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(i) 1.5 multiplied by CHILDREN OF LONE PARENTS (as defined below) ; and
(ii) 1.5 multiplied by CHILDREN OF CLAIMANTS (as defined below) ; and
(iii) The proportion of children aged under 18 in private households who were born outside the United Kingdom, Ireland, the USA or the Old Commonwealth, or whose head of household was born outside these areas, calculated using information from the 1981 Census. CHILDREN OF LONE PARENTS
The proportion of children aged under 18 in private households containing a lone parent family, calculated using information from the 1981 Census.
The children's social index is calculated thus :
CHILDREN'S SOCIAL INDEX
The sum of the following factors (each of which is calculated to 4 decimal places) :
(i) CHILDREN OF LONE PARENTS (as defined above for the Education block) ; minus 0.1305, and then divided by 0.0358 ; and"--
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robin Squire) : I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman's speech, butI ask him to bear in mind that these SSAs are less complex than their predecessors. That much, I think, is conceded all round. Secondly, most of an SSA is backed up by independent research which will sometimes produce some fairly complex calculations.
Mr. Illsley : Is that why the Government are thinking of altering the SSAs in 1994-95? Perhaps all the research has not been wasted in that case, and we may look forward to a better system.
Mr. Betts : Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the main findings of the Salford study was that, in changing from the grant-related expenditure assessment system to the standard spending assessment system, the Government sacrificed accuracy for the extra simplicity to which the Minister referred?
Mr. Illsley : My hon. Friend is an expert in local government finance and I defer to his greater knowledge. I am sure that what he says is true. In simplifying the GREAs we have perhaps lost out somewhere along the way. In any case, perhaps the Government will now realise that the indicators used are wrong. They must be more closely targeted on the needs of particular areas.
Mr. Kevin Hughes (Doncaster, North) : Does my hon. Friend agree that the figures are ridiculous, based as they are on information 12 years out of date? That information does not relate to the needs of the present day. Things have moved on a great deal since the 1981 census--one thinks of care for the elderly and care for children. I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that the assessments are nonsense.
Mr. Illsley : I do entirely. I hope that when the Government examine the 1991 census data they will also consider different economic indicators for the SSAs--and that they will not accept 1992-93 as the starting point for
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authorities which have been badly affected by their SSAs in the past three years. My hon. Friend's constituency of Doncaster, North contains one of the authorities which has been the subject of initial capping. We have been pegged low over the past three years because we started low. I hope that when the new formula is introduced we shall not be left at the bottom of the pile.According to Salford university research, the SSAs are based on information which is narrow, unrealiable and of questionable relevance. They fail to recognise the problems facing coalfield areas : relatively high unemployment and relatively low educational attainment. I do not know why the university uses the word "relatively". Educational attainment in my area is low and I make no apology for saying that. I disagree with the Government's figures because I think that they are poor indicators of educational attainment, but school examination tables and results on the testing of seven-year-olds show that my authority is at the bottom. More help in education should be used as an indicator of need.
My area suffers from industrial dereliction and needs economic regeneration. The problem will be made worse if the collieries close this year. It is a low-income area with relatively high mortality and a high incidence of chronic illness. The Salford university study states :
"A degree of error consistently disadvantages a number of authorities. The indicators used to characterise need come from a narrow and highly intercorrelated range. There is a strong case for the replacement, removal or downgrading of several indicators." I shall give some examples of how variation affects my authority. I stress that there is an enormous variation between the top and bottom ranked authorities in terms of SSA, especially in metropolitan areas. For the first time this year, my local authority has moved from bottom place. I repeat that I am asking not for increased total funding for local government but for a reorganisation of funding. Surely Manchester does not need 70 per cent. more funding than my area to provide the same services. I will give a concrete example. The implied spending on a 300-pupil primary school in my constituency is £534,000 but in Manchester it is £662,000. The implied cost for an 800-pupil secondary school in my area is £2,082,000 but for Manchester it is £2.5 million. Those are large differences. Does Manchester really need 24 per cent. more than my authority does to fund a 300-pupil primary school? The difference would pay about seven additional teachers.
I have spoken about the Tory-controlled boroughs of Westminster and Wandsworth. The SSA for a primary school pupil in Westminster is £2, 741 while in Barnsley it is £1,793. The implied spending on a 300- pupil primary school in Westminster is £822,000 but in Barnsley it is £534,000. For a secondary school in Westminster the amount is £3,193,000, while in Barnsley it is £2,082,000. That shows that the school in Westminster costs £1,111,000 more than the one in Barnsley. Why does Westminster need that much more to fund a similar school? I have been asked for three years why London boroughs have far more funding than mine.
The same disadvantages apply in social services. I shall use as a basis the social services SSA per child at risk. The figure for Manchester is £2,168,000 per annum and for
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Barnsley it is £1,202,000. Why does Manchester need £1 million, or 80 per cent., more than my authority to provide a standard service? The first two pages of the RSG report states that the SSAs are designed to show the funding for a standard level of service. We have complained time and again about these enormous differences. I spoke about ethnicity being used as an indicator in eight sub-blocks. If a borough is low in one block, it is deemed to be low in all eight. We are at the bottom of the table. Proxies are also used. There has been a fall in employment in my constituency since 1981. We witnessed the 1984-85 miners strike and the run-down in employment has been mainly in mining. Some 20,000 to 25,000 jobs have gone. Data from 1981 are no longer relevant, but we are receiving grant based on the 1981 census.Research shows that Barnsley is not a low-need authority as the Government tend to believe. It has at least moderate needs. We rank low on ethnicity and on people over the age of 85. Barnsley has a history of mining, which means that the number of people who live to the age of 85 is lower than in other comparable areas. In addition, because of mining, there is a high incidence of respiratory diseases among people between the ages of 50 and 65. However, the SSA takes no account of that. We rank high on standardised mortality rates because there is a high proportion of ill health in the age groups that I have mentioned. In my area, long-term illness and unemployment are well above the national average.
Ethnicity is a component of a number of indicators. The additional educational needs indicator shows that ethnic minorities do better than local people. I mentioned that in the corresponding debate last year. Research has shown that there is no longer a need to overcompensate for ethnic minorities. The all-ages social index leads to a classic finding. That index, which is a measure of social deprivation, gives a lower score to Barnsley than to Hampshire and Oxfordshire, and the children's social index scores Barnsley's needs lower, for example, than Hampshire, Oxfordshire and West Sussex. Who are we kidding? How could anyone be convinced that my authority has less social deprivation than Hampshire, Oxfordshire and West Sussex? That is a classic example of SSAs being completely wrong. I shall skip the health indicators because many hon. Members are waiting to speak and simply mention standardised mortality rates, limiting long-term illness, and low birth-rate indicators. Much research has been carried out in my constituency and the results are there if the Government wish to consider them. Audit Commission studies have shown that my authority is not a high but a moderate spender, but its needs are simply not covered by the SSA. I shall now deal with the budget for the fire and civil defence authorities. The Minister nods. I know that he is aware of my concern, because I have made representations to him. He knows that the fire service in my area--and, indeed, throughout South Yorkshire-- has again been given an SSA lower than that of any other fire and civil defence authority. It is lower than those of Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Tyne and Wear.
I know that you have an interest in this, Mr. Deputy Speaker. West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire fire authorities have the lowest SSA per head, and that is proving detrimental. We have met the Minister, and representatives from the Home Office ; only last week,
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South Yorkshire's chief fire officer visited the Minister to try to convince him of our needs. We are now approaching the levels recommended by the Home Office : we do not want to fall below those levels, and we hope that the Government will take fire authorities into account when setting SSAs.I am reluctant to talk about cuts. I well remember the Secretary of State's reference to a parade of bleeding stumps in 1990 ; I shall never forgive him for that comment, which has remained in my mind ever since. We had to make severe cuts in Barnsley. Now we shall have to cut £11 million from our budget, which will be rather difficult. I have a document listing the authority's own suggestions for cuts ; I will give just two examples.
Every local authority residential home in Barnsley is to close in April, and a complete ending of the school meals service is being considered. In an area of high unemployment such as mine, that is a desperate measure. I am not pleading, or parading bleeding stumps ; I am past that stage--I have been here for three years, pleading for better funding for my authority.
These will be serious cuts, which will affect my constituency greatly. I hope that there will be a different SSA calculation for 1994-95 ; I also hope that we shall receive additional help for 1993-94.
7.22 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury) : Thank you for allowing me to catch your eye at a comparatively early hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley), and to take part in the same debate as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones), who is a neighbour of mine : I completely surround his constituency. With respect, I am glad that I do, because I hope to contain the spread of the Liberal tendency in the area.
There is no doubt that this is a tight settlement. It needs to be, if we are to contain the alarming rise in PSBR. The settlement, which amounts to £33.45 billion of central Government support, will enable local government to spend some £40 billion this year ; that is the largest amount that local government has ever spent in this country. It is roughly a quarter of our total gross domestic product. Any talk of cuts from Opposition Members simply does not ring true. A week or two ago, in answer to a question, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State told me that the total local authority debt now stood at £54.4 billion. That is a fantastic figure, which has risen at an alarming rate since the 1980s. We shall have to do something about it.
Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned the way in which SSAs affect various authorities. A number of my constituents have written to me about the problem, which has also been raised by the hon. Member for Cheltenham. As I shall demonstrate, one of the main reasons for it is the indebtedness of those authorities. I am aware that local authority treasurers can do clever things with debt swaps and swapping money from one account to another and back again, and lending money in one account to another account at a higher rate of interest. Nevertheless, that £54.4 billion must be serviced each year, by each local authority that is in debt. My authority, Gloucestershire county council--which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Cheltenham--is complaining that
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this year's SSA is roughly £10 million short of what it thinks it needs to spend. Having obtained some statistics from my hon. Friend the Minister, I have discovered that Gloucestershire's debt is £124.4 million. Gloucestershire is a comparatively small shire council.Mr. Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton, North-East) : It is all very well to talk about local authorities' debt, and Gloucestershire may be a good case in point. However, the hon. Gentleman really ought to take into account the considerable assets of local authorities. When we draw up a balance sheet on the assets and liabilities of an organisation, we look at the net result--and I opine that the ratio of local authority assets to local authority debt is probably 10 or 20 times the amount that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. That puts local authorities in a very strong position. The hon. Gentleman must remember that the debt to which he refers was incurred to accumulate capital assets for the benefit of local communities.
Mr. Clifton-Brown : I was coming to that. The £124.4 billion of debt must be serviced. The hon. Gentleman is right : Gloucestershire county council has considerable assets. It has some 7,000 acres of valuable agricultural land.
As the hon. Member for Cheltenham has told us, he was part of a joint delegation that complained to my hon. Friend the Minister about the SSA. I was not there, but I was given a report of what took place. One of the questions that my hon. Friend asked the delegation was what would be the expected savings from capital sales of assets this year. The authority was not able to give a figure, although it had prepared its proposed budget. In his autumn statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer allowed local authorities great flexibility for this financial year in the way in which they spend their capital receipts ; yet that authority had not calculated the amount that it would save this year. Debts are an on-cost, which local authorities must service.
From another parliamentary answer that I received the other day, I discovered that some 14 local authorities were debt-free. There was a slight contretemps over the figures : another source said that eight of those authorities were indebted to some extent. However, 14 are listed in the answer. I looked up the authorities, to establish their political complexion. It so happens that 11 are Conservative ; the City of London is non-political-- [Laughter.] It is non-political as listed. The others are hung councils. The only one that is not Conservative-controlled- -even in the overall sense, as a hung council--is Ryedale, which is controlled by members of the SDP, whoever they are. [ Hon. Members :-- "They are all in the Lords."] I think that they have disappeared to another place.
In an effort to enlighten the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, Nort-East (Mr. Purchase)-- I am glad to see that he is enjoying my speech ; he may not enjoy it quite so much in a moment--I decided to try to find out which party was most effective at running local government. I came up with some interesting statistics, which I have not pulled out of mid-air. I discovered that 16 of the 20 authorities with the highest community charge were Labour controlled. I then discovered which were the top 20 worst collectors of the community charge. Not surprisingly, 15 of them--
Mr. Purchase : I bet they will be Labour.
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Mr. Clifton-Brown : The hon. Gentleman is very good at anticipating. There is a good long list that he can anticipate. When I give him a category, he can tell me how many of them are Labour. I decided to discover which were the bottom 20 authorities for rent arrears, and 16 out of the 20 were
Mr. Clifton-Brown : Thank you. I also discovered which of the bottom 20 had the most vacant dwellings.
Mr. Purchase : If I were you, I would take the money and not open the box.
Mr. Clifton-Brown : If I was a betting man, it would be a certainty. I would not have to open the box ; there would be no point. Seventeen out of the 20 were--oh, the hon. Gentleman has gone quiet all of a sudden.
I also considered manpower. The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) is very keen on employing more people. I wanted to see how effectively local authorities are run, and whether that depends on the level of manpower. I discovered that the six authorities employing the most manpower per 1,000 of the population were, needless to say, Labour. Manchester is at the top of the list, employing 52 full-time workers per 1,000 head of the population compared to Wandsworth's mere 17. The message is that Labour is inefficient.
The indebtedness of local authorities is an important factor, so I also looked up the 20 most indebted local authorities ; needless to say, I discovered that 18 out of the top 20 were Labour. That includes the city of Birmingham, which was originally going to announce 3,000 redundancies, then 1,000, and now I do not know how many. The Labour city council has a staggering debt of £1.8 billion.
Mr. Clifton-Brown : You did, you were very clever at anticipating. It shows that large city authorities have to spend more than they need to because of years and years of mismanagement. Conservative councils, especially if they are debt-free, are superbly run and offer a high level of efficient local services. However, Labour councils cost you more--they are very liberal with your money. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones). I hope that I shall not misquote him, but I am sure that he will tell me if I do. He said that he would be very reluctant to set a budget which would involve job cuts. Surely, no local authority will set the same budget every year, allow a bit for inflation, add a little and then say that it must implement huge cuts when it cannot get that amount. It must consider the services that it has to provide, decide what it needs to spend and see whether it can provide the services more efficiently.
I use Gloucestershire county council's figures as an example. The Conservatives lost control of the council in 1985, when it had a debt of £26 million, but, when the Liberals took control in 1985, the debt almost doubled, to £46.5 million in one year.
Mr. Nigel Jones : May I correct the hon. Gentleman who entirely surrounds me? Gloucestershire county council has never been under Liberal Democrat control. It has been a hung council since 1985 and currently operates the rather curious arrangement of a
Conservative-Labour alliance.
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I have two questions. First, there is an outstanding school capital programme of £65 million in Gloucestershire. It increases every year, as we are not building the schools and school extensions. What projects in the hon. Gentleman's constituency does he think we should delete from that capital programme? The quotation that I read to the House was from the headmaster of a school in his division. Secondly--Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order. Interventions are getting rather lengthy. Bearing in mind the fact that many hon. Members want to catch my eye, it is not fair for hon. Members who have already spoken to take up the time with long interventions.
Mr. Jones : I shall ask a brief second question. What does the hon. Gentleman have to say to the Conservative chairman of the education committee, who says that Gloucestershire's SSA for education is entirely inadequate?
Mr. Clifton-Brown : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting me. Gloucestershire county council is hung, but the Liberals had control between 1985 and 1991, so the increase in the debt occurred entirely under their control. We chucked out the Liberal controlling group in 1991. We now have the absurd situation in which the Conservatives and Labour alternate every six months, but we have been able to start to tackle -- [Interruption.] It is absurd, because no one party has control without the other party's agreement.
In view of what I have said about Gloucestershire county council's indebtedness, I have no doubt that, come May and the next local elections, we shall regain control. It would be much more sensible to have Conservative control of Gloucestershire county council to tackle the problem of indebtedness and offer a realistic level of service to the people of Gloucester, which is what we all want.
Before the hon. Member for Cheltenham intervened, I was saying that he spoke about setting a budget for his authority. I have the indebtedness figures for his authority, which we both represent. It is a very small local authority, but has a debt of a staggering £40 billion-- [Interruption.] --£40 million. Even so, it is £40 million on a comparatively small budget. It is no wonder that the hon. Gentleman could not set a budget that would provide the local level of services that he wants.
I suggest that the first thing that the Liberal controlling group on that authority should do is reduce that level of debt, so that it does not have to pay the servicing costs on it and will be able to provide a true level of service to the people of Cheltenham. Despite what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) said, indebtedness is a serious problem which must be tackled. If authorities such as Gloucestershire had the capital receipts that they should have, they would be able to provide a perfectly good--indeed, a superb--level of service within their SSA limit, and there would be no need for the fuss that they are currently generating. Local authority debt is huge, and it means a continuing on-cost to service that level of debt.
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7.38 pmMr. Colin Pickthall (Lancashire, West) : This has been a curious debate because, although most of us have been rightly concerned to study the figures and the damage being done to our local authorities by the settlement, hints of a wider debate on the nature of local government have emerged from time to time.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), the former leader of Bradford council, raised the issue of councillors and officers and the difficulty of maintaining a distinction between them. He suggested that councillors were for ever trying to take over the role of officers. I am sure that other hon. Members with experience of local government will, on occasion, have found exactly the opposite to be the case. Many officers will feel highly insulted by the hon. Gentleman's remarks. However, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar made an important point in that regard. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar also made an important point about not allowing the debate to become a slanging match about who has the worst councillors. As he said, all councillors would be tarred in such a debate.
I agreed with about 50 per cent. of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson). He made some important wider points about the nature of local government which, at some point, we will have to debate at greater length. I hope that members of the Government Front Bench noted his remarks about centralisation and the great damage that the Government's centralising tendency is causing in what to many people appears to be a systematic attack on the very nature of local government. The right hon. Member for Brent, North also made important points about registration ; I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) will wish to take them further.
I want to refer particularly to Lancashire to illustrate what I believe is happening to local government. I accept that some of my colleagues and some Conservative Members have made similar points about their authorities. Fortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) has already made half my speech for me.
Many authorities in the north and west of the country--indeed, all authorities other than London, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East and West Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, the Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire and Surrey, which benefit from the area cost adjustments- -are suffering badly. That issue has already been referred to several times in the debate. In a reply to a question of mine, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), told me that if the area cost adjustment was redistributed to all authorities in the country, it would amount to £15 per adult. In my case, that would be £15 for every adult in Lancashire. That is a not inconsiderable subsidy from the provinces--if I can call them that--to the south-east. The key point to bear in mind is that that subsidy has continued year after year and has increased each year. Referring to shire counties for the moment, and trying to compare like with like, if we consider the counties of Essex, Kent, Hampshire and Lancashire, which are more or less the same size--I noted the Secretary of State's
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comment from a sedentary position that it is all about population--in 1989-90, Essex received £3.5 million from the ACA ; in 1992-93, it received £64.2 million. In 1989-90, Kent received £3.5 million from the ACA ; in 1992-93, it received £64.1 million --not bad going. In 1989-90, Hampshire received nothing from the ACA ; in 1992-93, it received £62.6 million. Obviously, at some point it was discovered that Hampshire was being deprived and that was corrected : good for Hampshire.In 1989-90, Lancashire received nothing from the ACA. In 1992-93 it received nothing from the ACA, and the same will apply in the coming year. The same applies to Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland, Staffordshire and many others.
In 1986-87, the area cost adjustment was 1.5 per cent. of standard spending assessment. By 1992-93, it had grown to 3.5 per cent. We are talking about tremendously large sums of money. Between 1989-90 and 1992-93, the SSA of Essex has increased by 36 per cent., Kent's by 37 per cent. and Hampshire's by 31 per cent. Lancashire's has increased by 24 per cent. The disparity is even greater for other authorities. That enormous difference has a ratchet effect. It consistently renders shire counties like Lancashire worse off. I noted with some pleasure the Secretary of State's comments about considering the matter again this year and I hope that that happens. However, concomitantly, councils in the south and east will become better off relatively speaking.
In 1988-89, Essex, Kent, Hampshire and Lancashire received, within about £10 million, the same SSA. Since 1990-91, the gap between the three southern counties and Lancashire has been growing to the point that at the moment Lancashire's SSA is £100 million below Kent's SSA ; £80 million below that of Essex and £25 million below Hampshire's. I suppose that that could be called the politics of envy. If it is, I plead guilty : I am envious of those levels.
The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. John Redwood) : The point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State about population is that this year and next year population change has a big influence. The hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Pickthall) must consider SSAs per head. He must explain why Lancashire will receive £615 per head next year while Hampshire's figure is £568. The story is not quite the one that the hon. Gentleman is telling.
Mr. Pickthall : My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central has already examined the nature of the authorities to which the Minister has referred. He referred to the large urban area in a county like Lancashire which must be considered alongside the ethnicity problem. In the settlement for shire counties this year, Lancashire's SSA is increased by 2.1 per cent. In the league table of shire counties, in that respect Lancashire comes 35th of 39. Kent has received a 4.8 per cent. increase and that makes Kent third in the league of 39. Essex has received a 3.9 per cent. increase and is ninth in the league. Hampshire has received a 5.1 per cent. increase and is second in the league.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has made it clear in figures that he has published in recent
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weeks that, in all shire authorities, Conservative-controlled authorities have received increases averaging 3.7 per cent. ; Liberal Democrat-controlled authorities have received increases averaging 3.7 per cent. ; authorities with no overall control have received increases averaging 3 per cent. Labour-controlled authorities have received increases averaging 2.2 per cent.The area cost adjustment is not the whole problem, but it is a substantial part of it. The figures, which are always difficult to extract from the documentation that is being worried over, show a deliberate discrepancy in funding which it is hard not to see as deliberately designed to penalise Labour-controlled authorities and to reward the Tory heartlands. That is corrupt in the same way that pork barrel politics is corrupt in the United States, although the latter is rather better hidden.
The practice signals a Government who are so consumed by vanity and arrogance that they believe that they can shift large amounts of public money away from Labour or non-Tory authorities to Conservative authorities and consistently get away with it. They may be right, because they have got away with it so far.
That practice also signals a fundamental dismemberment of local democracy which is as offensive to many local Conservatives as it is to local and national Labour politicians.
I do not suggest that funding for counties in the south and east should be cut. I believe, as Conservative Members believe--in theory, at least--in levelling up. Obviously, special measures must be taken to take into account the special problems of London. That part of the ACA could be justified, but it should surely come from outside the total SSA settlement. In so far as the ACA allows for supposed extra costs to the south-east shires for items such as police wages, fire service wages and so on, the figure is bogus, as was revealed earlier. In fact, it is a subsidy that is paid by the rest of us to half a dozen Tory shires.
Yesterday, in relation to DAF, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) made it clear what Conservative Members think about subsidies. He said that if we give DAF money to save that firm, we will have to take money from other firms and destroy them. That is precisely what is going on in local government. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not here to make the same case tonight. The ACA is in the front line in the system of bad distribution of public funds, and that system needs to be corrected. Within that system there are many other anomalies. In my county of Lancashire, year after year SSAs for personal social services have been systematically below the average for the country and they become slightly worse each year.
One matter that has niggled me for a considerable time is the funding element in SSAs for under-fives education. It is calculated--I have mentioned this matter in every possible forum--on the basis of the population of under-fives in an authority, not the educational provision for those children. Wild anomalies are apparent. Some of the same counties are involved--is not that strange?
In Lancashire, in 1992-93 21,172 under-fives were provided for in terms of nursery education. Its SSA allowance for that is £22.9 million. In Hampshire, 13,207 under-fives are provided for, and the SSA is £22.7 million,
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almost the same amount as for Lancashire. In Kent, about half as many--11,100--under-fives are provided for. The SSA for Kent is £22.1 million--very little less than Lancashire's. In Essex, 12,900 under-fives are provided for, and the SSA is £21.63 million. If we take Lancashire's SSA per pupil as £100, we see that Hampshire has £159, Kent £184, and Essex £155. Incidentally, West Sussex would have £230 on the same basis.The problem is that that is active discouragement for local authorities to provide nursery education, which might be part of the plot--I remember what the previous Secretary of State for Education thought of nursery education. It is a disincentive for a bad provider to provide more, and it is a disincentive for a good provider to continue being a good provider if it is to receive the same amount of money anyway, depending on the number of under-fives in its area. If the under-fives element of SSA were funded equally, Lancashire would get £5.6 million more than it presently does. That would go a long way to solving some of the county's problems. In every authority in Lancashire, education accounts for more than half its expenditure. On 16 January, my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) received an answer from the hon. Member for Hornchurch, comparing expenditure per school pupil in those four counties. Boiled down to its essence, the answer showed that, on the basis of expenditure per pupil aged five to 16 inclusive, Essex receives £110 per pupil more than Lancashire does. If funding were level, that would be £20.97 million more for Lancashire. Hampshire receives £33 per pupil, and Kent receives £119 per pupil. If Lancashire were funded on the same basis as Kent, we would be £22.7 million better off--and yes, we would like it, please.
Wherever one looks in the miasma, one finds such anomalies. Before I became a Member of the House, I used to believe in the cock-up theory of politics. I no longer believe it. The SSA calculation, which gives off an air of technical neutrality--a system that was invented by robotic accountants, remorseless but pure--is in fact subject to arbitrary judgments and adjustments which all too clearly reflect the Government's attitude to people who have the temerity to elect Labour authorities.
A delegation from Lancashire secured a meeting with the Minister at which we debated the problems and raised several anomalies. To save time, I shall not refer to them, but the anomalies have already been mentioned--for example, in relation to the further education adjustment, nursery provision and other elements of ACA. We were able to lift the capping limit by £6 million. It would have made a difference, had our case been upheld, of £47.3 million for Lancashire, given that we would have had to have made virtually no cuts this year. Unfortunately, at the same time, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones) pointed out happened to his authority, our SSA was reduced. The capping limit went up and the SSA went down. The state of affairs that I have been trying to sketch is not a one- off punishment ; it is one stage of a progressive process that is forcing Lancashire to its knees. Cheered on by the hon. Members for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) and South Ribble (Mr. Atkins), through capping, the Government forced through £40 million-worth of cuts last year and they are forcing close to
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another £60 million-worth of cuts this year. That means many redundancies--of course it does--and cuts in discretionary grants which we had to make last year.I took part in that decision as a county councillor, and I hated it--we all did. It means cuts in home helps, schools, lollipop ladies--you name it. In particular, it means a cut in essential school build in my constituency, and that causes me great agony. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Lancaster called Lancashire bureaucratic. I remind her that the central administration costs for Lancashire are much less than they are in most private industry. However efficient, no local authority can withstand for long the steady cutting of its income and of its allowable spend. The Government know that better than anyone. The nub of their strategy is to make local government impossible.
The bureaucracy we fear is not that of counties and town halls but that of Whitehall, and Marsham street in particular, steadily drowning the country in a sea of red tape and formulae in order to centre all power in the Government. The country will wake up in the not-too-distant future, if it is not careful, and find itself in a centralised tyranny--although perhaps a smiling one--worthy of somebody such as Erich Honecker.
7.58 pm
Mr. Barry Field (Isle of Wight) : I thank you most sincerely, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me at such a late hour. I know that you have squeezed me in against all the odds because you recognise the peculiar circumstances that the Isle of Wight faces. I should be remiss in my duty if I did not place on record the undying thanks of all my constituents on the biggest of England's offshore islands for the opportunity that you have afforded me this evening.
I wonder whether I might call upon the hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Pickthall) to do me the great favour of standing up for a moment and looking at the Liberal Democrats Benches to see whether one of the Liberal Democrats is lying on the floor. I should not like to accuse the Liberal Democrats of being absent. Perhaps the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) will confirm that no Liberal Democrat Members are here this evening.
Mr. Straw : I am saddened to have to confirm that news, which will bring tears to the eyes of Conservative and Labour supporters alike in the Isle of Wight and across the country.
Mr. Field : I shall develop that theme in due course.
The hon. Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Pickthall) mentioned the Isle of Wight more times than anyone else has this evening. It is the only county council controlled by the Liberal Democrats--and where are they? They are nowhere to be seen. The Labour Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Blackburn, has confirmed that there is no one on the floor hiding behind the Benches, so they are not present here this evening. That is an extraordinary state of affairs, particularly as the Liberal Democrats are forever telling us that they are the guardians of local government and how they always champion the cause. It is deplorable that none of them is here this evening.
You have heard me say on many occasions in the past, Mr. Lofthouse, that the Isle of Wight is renowned for its dinosaurs and fossils. You may think that I am going back in time, but I have heard a number of hon. Members on
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both sides of the House make various points about local government finance and the way in which SSAs work. My claim is well established that we on the Isle of Wight have probably been longer at this than any other constituency in the United Kingdom. In 1965, the Edwards committee reported to the equivalent of the Department of the Environment in those days--I think that it was the Ministry of Local Government. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason), a former chairman of the Association of District Councils is here this evening and I am sure that he will correct me if I am wrong.The Edwards committee concluded that there was a need for an adjustment in local government finance for the Isle of Wight. I have been here for six years and I have mentioned it on every opportunity. I do not apologise to the House for keeping up this tirade because, as we hear so often--and we have heard it again, Mr. Lofthouse--
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I hesitate to intervene in the hon. Gentleman's speech and I recognise that the House has spent a lot of time in Committee recently, but on this occasion I am not addressed as Mr. Lofthouse.
Mr. Field : I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and in future I shall not refer to you by the name by which your dear lady normally refers to you. I apologise for that apparent discourtesy to the Chair. You know me well enough, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to know precisely how contrite I am.
This is a long-running saga that I have mentioned at every possible opportunity. I make no apology for that, because I disagree with some Opposition Members who say that we are not dealing with a listening Government. The Isle of Wight has been recommended for unitary authority status by the Local Government Commission. It is something that we have been after for many years. It is necessary to reform the structure of local government on the island, particularly when one considers that it is conservatively estimated that it would result in a saving of £1 million to £1.5 million per annum.
Mr. Straw : We are as interested as the hon. Gentleman is in the proposal for a unitary authority for the Isle of Wight. Does he share my concern that the Local Government Commission has proposed that there should be all-out elections once every four years and does he agree with me, with the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) and with many other Conservative Members that accountability on the Isle of Wight and elsewhere will be strengthened if there were a cycle of elections each year with a third of the councillors retiring?
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