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8.6 pm
Mr. Thomas McAvoy (Glasgow, Rutherglen): The Minister was right about the Government's attitude to local government. There is no doubt that local government has been the whipping boy of the Conservative Government in the past 17 years. The Government have repeatedly attacked local government, constrained its powers and functions and struck at its financial basis.I shall not respond in too much detail to what the Minister said, because he was obviously dealing only with English local authorities. I await the speech of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch), to hear the Government's response to the debate from a Scottish perspective.
I heard the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) appeal for a high-minded approach to the debate and criticise deceit and misinformation. Deceit and misinformation immediately call to mind the most recent "Focus" leaflets in my area. I have never seen more consistent deceit and information than that in Liberal Democrats' focus leaflets. People who live in glasshouses should not throw stones.
I want to address issues in my local area, which I am elected first and foremost to do. I am especially pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is present. On behalf of the Government, he certainly has a lot to answer for. The Conservative base in Scottish local government has all but vanished. The Conservatives do not control a single new unitary council. Indeed, there has not been a Conservative councillor in the Cambuslang area of my constituency since 1982.
The Scottish revulsion for the Conservative Government, driven on by Thatcherism, led many middle-of-the-road, decent Conservative voters to start voting Liberal, and they have continued to do so. They would not go the whole way and vote Labour, but what will happen in the coming year when those Tory-Liberal voters find out that the leader of the Liberal party has declared that he will support not the Conservative party but a Labour Government? I do not know, but I shall await the outcome with interest. The Conservative base in Scotland has been destroyed despite the Government's attempts at gerrymandering through the unwanted and uncalled-for reorganisation of Scottish local government.
As a former Strathclyde regional councillor, I know that the council has done a first-class job. For the benefit of the Under-Secretary, who is a new boy in this regard, I should point out that Strathclyde regional council was
repeatedly praised by Conservative Secretaries of State for Scotland for its responsible attitude to the organisation of its services and the raising of money for those services.
The previous Secretary of State for Scotland, theright hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale(Mr. Lang), denied that there would be any job losses because of the reorganisation of Scottish local government. He then said that there would be losses, but only at the edges, and that they would amount to about 1,000, if that. On Friday, I attended a meeting at the city chambers in Glasgow, where I was shown figures that 8,000 jobs will be lost in Scottish local government, and the number is rising.
My constituency is divided between two local authorities: South Lanarkshire, covering Cambuslang, Halfway and Rutherglen, and the new Glasgow city council, covering Toryglen. South Lanarkshire new council is under pressure because the grant settlement from the Government completely ignores any pay awards for local authority staff, including teachers. If the Minister wishes to deny that, he is welcome to intervene. It means that any nationally agreed pay awards have to be met in full by each local authority from whatever resources it can find or, more likely, from the cuts imposed to finance them. It is a cumulative problem, because, according to the figures that I have, no allowance has been made in the grant for the past three years for pay awards.
One opinion put forward at the meeting in the city chambers in Glasgow was that English authorities had received allowances in their grants to deal with a 4.5 per cent. increase, yet there is no comparable increase for Scottish local authorities. I should like the Minister to respond to that point.
There is also pressure on local authority services because of additional works and costs undertaken by local authorities that are not reflected in the grant. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities produced an extensive list of works and costs that were ignored by the Government when they arrived at the grant settlement. One example is the landfill tax that local authorities will have to pay from October 1996, which the Scottish Office has completely ignored.
The Government have retained capping and, in some ways, reinforced the capping of local authority expenditure. In simple terms, in the coming financial year, if a local authority can increase expenditure by only 1 per cent. on that for 1995-96 before being capped, extensive cuts are inevitable. Local authorities in Scotland are being forced to cut services to reach the Government capping limit and thereby avoid action by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Local authorities, including South Lanarkshire, are,in effect, experiencing another round of cuts, and face service reductions as a result of vacancies not being filled. They also face extra charges on the community, redundancies and the closure of facilities. At the end of the exercise, they are still looking for significant increases in council tax because of the relatively small increase in grant.
South Lanarkshire is a new council for Cambuslang, Halfway and Rutherglen. Twenty years ago, we were incorporated into Glasgow district council, which, in the eyes of many folk, was not a success. We are now part of South Lanarkshire. Despite that council's difficulties,it has recognised the special needs of Cambuslang,
Halfway and Rutherglen through special measures in the forthcoming year. With great difficulty, it has managed to keep the increase in council rents down to about £2 a week, which, although still high for council tenants, is comparatively low--life is all about comparisons, and the increase is certainly less than the going rate of council increases in Scotland.
In addition, councillors in the rest of South Lanarkshire have taken the wider view and allowed extra capital spending on the housing programme in the Cambuslang and Rutherglen area. That displays a degree of tolerance and good will towards our area that we very much appreciate.
In many ways, all councils in Scotland are in trouble but the figures that I received on Friday for the new Glasgow city council are frightening. Conservatives and others will say that Labour is always crying disaster, that it is merely going through the motions and that, after we have had a little panic and cried wolf, things will settle down and everything will be fine. Only in the longer term will we be able to establish whether there is any credibility in that view.
It is a matter of fact, not opinion, that it costs the new Glasgow city council £874 million to provide its current services. That is what it cost last year, with no expansion of the council budget. For the coming year, grant-aided expenditure results in only £807 million being available. Glasgow city council therefore faces a £67 million shortfall. Surely that must be recognised as a special case.
I am not arguing that the cake should be redistributed in Glasgow's favour but, as someone whose constituency covers two different councils under the new system, I am already on record as saying, and have no hesitation in repeating, that whichever council covers the city of Glasgow will need special help. There is possibly more need in that area than anywhere else in Scotland. With the disaggregation of Strathclyde regional council services, Glasgow city council faces a desperate situation. A deficit of £67 million is equivalent to a cut of almost 8 per cent. in its budget. Various measures have been suggested that would reduce the amount required, through departmental cuts, to £45 million or just 5 per cent., but such cuts are draconian.
Examples of the measures that Glasgow council needs to take include increasing charges for school meals and milk, home helps, recreational facilities, burials and cremations, community education and letting fees.In addition, charges would need to be extended to a wider range of home care and social services, and charges would be introduced for under-five nursery provision and for entry into museums.
Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow):
Does my hon. Friend agree that the problems that he is outlining are exacerbated by the fact that the new councils have literally no experience of, for example, social work policies, procedures and practice? The same is true of education, so the new authorities face a difficult future.
Mr. McAvoy:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which reinforces a point that I intended to make later. There will be a learning curve for the new
The closures of services to which I have referred are not in my imagination, as there is a £67 million shortfall to be met. The options for the council include closing primary and secondary schools, but Strathclyde has tried hard to deal with the problem of surplus school places. The council is considering closing community education facilities and residential schools. These include, for instance, the Carnbooth school, the only school in the area that caters for deaf and blind children. Councillors were so desperate at one stage that they even considered closing that school, although I now believe that they have decided to look at other measures. That is the sort of desperate attitude that the Government have forced on councillors who are trying to balance the budget.
Other facilities considered for closure included elderly people's homes, local authority day centres and hostels, libraries, museums, public halls and the district court. Only last week, the Secretary of State criticised Glasgow district council following the cancellation of a whole day's court cases at the district court, which resulted in many cases not being fully processed. The Government are forcing such situations on councils, and are then criticising them. Despite all these potential cuts, a massive increase in council tax faces Glasgow residents if no help comes from the Government.
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