House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Feb 1993

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Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman must know that by far the biggest factor in those changes is population change. Is he seriously suggesting that we should not have used the latest population figures from the 1991 census?

Mr. Straw : The Secretary of State was the master of the poll tax, and he was the one who went around the country

Mr. Howard : Answer.

Mr. Straw : I am, I am. The Secretary of State should know that one of the consequences of the poll tax--the tax that he said would be the fairest and the best--is that the number of people registering for the electoral register and for the census is down. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that. There has been massive

under-registration for the census. That evidence is known to his Department, but he refused to take it into account. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that that is so in counties controlled by the Labour party ; it is a matter of record that the problem of under- registration is most acute in larger cities and towns--and we control the larger cities and towns and the counties with the largest urban populations.

Mr. Howard : Will the hon. Gentleman calm down and consider the facts ? We are talking about counties, not inner-city areas. Is he seriously suggesting that people have removed themselves from the register in Labour-controlled shire counties but not in other counties ? That is an absurd proposition.

Mr. Straw : It is not absurd at all. If the Secretary of State had any knowledge of the geography of this country, he would know that Labour- controlled shire counties are more urban than the Conservative-controlled shire counties. They contain major cities such as Bristol, Hull, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Preston. There is a much higher propensity not to register, especially among young people, in those areas than in areas with more stable populations. That is a fact.

The Secretary of State mentioned population loss. There has been an element of population loss but--surprise, surprise--Richmond and Wokingham, which are both Conservative controlled, receive a population loss grant while Islington and Camden which are Labour, do not.

The all ages social index rates Bournemouth as more deprived than Barnsley, Watford as more deprived than Wigan, and suggests that the Prime Minister's Huntingdonshire has poorer social conditions than Chester-le-Street. Is the Secretary of State going to say, on that evidence, that it is a fair system in which there has been no political gerrymandering ? Dudley is told that it has £1,722 to spend on each primary age pupil, but Bedfordshire is allowed £250 more. Barnsley is allowed only £1,793 per pupil, but the Secretary of State's Kent--on no basis more deprived or in greater need than Barnsley--is given almost £100 more. I could go on and on. There is scarcely a service area where the data and methodology used are sufficiently robust to run a grant distribution system simply. What makes matters so much worse is that the convoluted, contrived and politically distorted system is then used as a control on total spending, as the base line for capping and, through gearing, becomes one of the principal factors in the level of the council tax. We do not

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yet know what the level of the council tax will be in each authority, but we can be certain of one thing--it will be far in excess of what the Government pretended that it would be during and before the general election campaign.

In 1991, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) predicted the council tax levels for each council area. He said that the average for the country would be £400 for band D. That was the basis of the Government's claims for the council tax before the election. Uprated for inflation, that £400 will be £428 in April of this year. However, as the Secretary of State is aware, since he quoted the Local Government Chronicle survey with great approval, the band D figure will not be £428 or anything like it. According to the Local Government Chronicle, the band D figure will be £550. That is £122 more--nearly a quarter more--than the figure that the right hon. Member for Henley and his right hon. Friends were peddling around the country before the election.

Higher council tax bills will be a consequence of the settlement. A second consequence will be further centralisation of power and a loss of democracy. Thirdly, many thousands of jobs will be lost. Fourthly, and most seriously, there will be a reduction in the public service that councils provide to individuals and communities across the land. That will mean shorter hours of libraries, the closure of residential homes for the elderly, higher charges for meals on wheels and home helps, larger classes and fewer policemen on the beat than what is necessary.

That is a policy without purpose--a policy so wrong-headed that it will increase unemployment and the borrowing requirement, worsen the recession and harm the very services on which the victims of the recession most rely. The policy is partisan and prejudiced, and we oppose it : it will not do.

5.31 pm

Mr. Jerry Hayes (Harlow) : I do not pretend for a moment to be a great expert on local government. In fact, I last made a speech on the subject 10 years ago-- [Hon. Members :-- "Sit down, then."] Hon. Members may say, "Sit down," but I know injustice and unfairness when I see it. I know when my town faces a total catastrophe because of the complete and utter incompetence of Labour-controlled Harlow council.

For years, I, the district auditor and my colleagues on the Government Front Bench have been warning the local authority members that, unless they gained control of their spending and put it on a gradual downward path, there would be job losses, capping and a disaster for the services in my town. Just before the general election, they capitalised £17 million- worth of receipts. Their standard spending assessment is approximately £7 million, but they have been spending a budget of £26 million. Because, for some amazing reason, they believed that the Labour party was going to win the general election, they blew their reserves and spent all the money.

Dr. Roger Berry (Kingswood) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hayes : No, the hon. Gentleman must be patient. I have some very important points to make, which involve jobs and services that may be lost. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, it is my job to try to support the people in

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my town. I do not want to make general party political points. I want to deal specifically with Harlow and how it is being affected by the Labour party there.

It was particularly interesting that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) spoke about value for money. He and I were born and bred just a few miles from each other. From his knowledge of the history of the area, he knows that Harlow council has been spending year after year.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster) : Just like Lancashire.

Mr. Hayes : As my hon. Friend has said, just like Lancashire.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : In the first eight years of Labour control, Lancashire increased its spending by 176 per cent., and it is still rising.

Mr. Hayes : As usual, my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) has made her point eloquently. She always looks after her constituents with great aplomb.

I would like to consider what is actually happening in Harlow. The truth of the matter is that the sky is black with Labour chickens coming home to roost. It might be helpful if I were to paraphrase some of the points made in a report by the Conservative group on 15 December 1992. The report stated :

"The Labour run council have built up a reputation for its quasi welfare state, in that it has to provide everything in the town The result is that virtually every service in the town has a Council influence. All primary health facilities are provided in designated health centres, now owned by a Council funded trust. Apart from a bingo hall, a night club and the sports centre, all leisure facilities are council owned and run. A high profile Harlow Council for Voluntary Services has almost nationalised the voluntary sector."

I wholeheartedly support that splendid organisation. I do not want to see it go to the wall because of the incompetence of the Labour party in Harlow. The report continues :

"Most voluntary organisation are Council-funded and have councillors involved in their running, to the extent that many voluntary bodies are reliant on district council funding to pay their salary bills."

I will now deal with the recent financial position. The report continues :

"For the past three years, since the introduction of the Community Charge, the council has funded approximately half of its General Rate Fund expenditure of around £24 million (against an SSA of approximately £7 million) through the use of capital receipts, interests and reserves. By 1993-94, the available reserves will be all but exhausted. The majority party do not have a strategy for dealing with this situation, apart from a very strong belief that Labour were going to win the general election."

Never mind what I and the Tory party say ; what did the district auditor say in his most recent report? He said :

"The financial health of the Council continues to be a cause for concern."

If ever there was an understatement, that is one. The district auditor continues :

"In recent years, revenue expenditure has been supported by the use of reserves with the result that the general reserve balance has been reduced to some £12.2 million at 31 March 1992. Use of reserves at the current rate will exhaust the general reserve by 31 March 1993." That spells total and utter disaster. It means the possibility of hundreds of decent people losing their jobs.

In the face of that, what does the Labour group in Harlow want me to do? The members of that group want me to go to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary

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of State and say, "Let's have some more money." They want me to ask for more money, after so much has been squandered over the years. If any money is forthcoming, it will not be money from my right hon. and learned Friend or from the Treasury : it will be money from people in Harlow. The whole point of the cap is to protect the people in Harlow. They will have to pay.

I would love to be able to go to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State--

Mr. Illsley : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hayes : I ask the hon. Gentleman to be patient. Although Barnsley may be very close to Harlow, I want to raise some important points that directly affect my constituency.

If the people in Harlow Labour party, who are entrusted with controlling the finances for the people in the area, had not spent their reserves in keeping the community charge down, it would have been £543 per person as opposed to £301. If my right hon. and learned Friend said, "Right : we won't have a cap--I've changed my mind, because of the disaster that might happen," the community charge this year would be much more than that figure. The council tax for a band D household would be more than £1,300 this year. That would completely crucify people who are on the breadline.

I do not mind going to my right hon. and learned Friend and his Front-Bench colleagues and saying, "Look, the cap will have a tremendous effect on many of my constituents--on those who have worked hard for the community, on the voluntary and front-line services, and on the playhouse. Many important organisations are at risk. We need some breathing space." I cannot ask my right hon. and learned Friend for that breathing space unless I have radical proposals from the Labour members who are in control.

Let us bring in the consultants. I asked councillors to do that years ago, but they refused. They said, "We are one of the finest-run councils in the country. We don't need to bring in consultants." I said, "Let us listen to what the district auditor said and let us bring value for money," but, no, none of that was to happen. There have been damning reports from the district auditor, and there have been damaging reports from the treasurer who was mysteriously sacked. There were damning reports from the general manager, who said that no one has a grip on management in Harlow town hall. There have been restrictive practices after restrictive practices, and the trade unions have had far greater sway outside than they should have had.

I have been trying to urge Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats groups to put aside their party politics and sit round the table. [Laughter.] Opposition Members laugh, but, heavens, I have been trying to do that without much help. Let us have some radical solutions-- but, no, all Harlow councillors want is more and more money. If I were a compulsive gambler who had just lost all my winnings on the last horse, it would be like going to my bank manager and asking for an overdraft so that I could put the rest of my money on a horse. How can my right hon. and learned Friend do that? We must get round the table and put forward radical solutions. "Impossible, absolutely impossible," they say. It is not impossible.

I shall make one or two suggestions. Of course they are pooh-poohed in the local newspapers every time I make

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them, but the councillors have something called democracy and--what is it called?--decentralisation, which means mini-town hall. Of course that saves lots of money, so we are told, but what does the district auditor say? He says :

"The Council is currently undergoing a period of reorganisation with the proposed creation of the Neighbourhood Committees and Offices. Although the General Manager has assured us that the reorganisation will generate savings, costings have not been produced to show how this will be achieved. Any additional costs will place extra pressure on revenue budgets."

You bet, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has cost £1.2 million. We hear that the Labour group is to set a budget which will be well above the cap. We know, although we cannot prejudge anything that happens in court, that there is a very good chance that the cap will remain as it is. It means that people in Harlow will have to be re-billed. It will cost £200,000 to re-bill people because of a hopeless political exercise.

Mr. Illsley : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hayes : The hon. Gentleman has been most patient. Of course I give way to him.

Mr. Illsley : Does the hon. Gentleman recall that, when the Chancellor reduced community charge bills by £140, every local authority in the country had to re-bill at a similar cost? It seems rather silly the hon. Gentleman complaining about re-billing, when the Government brought about re-billing in every local authority throughout the country.

Mr. Hayes : I knew that I should not have given way to the hon. Gentleman. He is a great expert on local government ; he could have done much better than that. The hon. Gentleman knows that there was a great shout of relief in respect of that £140. People did not begrudge it. They were very pleased indeed, and they were certainly very pleased in Harlow.

What makes me so angry is that we have emotive campaigns about Kingsmoor house, a magnificent institution which looks after children who have been abused. It gives excellent support to people who are most in need. We are told that, because of the wicked Tory Government, it will be closed. Do you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, how much it costs to keep Kingsmoor house open? It costs £200,000 a year--precisely the same amount of money that is to be squandered on a silly party political exercise by the Labour party in Harlow. That is the depth that those councillors are sinking to.

Let me deal briefly with the report to which I alluded on the recent financial position. It goes on to state :

"by 1993-94, the available reserves will be all but exhausted." We have heard that from the district auditor. It goes on : "The majority party do not have a strategy for dealing with this situation, apart from a very strong belief that Labour were going to win the general election. Financial reviews by the Council have occurred over the past two years in order to contain spending at £24M, which has only served to prevent inflation from increasing its actual expenditure. Efforts at saving £1.5M (90- 91) and £2.0M (91-92) were only partly successful, as a result of additional monies becoming available during the year. There has been no sustained effort to reduce or moderate expenditure."

The local Labour party is saying that, because my right hon. and learned Friend has quite sensibly introduced the

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unified business rate, money is being stolen by the Government. Of course, business men remember the days when Harlow council used to fleece them. Until the introduction of the community charge UBR, Harlow had the highest poundage rate in the country--91p. That is what it meant to businesses in my constituency.

Let us deal briefly with the capital position. The auditor's report--it is not disputed by the district auditor--states : "In 1988-89 and 1989-90 housing maintenance costs were capitalised to the extent of £17M."

We are talking about a political authority with an SSA of approximately £7 million. The report goes on :

"The overall effect of this was to transfer Right To Buy proceeds from housing capital to revenue reserves, to support revenue spending in future years. With the current financial regulations, this was resulted in £4.2M of debt charges falling to the"

general rate fund "instead of £0.771M."

That is the amount of money that we should be paying.

The hon. Member for Blackburn has sensibly left the Chamber and is doing other things. He said that he believed in value for money in local authorities, and that local authorities under Labour control did exactly the same thing. We should hear about what Harlow Labour party has been doing for compulsory competitive tendering. The report states :

"Although a number of Council services have gone out to tender, the Labour Group have ensured that the contracts are unattractive to external bidders. Many bids received have been inflated to cover the cost of monitoring the work carried out, an excess which was not applied to the in-house bid. The use of Council facilities and vehicles have been denied to prospective bidders. Leisure facilities have been block booked to community groups at prime times when they could attract premium rates."

That is what is going on in Harlow at the moment. The hon. Member for Blackburn talks about value for money. The Labour party in Harlow would not know value for money and decent management if they ran into it and bit it on the leg with a large gin and tonic.

I have suggested time and again that consultants should be brought in, and that there are ways in which savings could be made. We know that the Labour group will have to set up another bidding operation which will cost £200,000. We hear about what is happening with front-line services, we hear about Kingsmoor house and all the great things that the Conservative group and I believe in, but we do not hear about what will happen to the policy unit. Of course the policy unit is party political ; it costs only £1 million a year, and the council does not intend to scrap it. That is what is happening. We must remember the spending that should be going on in Harlow. How much do you, Madam Deputy Speaker, think that Labour councillors spend on information technology? It is £3.5 million a year in Harlow council, with an SSA of about £7 million--just on information technology. [Laughter.] I am sorry that Opposition Members think that that is funny. I suppose that it would be funny if hundreds of people were not going to lose their jobs as a result of that incompetence. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) is new to the Chamber, but the squandering that he used to get up to on his local council is well documented. I said that just in case the camera above my head zooms in on the hon. Gentleman laughing--as we can now have reaction

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shots--at the misery that is being caused by members of his party who purport to look after the interests of ordinary people. Well, they do not.

Having dealt with the policy unit, let me briefly deal with the other excesses. For example, Harlow Labour party gives property rent-free to its pet causes, and council members have all sorts of facilities. I cannot complain too much about that, but I object to the trade union resource centre getting free property at the expense of the poor old charge payer. I resent organisations such as the workers' rights project getting £80,000 a year out of the hard-pressed people of Harlow.

We spend £400,000 a year on the Harlow playhouse, a wonderful institution where I take my children regularly. It is under threat of closure. The board of management has proposed very sensibly, saving nearly £300,000 a year by putting it out to private tender and creating a joint relationship between private and public enterprise, but the council will not consider it. That is the sorry state of Harlow council.

I support the front-line services, the playhouse, Kingsmoor house and the tremendous work that ordinary people are doing to help those who are frail and vulnerable. Of course it is the frail and the vulnerable who will suffer. We do not hear about the old people's homes that are to close, about Kingsmoor house having to close and about those most in need who will suffer, but they will suffer simply because of the complete incompetence of the Labour-controlled council-- [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Attercliffe please contain himself? He may think that it is all tremendously funny, but many of my constituents will suffer because of some of the policies of his party that he supports.

I hope that members of the Labour party in Harlow will listen to some of the things that I have been saying and to some of the things that the general manager and the district auditor have been saying. If they do not, they will cause widespread misery to ordinary, decent folk in Harlow who are hard pressed enough.

5.53 pm

Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge) : The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) asked Opposition Members to contain themselves, but the House will understand their amusement. I was sympathetic with only one point he raised : his suggestion that there should be less party political point scoring at the expense of local government. The fact that he continued at great length with a tirade against his own local authority gave the lie to that remark, but I shall return to that point later.

This year's revenue support grant settlement once again exposes the partisan nature of the Government's local government finance regime. Indeed, it goes further ; it exposes the whole nature of the Government's approach to local democracy and the sinister way in which our traditional system of government is being undermined. One instrument which is used for those purposes is the standard spending assessment or SSA, a system which owes more to the prejudices of the Tory party than to any honest attempt properly to assess the needs of individual localities. It is a system which allows the Secretary of State to pick off individual councils and reward others.

Most casual observers would surely conclude that the needs of the people of Tyne and Wear in terms of local government services are likely to be at least as high as

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those living in the heart of the capital. In fact, given the level of unemployment, the decline of industry and the continuing work to remove the scars of our industrial past, most would conclude that our needs are somewhat greater ; yet, according to the Government, Tory-controlled Westminster's needs amount to £1,200 per head of population, while the needs of Labour-controlled Tyne and Wear authorities range from just £661 to £750.

A good example of the partisan nature of the system is the fact that, if Labour-controlled Gateshead were allocated the same level of SSA as Tory- controlled Westminster for just one year, Gateshead's council tax could be set at zero for the next three years. It is not a matter of more and more money, as the hon. Member for Harlow suggested earlier. All we want in Gateshead are the same resources that are being applied to Westminster.

The SSA system provides increased help to areas of higher pay and prices, which would appear to conflict with the Government's policy to restrain public sector pay, yet no recognition is made of the need for better public services in areas such as Tyne and Wear, where low incomes and high unemployment are much more prevalent than in Westminster.

If car ownership is low, there is a need for better public transport, and if people cannot afford golf club fees and private health clubs, there is a greater need for public recreation facilities. However, the system turns that logic on its head, so that the Tory party can direct resources to areas in the south to try to prevent the haemorrhage in its support. The comparison with Westminster demonstrates political manipulation of the system ; my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr.Straw) drew attention to other examples.

There are other anomalies in the system. For instance, how can a Government who have acknowledged the similarity of the problems faced by Newcastle and Gateshead by creating a partnership area covering both, calculate that Gateshead needs £44 per a head, or £9 million less than Newcastle, to deal with the same problems? When one takes into account the fact that the great city of Newcastle is being forced to cut expenditure by £8 million this year and £12 million between 1994-96, the full scale of the effects of the settlement and the system is realised.

That is due to the inadequacy of the SSA and the fact that it has been reduced by £9 million following the removal of further education responsibilities from the city of Newcastle, although expenditure on those facilities last year was only £6 million. All that will mean reductions in services and increases in unemployment as yet more jobs are lost. The settlement means that more job losses are inevitable. The magnitude of cuts when male unemployment runs at 40 per cent. in the city challenge area makes the so-called additional funds provided by such special measures woefully inadequate. What is the sense in recognising the special needs of an area by awarding city challenge and then forcing huge cuts in expenditure? The Government are about to correct that illogical scenario by scrapping the urban programme, a measure that will force the closure of thousands of voluntary projects throughout the country and reverse any progress which has been made in the attempts to improve the standard and quality of life in our inner cities over the past 20 years.

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Mr. Illsley : Is my hon. Friend's authority in the same situation as mine, as a city challenge authority now having to spend money on implementing city challenge, which is a charge against its rate support grant and its budget, and finding it difficult to maintain now that the urban programme money is being withdrawn?

Mr. Clelland : My hon. Friend draws attention to yet more inconsistencies in the system.

A system which gives with one hand and takes with the other is not helping our localities, and the people who live in the inner-city areas recognise that. People who are active in the inner-city challenge areas recognise that the money that is being given to them is being taken away from others who may be just as needy. It is not a fair or just system.

One of the overriding concerns of people in the city challenge area, on Tyneside and in Britain in general, is the high and increasing level of crime, yet the SSA and capping limits placed upon the Northumbrian police authority in this settlement, will put at risk the effect of combating crime in the area.

The 4.5 per cent. increase in SSA, which itself understates the spending needs of Northumbria, is expected to absorb the full effect of the 1992 police pay award approved by the Home Secretary at 6.5 per cent. It is expected to absorb the increase in the cost of police pensions, which is 10 per cent. of the authority's budget, the increase in insurance premiums, and the increases in national insurance from 1 April.

In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Environment, the police authority has said :

"The implications for policing levels in Northumbria of the provisional RSG settlement are dire. It is no understatement that the progress achieved in recent years is at risk."

Add to this the ending of the urban crime fund and the full scale of the very serious situation now facing our communities is frighteningly obvious.

All this has been pointed out to the Secretary of State, but little or nothing has changed. All the warnings and arguments have fallen on the deaf ears of the right hon. Gentleman, whose Cheshire cat smile perhaps arises from the amusement that he derives from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's claim in the autumn statement that the RSG settlement should be totally adequate for local government. The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks where the money would come from to meet the improvements we call for. For a start, he could correct the anomalies to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn and I have drawn attention. Also, he might look at the millions of pounds currently being spent on unelected quangos appointed by him and his right hon. Friends throughout the country. The inadequacies of the SSA system are now compounded by the anomalies of the council tax system, incidentally. How can it be right that a disabled person living in a property valued at over a quarter of a million pounds can benefit from a reduction in council tax, yet someone else with perhaps even more severe disabilities living in a property valued at only £30,000 gets no reduction? This has serious implications for people living in my constituency, where 65 per cent. of properties are in band A. It would be the economics of the madhouse if it were just about economics, but of course that is not what it is about, is it?

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The overall effect is staggering, with an estimated 33,000 job losses in local government as a result--equal to those which caused such a public outcry, and justifiably so, when the closure of 31 pits was announced last year. Like the threatened job losses in the mining industry, these 33,000 redundancies will have a knock-on effect, so that the overall impact on localities and the national economy will be severe.

All this is part of the Government's strategy to run down local government replace locally accountable elected councils by quangos accountable only to the Government ; the octopus method of government, whereby Whitehall extends its tentacles into every corner of the country, eliminating political opposition and strangling local needs and priorities. It is entirely ideological. There is no case for the kind of strict control of locally raised finances which this Government imposed, other than unbridled dogma.

The attacks on local government finances are accompanied by appeals and incentives to opt out of the local government structure, and by restrictions on the eligibility to stand for election by the introduction of the concept of politically restricted posts, compulsory competitive tendering, and so on. The result is that local authorities can no longer respond to the wishes of the people they are elected to serve, but serve instead central Government and the priorities and prejudices of central office. It is a system more at home in pre-war Russia than in 1990s Britain. No wonder all political parties are finding it difficult to attract candidates in local elections.

There is a deliberate campaign by Tory Members to discredit and denigrate local government at every turn. We saw it again last week, when they leaped so eagerly and gleefully on the news of maladministration in Lambeth, and the Secretary of State has been at it again today.

Never in the history of culinary metaphors have so many frying pans called the kettle black. Tory Members could fake virtue for Europe, but if it is their objective to damage Labour local government, it does not work. All that happens is that some of my hon. Friends are provoked into responding with examples of Tory malpractice. These tit-for-tat exchanges, which rarely rise above the debating level of the school playground, result only in damaging all local democracy by grossly exaggerating the extent of malpractice in local authorities, which is no worse than in any other sector of society, especially the Tory party.

It all suits the purpose of those who would further diminish the role of democracy in this country--the real enemies within, who have done more to undermine the faith of the British people in their system of government than could any sinister, well thought out KGB or CIA plot.

New and unaccountable power bases have been encouraged and asssisted to develop over the past 14 years. They can be seen throughout our towns and cities, planning the lives and futures of millions of our people, without any mandate to do so. I remember well the occasion of the Northumberland Plate at Gosforth park racecourse a few years ago. I asked what the small groups of local gentry were gathered together to discuss, and was told that they were deciding who should be the chairman of the training and enterprise council. And so they did, in between the Brown Ale handicap and the Federation cup. How about that for open government?

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That is but one minor example of the goings on throughout the country, as the only question that needs to be answered satisfactorily for certain people to be appointed to often well-paid sinecures is : "Is he one of us?"

The RSG settlement continues this centralist trend and the opportunities for real corruption are extended yet again as democratic scrutiny is further watered down. It will do nothing to improve and extend the services on which so many of my constituents rely. On the contrary, the further attack on local government which this package represents will further weaken its ability to tackle the problems faced by communities, businesses and individuals on Tyneside and elsewhere.

The system of local government finance now in place in this country is unfair, unjust and deliberately tailored to shackle, rather than free, local priorities and local enterprise. It is discriminatory and prejudiced, and brings no credit to this Government or its architects.

6.6 pm

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