systematically placed before the Minister for his consideration and that of his staff a request to be advised how best Wigan could achieve maximum efficiency, value for money, good housekeeping, and everything else that speaks well of local government services.

That gesture was accepted by the Minister to the extent that he sent one of his civil servants to Wigan for several months to examine its books. Even the Minister himself concedes that authority's excellent quality of services and first-class housekeeping. However, when I put questions to the Minister, he says that that is not relevant to the standard spending assessment formula. What on earth are we supposed to do in such a case, which has been examined by the Audit Commission and by The Sunday Times , whose league table showed Wigan to be the third most efficient metropolitan district in the country?

Referring to the district's value-for-money educational services, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities states in the parliamentary brief sent to all right hon. and hon. Members that the teachers' pay award will have implications :

"Teacher jobs will have to be sacrificed to meet capping criteria. The Government claims that it wishes to improve

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standards and hails the SAT 7-year-old test results as a move in this direction. Yet Wigan, which produced above- average results, is being forced to consider reducing its teaching staff."

Impartial assessments by two highly professional organisations clearly state that that metropolitan district is again being discriminated against under a system that militates against good housekeeping and accountability.

When the poll tax was first introduced, I understood that it was about ensuring greater accountability to ratepayers, Parliament, and Ministers. The bit about accountability to Ministers may well be true. It appears to be their exclusive preserve, regardless of the case that authorities may present, to ordain that an unfair, unworkable and discriminatory formula must remain the norm. Since the introduction of standard spending assessments, my borough has been capped three times. In the past three years, £38 million has been taken from its budget. An all-party delegation, including the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal groups and the chairman of the chamber of commerce, presented the case to the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities recently, but no financial relief has yet been received. We now face a further deficit of £15 million to meet the capping criteria. It is estimated--again, the position has been examined by a Minister--that between 750 and 1,000 redundancies will follow.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : In local government?

Mr. Cunliffe : Yes, in local government.

Only last week, 625 miners lost their jobs at the Bickershaw colliery, and the week before, 220 people were made redundant at a textile mill. The borough is already involved in a grim economic scenario, and needs all the help and encouragement that it can get. What will the proposed cuts mean? A minimum of about 400 teachers will lose their jobs somewhere along the line ; social services will be decimated ; 25 or 30 youth officers will suffer. The aged, the sick, the chronically disabled, the young and the unemployed will all be affected by this stupid SSA.

My Tory opponent in Leigh has said that he will fight the next election on home rule and the breaking up of Wigan metro--a unitary authority, which has built in the new local government criteria. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not present. According to an item in the Leigh Reporter , Mr. Egerton--the Conservative candidate--has spoken to the Secretary of State, and has approached various other people. He says that he has special access to the right hon. Gentleman's advisers, and that the intention is to restore Leigh's status as a non-county borough and to make Atherton, Tyldesley and Hindley into urban district councils.

Perhaps the Minister will confirm or deny that that is the plan. It entirely contradicts the criteria laid down for local government, including the elimination of two-tier authorities. It is, of course, understandable that a Conservative candidate will need a little help when the Labour majority is 17,000.

The Government claim that the SSAs are scientifically calculated, and represent a real measure of the need to spend. The Minister is still the patron saint of the original poll tax--as opposed to the new Whitehall council tax--and I saw him on television the other day making such claims.

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Is it not true that all the professional associations in local government--bodies that did not involve themselves in the political debate until this corny formula came into effect--have condemned the system? It has militated against the lives of local people-- against their trades, their associations, their business acumen and, above all, their employment prospects. It has been proved to be unfair, unworkable, discriminatory and indefensible ; it has been utterly discredited.

If this is an example of the new Tory "charterism", heaven help the nation. The sooner the Government have the guts to grant the country sweet relief, the sooner we can provide hope and consolation. Under a Labour Government, the SSA formula will be destined for the dustbin, along with its architects, the Tory legislators.

5.5 pm

Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : I was intrigued by the fact that the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Cunliffe) devoted so much time to the utterances of his Conservative opponent. I should have thought that, with a majority of 17,000, he would not be all that worried, but perhaps his anxiety is an indication of the impact that the Tory candidate is making. I am less worried, as Labour would have to gain 22,000-odd extra votes in my constituency. One never knows, however ; the electorate might change their minds.

Let me say a word about the tone of today's debate.

Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) : One word : rubbish.

Mr. Hughes : As the hon. Gentleman has not yet spoken, it is not entirely rubbish.

It has been the case during my time in local government and since then--and I suspect that it has always been the case--that every local authority grant settlement has been greeted with the chorus, "It is not enough." It is inconceivable that after the Secretary of State had announced the amount that would be available, an authority would ever say, "Thank you very much ; that is exactly what we were looking for." That certainly did not happen under the last Labour Government.

Mr. Allen McKay : The hon. Gentleman is not comparing like with like. In the days of the rates, before the poll tax regime was introduced, local authorities would complain to the Secretary of State that they had not enough money, irrespective of which party was in government. Then, however, they were allowed to collect the extra money that they needed after going to the people to ask them for it.

Mr. Hughes : I was living in the London borough of Ealing when it put up its rates by 57 per cent. The borough was allowed to collect the money all right, and I remember who it collected it from. I was a member of Hounslow borough council, which was then Labour-controlled, under a Labour Government. The borough complained then that it did not have enough grant. The complaints of Opposition Members should be put into context. We should bear it in mind that many local government leaders--members of different parties and different local authority associations

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--will be saying, partly as a way of bargaining and protecting their position, that they would like more money.

Of course my own borough, the London borough of Harrow, could use more money. School rolls are rising and our first schools are crammed. There are no empty places in them, as there are in other local authority areas. My local authority is financing one first and middle school, and seeking to finance a second.

I know that eventually the money comes back, but it has to be financed in the short term. There is also the problem of the rapid increase in the Metropolitan police precept. Of course we want more money to be spent on policing, but that money has to be added to the community charge bills of people in my constituency and elsewhere. In Harrow, people would like more money, but they recognise that they cannot just have more money without paying the price for it. The standard spending assessments have increased by 6.8 per cent.--that is above the level of inflation. It is important to recognise that it should be possible for each local authority to be able to spend at least what it spent last year, plus inflation, without making any cuts in services. Surely, the art of government, as the noble Lord Wilson said when he was Prime Minister, is summed up in the phrase :

"Politics is the art of the possible,"

Sir Anthony Grant : It was the late Lord Butler who used that phrase.

Mr. Hughes : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who used to represent part of my constituency. I thought that it was a wise phrase to have been used by the noble Lord Wilson.

Anyone in government, whether local or national, must choose priorities. If money is spent in one area, it robs money from another. Money given to local authorities used to be given in watertight compartments and if it was not spent in one area, it could not be transferred straight across to another. That has changed under this Government. There is greater flexibility for virement under the budget headings. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) may not have had experience in local government. I am talking with direct experience of local government during the previous Labour Government.

Mr. Jack Thompson (Wansbeck) : Is the hon. Gentleman aware that for three years I was leader of my county council and that my service on local authorities extends over 15 years? I was the chairman of the policy resources committee of my council and money was switched around and is switched around by every local authority.

Mr. Hughes : Yes, but there were limitations. If the hon. Gentleman cares to go to the Library, he will see that that is confirmed. Since money can be transferred between budget heads, if money is wasted in one area, it is because the local authority has made a choice not to spend it elsewhere. When Labour-controlled Birmingham council-- [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said, "Here we go." When I have finished this catalogue of examples, will the hon. Gentleman defend it?

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Mr. Blunkett : Is this to be the same catalogue that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) put on the Order Paper yesterday? If it is, all who can read can be spared the hon. Gentleman's comments now.

Mr. Hughes : I am delighted to say that this is a different catalogue. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that there are more things on the Order Paper that one can look at, including buying wedding rings for two stone statues at a cost of £50,000. I was not going to mention that.

I want to talk about the 149 trips to foreign countries paid for by Birmingham council. There were 29 trips to France, as well as trips to Puerto Rico, the Gambia, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, the United States of America, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Soviet Union and Italy. The trip to Italy took place during the world cup and was supposedly a fact-finding trip to look at football grounds. Birmingham council decided to spend its money in that way and not on sweeping the streets, social services or education. That was the Labour-controlled authority's choice.

Derbyshire spent £1 million on its information department. That is another example of the Labour party making a choice in government. It felt that it would rather spend £1 million on information than on social services or education. Haringey was told that its £3.8 million vehicle bill could be reduced by £1 million if it was properly managed. It has not bothered to try to do so. That money is wasted when it could have been spent on social services or education. Lambeth has many problems, but last year it spent £42,000 on a stretched limousine for its mayor. Perhaps some local authorities can afford that. I agree with the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey) who was incredulous that money should be spent in that way.

Mr. Haynes : Will the hon. Gentleman now criticise the Government for wasting £10 billion on the introduction of the poll tax? How about that one? Have a go at that.

Mr. Hughes : The hon. Gentleman has many admirable qualities, but being able to add up is not one of them. That figure is conjured out of mid -air. It includes money that has been used directly to help reduce the size of people's bills. If the hon. Gentleman believes that that is money badly spent, he should say so. That money is also included in the fraudulent figures given by the Labour party for its council tax. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. There are many problems in the London borough of Haringey. It could have chosen to spend money on social services or education, but it has chosen to spend £500,000 a year on luxury cars for 98 council officials.

I have a flat in Lambeth, as does the Labour party Whip. He and I both know how rotten the services are. Because it provides such rotten services, it is important to be able to telephone the council. One may need something done to one's flat or house. Therefore, it would have been a good use of money for Lambeth to pay its telephone bill to prevent the council being cut off 30 times in one year. That is a waste of money, and its typical of the choices made by Labour councils. It is no wonder that, for three years running, two Labour-controlled councils in London failed to close their accounts by the statutory deadline. If

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I were running a council like that, I would be embarrassed to close the accounts and let people see what had been done.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) : My hon. Friend has been talking about Lambeth. Does he agree with the Local Government Chronicle which, when commenting on the district auditor's report, summed up Lambeth as

"an unresponsive organisation where action is generally achieved only after inordinate delays or in response to a crisis"? Does that sum up Labour government in Lambeth?

Mr. Hughes : I have some good news about Lambeth. I was told by a senior council official that things were improving and that there were fewer than 10 nutcases left in the Labour group. Things might get better.

Mr. Allen McKay : Say that to those outside.

Mr. Hughes : The official said it outside.

The Labour party has continued with its policy over the past few weeks. Just over a week ago, the Labour party claimed that massive cuts could be made in the defence budget without any redundancies. I thought that that was clever. Also, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) claimed that as Home Secretary he would put many more police on the beat without adding a penny to the Home Office budget. I thought that that was also clever--I do not know whether he does not intend to pay them, but he will have to take that up with the Police Federation.

What have we heard today from the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould)? It is implicit in what he has been saying to his friends that whatever grant system applied whether it was the standard spending assessment or something else--and were Labour to form a Government, every council would be top of the league. They would all have the same grant as those which currently receive the most. One could not read anything else into his words. However, we know that that is not only impossible but flies in the face of Labour's pretty tawdry record in government.

A Labour Government's agenda for local government has been made clear, at least to me. It is a bit like a Labour acid house party--what matters about an acid house party is not what goes on inside but the fact that one does not tell anyone where it is happening. All the Labour party's policies are conducted in whispers : that has now been revealed in Sheffield, where the Labour authority has plainly done a deal with the Labour Front Bench. The deal was to ask whether, if the authority set a budget that could not be met and if there was a Labour Government--Labour say, when there is a Labour Government--that Government would meet its deficit. In private, those on the Labour Front Bench have plainly said yes, and they have not said yes only in Sheffield.

I have spoken to Conservative council leaders across the country and received some interesting responses. Labour spokesmen are travelling around the country speaking to Labour councillors or Labour groups and echoing the words of Labour's deputy leader who told, I think, Motherwell's Labour council group, "You won't get as much money as you want, but you will get more." In other words, Labour is promising that the election of a Labour Government would be accompanied by more money.

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Labour refuses to specify how much money or how it would be raised, but we know that it can be raised from only two people, or from one group of people in two different ways. It can be raised by increasing direct taxation, which Labour pretends that it would not do, or by allowing the local government tax bill--the council tax, or its version, which it laughably calls "fair rates"--to soar. That is the reality of Labour party policy.

Mr. Blunkett : The hon. Gentleman speaks as the chairman or vice- chairman--

Mr. Hughes : Vice-chairman.

Mr. Blunkett : --as the vice-chairman of the Conservative party's local government committee. In that prestigious role which the Conservative party grants to such a post, he has already made a statement in a press release last week about members of Labour's Front Bench travelling up and down the country making promises. Will he give us examples--other than the one he has dreamed up about Motherwell and the fictitious and erroneous statement about Sheffield--of the figures, statements and promises, and how much?

Mr. Hughes : The hon. Gentleman has given me some good news--I did not think that anyone had picked up my press release. I am delighted that he has read it. It has a better circulation than I thought and that will encourage me to publish more. I am enormously grateful to him. He must be patient, because I shall reveal all--he need not worry about that. There are examples from Kent, the west country and the north and they will all be revealed.

The hon. Gentleman should seek advice about the quotation from the deputy leader of the Labour party. Some Labour advisers might be lurking in the precincts of the Chamber to advise him precisely what the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook said, but I have cited his exact words--they were spoken in public. If that is what the right hon. Gentleman says in public, God alone knows what he says in private in a smoke-filled room, because it is in the privacy of that smoke-filled room that other words are being used. Unfortunately, Labour council members are revealing all to their Conservative counterparts, and we are receiving the information.

The Labour party, with the tawdry and lacklustre performance of the members of its Front Bench, refuses to face one simple truth. It is fine to say that it will spend more money and that it wants to improve services, but we and the people of this country know that promises have a price and that, unless one can pay the price, the promises are completely empty.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. I remind the House of Mr. Speaker's appeal for brief speeches.

5.24 pm

Mr. David Bellotti (Eastbourne) : I am glad to have heard all but three minutes of the speeches made so far. I begin by dealing with the overall finance available to local government and the Government's decision to make provision of £41.8 billion for the total standard spending assessment for 1992-93. If we consider that figure and the

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different services that different local authorities need to deliver, we can conclude only that that figure is inadequate for the job. The Secretary of State spoke about a 7.6 per cent. increase, but that misleads many people outside the House, because it implies that that is an increase on the services that they enjoyed last year. That is not so. There will be only a 4.8 per cent. increase in the level of services that they had the pleasure to enjoy in 1991-92. We need to establish the facts and not listen to the figures, which I believe are sometimes deliberately intended to mislead so that any blame for subsequent action and mismanagement of services will be attached to local authorities, not to the Government. Let us nail that issue at the outset.

I think that the House has now concluded that 4.8 per cent. is the real sum of money about which the Secretary of State spoke. We need to bring into play the amount of new service provision which local authorities have agreed to provide after Government legislation. I refer briefly to three pieces of legislation--the Education Reform Act 1988, the Children Act 1989 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. If three are not enough, I could mention care in the community policies.

The provisions of those Acts add to the costs of local authorities, which are expected to bear the additional service demands against a background of a 4.8 per cent. increase. That figure is wholly inadequate for the job, as was demonstrated by the number of local authorities whose representatives have met the Minister at the Department during the past few months. They were of all political persuasions, and they brought home to him the inadequacy of the sums available. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how many local authorities have written to express their concern about the inadequacy of the financial settlement or have been to see him. That in itself would be quite revealing.

A further problem is that, during the coming year, local authorities will have to pick up other costs which have not been allowed for. There is a 1.3 per cent. tail-end teachers' pay award from 1991, which will come into effect in 1992-93. That does not appear to have been taken into account in the settlement figures. In addition to that 1.3 per cent. carry-over, the Government will fairly soon settle teachers' pay for next year. The allowances for inflation in the figures given for local authorities will be very much below the level of the pay settlement for teachers which local authorities no longer have a say in fixing.

Therefore, local authorities are being asked not merely to begin with a level below the rate of inflation or to deliver extra services, but to deal with decisions taken later which they will find it difficult to meet. They will have to meet them even if they find it impossible : it will be the law, because the Government have centralised the decision-making processes for teachers' pay. Therefore, all local authorities of every political persuasion will conclude that the settlement is wholly and utterly inadequate for the job.

The majority of local authorities will stay within their capping limits. By and large, local authorities want to observe the regulations and do not wish to go outside the law. In a sense that makes it worse, because they pass on to the people in the local community the result of the Tory cuts-- and cuts they are.

The position is made worse by central Government trying to interfere in some of the service delivery. Is the Minister aware of a letter sent from the Home Office by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary to all chief

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constables, requesting details of budgets from 1992-93 ? The letter's effect is that each local authority that funds a police authority should spend up to its SSA on services for the police. Many hon. Members may agree with the figure, but the impact for many local authorities will be that they will have to make cuts in education, in social services, in housing and in other services if they spend that amount on services for the police.

West Midlands was mentioned earlier as a county council that is also a police authority which did not intend to spend up to its SSA on the police. The only alternative would be the wholesale closure of a number of schools. I stress that it would be the closure of schools, not merely the cutting of hundreds of teachers' jobs.

I know that Ministers often do not listen when I speak about local government. All I can do is to cut out Hansard tomorrow, send them the statistical information and invite them to dispute the figures. I like to present the figures so that at least I give Ministers the chance to have an intellectual argument. They never enter intellectual arguments with me and I can only assume, as did other hon. Members earlier, that they do not like to listen to people who have actually been in local government for a number of years, because they are afraid that they might learn something.

There is an additional problem which the settlement does not take into account, which is money that local authorities cannot collect through the poll tax. It is not money that they do not want to collect, but money that is uncollectable. Southwark, part of which is covered by the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), has applied for 2,500 liability orders. It is a matter of regret that the Minister and the Secretary of State were not able to support the Opposition proposal in that regard, which could have been put quickly on to the statute book.

As a result of the position in the courts and because the Government could not get their legislation right to begin with, Southwark could lose up to £500,000 of revenue in the short term. No local authority can afford to lose such money. It is not that Southwark does not intend to collect the money ; it is doing its best.

The Conservative chairman of the Association of District Councils has said that the response by the Secretary of State to the matter is not enough :

"We need immediate action to change the law and it must be retrospective."

Co-operation on the matter has been offered by the Opposition, but it has been turned down.

The Minister courteously received a delegation from Eastbourne, my local authority. We outlined the cuts in services that would be necessary in the Eastbourne borough council area. We face a poll tax of about £315, and we told the Minister that a month ago. The response of the Minister and the Secretary of State in the press was that the figures would not be reached, but they will. One reason is that the county council will now spend up to its SSA, which it has never done before. It will put £1.43 million into its budget to increase provision for special educational needs. It must do that ; if it does not, it will be taken to court by many parents for failing to provide the special education which families need in East Sussex. It is all very well to receive a courteous response when one goes to the Department of the Environment. In the group from Eastbourne, we had the Liberal Democrat leader of the council, the Conservative leader of the

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opposition group, the chairman of the chamber of commerce, the president of the Eastbourne Industrial Association and the chief executive. All gave the same message and the Minister gave the same answer : "I will have to look at it. If I give you anything, I will have to take something from somewhere else." Surely the Minister should conclude that there is not enough money in the pot and that the pot is not big enough. Not only Eastbourne, but other areas should have more consideration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) tells me about Northumberland county council. He draws attention "to the crisis in education in Northumberland where the inadequate SSA has led to cuts of £6.5 million including £3.7 million from the education service. Severe cuts are being imposed on schools which were already providing education at much lower costs per pupil than the rest of the country. Last week, the head teachers of every Northumberland school came to the House of Commons to protest about the effect of the cuts and about the system that has produced them." Those head teachers were not from one political party, but from the schools, and spoke on behalf of the children in those schools. How can an SSA system and settlement work like that in Northumberland? That county council does not appear on the Government's list of profligate authorities.

Sutton is also controlled by the Liberal Democrats. The Government are imposing limits on Sutton which will lead to an £8 million cut in next year's budget. Sutton has the fourth lowest net expenditure per head of all the London boroughs. It spends less per head than almost all the London boroughs, yet it will have to cut £8 million from its budget next year. In 1991-92, it is spending £561 per head. Kingston upon Thames spends £629, which is much nearer the average. If Sutton spent at the level of Kingston, it could spend another £11 million without being affected by legislation. The cuts in Sutton and the blame for them lie clearly at the door of the Tory Government. The revenue support grant per adult in Sutton is £485. In Wandsworth, the figure is £977. It is no wonder that Wandsworth can have a nil poll tax for 1991-92 when it gets so much extra per adult compared with most other London boroughs. That is why people keep referring to Wandsworth. However, Conservative Members do not often refer to the services that Wandsworth delivers, although Wandsworth was mentioned in an earlier exchange.

If Conservative Members did refer to the services, they might draw attention to the fact that Wandsworth borough council was taken to court and ordered to pay £12,000 in legal costs after the court heard of an infestation of cockroaches in the York Road estate and in the St. James Grove estate had made tenants' lives a misery because the cockroaches crawled into food, drinks, beds and shoes. If that is the level of services provided in Wandsworth, it is no wonder that the council tax is nil. We should not talk only about the spending, but about the level of services. Every time a Conservative Member starts to shout about Wandsworth, the Opposition will start to shout about cockroaches.

The Isle of Wight has also been mentioned. The Government have successively reduced support to the Liberal Democrat-run county council, which has always provided cost-effective services.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell : I wish that the hon. Gentleman had spent a little longer looking at the example of

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Wandsworth, whose services he decried. Is he not aware that there is an excellent comparison between Wandsworth and Lambeth? The comparison has been made by many independent bodies, including the Audit Commission. Does that not show that people in Wandsworth get a better service across the board, respect their council more, feel that they get a better service and pay a great deal less for it?

Mr. Bellotti : I did not want to return to the subject of Wandsworth. I will compare Wandsworth to all other local authorities. I am not prepared to join in a Government attack on a small number of local authorities when we have the interests of all local authorities at heart. However, the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) has given me the opportunity to say that, when one of the tenants approached the council about the cockroaches in her flat, the local authority bribed her to drop her complaint and offered her another flat. The council should have investigated the complaint rather than moving the person, because the problem was then present for the next tenant.

I was talking about the Isle of Wight. The county council there has always delivered services cost-effectively. The SSA which the Government are imposing on the local authority makes it more difficult for the services to be delivered. The choice is stark, not only for the Isle of Wight but for other local authorities : should one exceed one's SSA and inflict a high poll tax--soon to be the council tax--on members of the community, or should one see whether services can be cut?

Mr. Barry Field : I think that the hon. Gentleman heard my intervention in the speech of the Secretary of State. When the Liberal Democrats last fought the county elections, they ran the balances down to £250,000. Balances now stand at nearly £3 million, because the Isle of Wight had the highest shire county settlement of any English county last year. This year, per capita, we have moved up from 14th place to 11th.

I know that the hon. Gentleman has heard me make the point many times before, but in 1962, the Edwards committee considered that, in terms of local government finance, the Isle of Wight was underfunded. Successive Members of Parliament have led delegations to the Department of the Environment to argue the case for an increase in rate support grant or standard spending assessment. None of us disagrees that there is a problem, but it is not something that has suddenly visited us from outer space this year. The cuts that the Liberal Democrats are imposing on the Isle of Wight in this election year are purely political and not dictated by economic or financial necessity.

Mr. Bellotti : The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his opinion, but the facts stand. If the Government had not taken increased central control, the Isle of Wight local authority--like all other local authorities--would be in a better position to take its own decisions. The hon. Gentleman is inconsistent. It seems that today he intends to support the Government and accept the SSA figures, yet he proposes to join a march on Saturday against the cuts--which are really Tory cuts imposed by the Government on Newport and the Isle of Wight. Those actions are wholly inconsistent, and I am sure that people

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living on the Isle of Wight will realise it. One day the hon. Gentleman votes to support his local authority's SSA, and a few days later he marches against cuts that are the result of Tory action. The hon. Gentleman deserves any conclusion that those on the Isle of Wight may draw. [Interruption.] I can only hear the word "balances".

Mr. Barry Field : Three million pounds-worth of balances.

Mr. Bellotti : Those with experience of local authorities know that, in successive years, balances vary--up and down--but the services provided are the key factor in deciding whether the local authority is doing the job that it should.

Before I conclude my remarks--I must say that I am rather enjoying the debate--I want to refer to voluntary organisations. In debating local authorities, we often overlook the role that the voluntary sector plays in our community. The more centralised capping powers and increased restrictions on SSAs the Government put in place, the more the voluntary sector feels the pinch, because the voluntary organisations cannot enter into partnership programmes.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations ably drew that to our attention in its response to "Competing for Quality". The Government's compulsory competitive tendering proposals do nothing to help their situation--in fact, they make it worse. The voluntary organisations are being squeezed out of the partnership programmes that they have provided as a result of the Government's action on compulsory competitive tendering and as a result of the SSAs before us today.

If we really want the voluntary sector to enter into the provision of programmes in our local communities, we must do far more to encourage them. All that happens at present is that local authorities shift their money to items such as special needs--which I mentioned in connection with East Sussex, and which is very important--away from, for example, the provision of play facilities, because the provision of such facilities is not a statutory responsibility. The voluntary sector, which could provide very cost-effective play facilities if it had a grant, no longer receives a grant and cannot provide them. The Government have not only attacked local authorities ; they have attacked councillors of all parties. The latest information we have is that many councillors of all parties are leaving local authorities because they blame the Government for interfering in the provision of services that they were elected by local communities to deliver. The Government are having such an adverse effect that 42 per cent. of all councillors are standing down after only one term of office. That is an amazing statistic. [ Hon. Members :-- "What about you?"] I can tell the Minister that, in every election that I have fought since 1977, my vote has increased, and that I have no intention of losing that record. When I stand down from my local authority membership, I shall do so with reluctance, because I believe that many of our councillors do a much better job than many of us in the House. Their role is very important and should never be underestimated.

The forced service cuts, the Government's attacks on local councillors and the fact that the Government have given local authorities an uncollectable tax base all lead us to the conclusion that the Government do not value local authorities' work. What we must do is to put into place

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something that will give local authorities the confidence to deliver services. The Government cannot give them that confidence. We must look elsewhere. We must have people who will serve their local communities.

The people in those local communities know who to blame for the poll tax : they know who introduced it and who is responsible for it. They know who to blame for the cuts in local services ; they are in no doubt whatever about that. Those self-same people cannot wait for the opportunity to put the blame on the Government. The earlier we have an election and give them that opportunity, the better. 5.46 pm

Mr. Lewis Stevens (Nuneaton) : Opposition Members have implied-- indeed, have stated directly--that the SSAs will work to the advantage of Tory councils. I wish someone would explain to me--coming from Warwickshire as I do and knowing the problems that we have had there in the past 12 months, which appear likely to be repeated to some extent--how that can be the case.

Questions have also been raised about the quality of the SSA system. There has been too much writing off of the formula as a Tory ploy dreamed up by the Government--not worth while and not logical. That view needs to be countered. The SSA system is an objective system applying in a fair and proper way to every authority in the country.

It is quite ludicrous to think that one might choose another system for the distribution of central Government resources which would not of necessity involve some formula that would almost certainly appear to benefit one local authority against another. But perhaps the Labour party prefers total patronage, so that it can dish out the money to councils that it thinks should have it and withhold money from councils that it thinks should not.

That would be a much more unfair system. We need a system, such as the SSA system, which can be worked on a formula and which takes into account many of the factors that statistics show have a direct correlation to what one might spend on various services. It is a sensible and logical system.

Having said that, however, I emphasise that any system that serves local government must be fine-tuned and tinkered with continually, because we do not live in a static world--in local government finance or anything else. To cope with changes--whether demographic changes or changes in what the Government require of local government--we need to update and change the arrangements.

Under the present system, Warwickshire almost inevitably seems to come off not very well, to say the least, and distinctly badly in some areas, to put it at its worst. The Audit Commission puts groups into families. The families that it has chosen for us in terms of SSAs and grants invariably put us very near the bottom. No one would suggest that Warwickshire, given the type of county that it is, would normally expect to receive very high levels of grant. By most criteria, it could not be said that the county shares the problems of the inner cities ; nor does it have the problem of sparsity of population that is faced by counties such as Northumberland. Nevertheless, we believe that we should have more money than the amount that is distributed to us.

Indeed, distribution is the key. The Government have substantially increased the amount that is available to

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