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Mr. Evans: No, I shall not, because I tried to intervene several times on the hon. Member for Caerphilly and others, and was told that I could not do so. I am simply doing exactly the same to Opposition Members. The sooner they stop carping, the sooner I shall finish my speech, and they will have the opportunity to have their say.
Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West): Will thehon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Evans: I shall not give way. The righthon. Gentleman--
Mr. Williams: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In interjections and during his speech, thehon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) has referred to the constituencies of my hon. Friends and myself. I am sure that you will agree that it is a normal courtesy that, when a Member refers to other Members' constituencies in the House, especially if he makes political points about them, he should then give way to one of the local Members.
Madam Deputy Speaker: That may be a courtesy, but it is not a requirement.
Mr. Evans: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker--[Interruption.] I tried to intervene several times during the debate. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) came into the Chamber only recently. He has not been here for the entire debate, although I am sure that he has good reasons for not having been here. I am not prepared to give way to him now.
We have heard some horror stories about local authority expenditure, and of course I saw what happened when I served on the local authority in West Glamorgan. Expenditure on chains of office, new buildings and councillors' allowances was appalling. Last year, I condemned the members of Mid Glamorgan council for trying to put their expenses up through the roof in a disproportionate manner. Their snouts were firmly in the trough.
The Labour party may talk about fat cats, but I can talk about the fat cats of Wales--and they are not in business but in Labour-run authorities. The Labour party should do all in its power to condemn local authority members for trying to increase their expenses.
Mr. Alan Williams:
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
I trust that this is a genuine point of order.
Mr. Williams:
It is, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thehon. Member for Ribble Valley is utterly misusing the procedures of the House of Commons by making snide and pathetic attacks on people who cannot defend themselves, and then being afraid to give way to those who seek to defend them.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
That is not a point of order for the Chair.
Mr. Evans:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.I hope that that was not the intervention that the righthon. Gentleman attempted to make before. If it was, I am delighted that I did not give way to him.
As for education expenditure, I hope that local education authorities will pass the money to the schools to spend, and not keep any of it back for central administration. It was instructive to hear Opposition Members talking about cutting services. They talk about front-line services, and about the customers who will suffer if they lose those services, yet not one of them talked about cutting administration and central bureaucracy.
My advice to Labour-run local authorities is to re-examine their internal running costs, as everybody has had to do, and to find ways of improving efficiency as much as they can. They should not make local service customers suffer simply to make a political point. There was a 45 per cent. increase in expenditure on nursery education between 1979 and 1994, and a 54 per cent. increase in expenditure on secondary education in Wales over the same period.
However, the increase in expenditure is not the only important factor. Also vital is the testing that goes alongside the education that young people receive. The Labour party opposed that policy, and also the introduction of the national curriculum, which is improving standards all the time.
I was pleased to learn of the extra expenditure on law and order. On top of the extra 11 per cent. last year, that is excellent news, especially considering the fact that, when the Labour party was in power, spending on the police was one of the categories that suffered greatly.
I hope that the extra expenditure will result in more police on the beat, particularly in rural areas, and the utilisation of new technology, such as closed circuit cameras, which are extremely useful in reducing crime.I hope also that there will be a continuation of the civilianisation of office posts, which will release policemen and policewomen and enable them to go back on the beat.
Compulsory competitive tendering in local authorities has made authorities far more efficient, and has resulted in those authorities being able to save money to spend on
services for local people. The Labour party is totally opposed to that policy, and would chuck out a policy that has saved many millions of pounds while providing excellent services to local people. Labour would replace the system with expensive in-house bids, from which the public would not benefit. That is a spiteful and dogmatic move by Labour that is not in the best interests of Welsh people.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Conwy posed an important question about Labour's pledge to introduce an assembly. We know that there are no current plans to provide a Welsh assembly with tax-raising powers, such as are envisaged for the Scottish assembly. Labour Members who believe in the principle of an assembly ought to ask why a Scottish assembly will be allowed to raise tax, while the Welsh will not be trusted to do so. Having seen the way in which Labour local authorities operate in Wales, I can fully understand why the Labour party is scared of allowing a Labour-run assembly--as Opposition Members would probably see it--to raise taxes.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy):
In reply to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), there are one or two things that my party would do to save money and put it into local government. We would not be paying for nuclear arms for one thing, and we would not be stuffing money into the pockets of people on quangos for another. We would review the operation of the standard spending assessment, which works to the detriment of many councils in Wales. I have no doubt that we would look at other matters over time.
The Secretary of State announced on 18 December:
In his press release--in the Welsh Office, government is by press release now--he said that it was based on his view of what the real needs of local government were at the appropriate level. I believe that either he or every single council in Wales is absolutely wrong.
In his apologia for the settlement, he prayed in aid--again by press release--the notion that there would be more use of the private finance initiative, with£360 million of capital investment being produced in the next three years. Where on earth did he get that figure from? If it was conjured up by his merry band at the Welsh Office, he should be circumspect about quoting it.
For example, the Welsh Office recently astounded the new Denbighshire authority by using an inaccurate measurement of the length of roads in the authority. That affected the authority's SSA, and the Denbighshire authority is currently £600,000 out of pocket. So much for a careful evaluation of the spending needs of Welsh local government.
The overall situation in Welsh local government is that authorities feel that they cannot make any further cuts. The latest settlement is again a substantial cut in real
terms. It comes after four years of cuts, and authorities now have virtually nothing left to cut. Let us examine the evidence. I referred to Denbighshire, and that authority is very concerned that precepts from the newfire authority--imposed on Denbighshire by the Government--will be very heavy.
The authority is concerned about the spiralling cost of reorganisation. Those of us who served on Committee on the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 warned the Government that their figures for the cost of reorganisation were pie in the sky. Here we are again--1974 revisited. The new authorities are being burdened by crippling debts.
In a parliamentary answer, the Minister of State said that £41 million-plus was being allocated for 1996-1997 to cover
I do not know where the figure of £41 million comes from, but I hope it is not from the same person who worked on Denbighshire's SSA. The Welsh Office is now graciously saying that councils can spend £41 million of their own chargepayers' money to offset part of the cost of reorganisation. In fact, the Welsh Office does not have a clue about the total cost. It is in the dark--as is everybody else, unfortunately.
This is another abject display of the failure of the Welsh Office adequately to provide for the needs of Wales. The huge rise in the cost of community care has clearly not been adequately addressed by the Government. The increase in the 1996-1997 settlement on last year's is only 1.8 per cent., while the Government's own figures forecast that prices will rise by 2.5 per cent, resulting in a further squeeze on local authorities.
My authority, Caernarfonshire and Meirionnydd--soon to become Gwynedd--has been allocated £365,000 extra cash, leading the council to the inescapable conclusion that it must cut services substantially and impose large increases in council tax for 1996-1997. The current settlement is, in fact, a 1.3 per cent. reduction compared with the 1995-1996 budget. By applying the standstill budget--which comes into effect after four years of cuts--the budget exceeds the capping limits by£2.66 million.
Therefore, my local council has basically three operational choices. First, it can cut services. That will mean closing rural schools and leisure centres, and making teachers and those in social services redundant--workers in both those sectors, I might add, do splendid work, and are already at full stretch. Secondly, it could capitalise its revenue expenditure, and that could obviously entail the deferment of much-needed capital projects. Thirdly, it could use some of the balances. The amount available in Gwynedd will not be known until September, but in any event it will only defer the need to cut, and may give a skewed budget figure to work on next year. Incidentally, such a move would produce an artificially low level of council tax, and would defer the need for a more substantial increase.
"the revenue settlement for local authorities for 1996-7 is a fair one in the current climate".
"a proportion of councils' expenditure on compensation, accommodation and information technology."--[Official Report,5 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 55.]
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