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10.34 am
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset): I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir H. Spicer) on securing this timely debate. I especially welcome the opportunity to nail once and for all the biggest lie in Dorset. That lie has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock). It is that Members of Parliament for Dorset and the previous administration in county hall have not fought Dorset's corner. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I cast no aspersions on other people's ability to fight for Dorset, but any Member of Parliament who comes to this place knows that they represent their constituents, and that no one else will fight for a better share of national resources for Dorset. I therefore become angry when I read headlines trying to steal the thunder of Members of Parliament, all of whom have been in this place much longer than me and have done an extremely good job, constantly bringing to Ministers' attention what we need for our Dorset constituents.
That should never remove from our minds the way in which we correctly use money in Dorset, and the fact that, throughout the decades, our officers have been extremely skilful in dealing with the low resources coming to Dorset. The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned what good education we achieve with virtually the lowest spending on education. That must be reflected at the beginning of all our remarks. We must be proud of teachers in Dorset and of how they achieve value for money. Many people could learn from what we do in Dorset. We are proud of everything we do in our national health service and other such organisations. I hope that any robust comments I make should not reflect on the abilities of the people who work in those organisations.
At our first meeting with the new administration, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the new chairman of the policies and resources committee came to see us in a spirit of co-operation. We had what seemed to be an extremely positive and sensible exchange of views. I did not agree with Councillor Trevor Jones's view that we would be wasting our time if we continued to press the Government on several issues. That was annoying.
One of the issues was the area cost adjustment. Councillor Jones said that we had been banging on about it for many years, and that the Government simply would not listen. To a certain extent, we were becoming worried that that was true.
Another issue was the funding of the police. At the meeting, he specifically said--I have noted it down; I was a little surprised--that we should concentrate on increasing the standard spending assessment for education and on other sectors, and remove from our campaigning tactics the area cost adjustment and the funding of the Conservative conference for the police force. Councillors agreed, however, that we should still bang on about those issues and press the Government.
The Government have now said--belatedly, but it is to be welcomed--that they are considering the area cost adjustment, and that a report will be published this
summer. I hope that the inequities of the policy will at long last be clear to everyone. It will be shown that area cost adjustments were a fiddle factor for high-spending inner-city authorities, and that the Labour party could not have continued such high spending if the authorities, especially those in London, had received only their fair share. It shows that the south-east has been receiving far too much of the national cake.
Given what has happened, it has been difficult to get at the facts and figures of the low SSA, as newspaper headlines on the latest settlement have shown. The Government will know that Dorset has just received the best settlement ever. One only has to read Councillor Trevor Jones's speech to discover that that is exactly what he thinks. One headline said, however, that there would be £4.7 million-worth of cuts. The council came to that wonderful figure simply because it decided that it would like to increase its budgets across the board by 7 per cent., and when it received only an increase of 6 per cent., the difference was £4.7 million.
Mrs. Maddock:
Conservative Members seem to be afraid of facing the facts. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that at the end of Trevor Jones's excellent budget speech--I understand that Mr. Jones is yet to receive a reply from the hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) to questions on some of the points that the hon. Gentleman has raised in the press that appear not to be quite right--all his Conservative colleagues said that, although the proposed budget was excellent, they were not prepared to vote for it, which is pretty poor, and that they sat on their hands? They did not propose another budget. I have yet to hear how Conservative Members think that all the wonderful services that they think are necessary should be paid for.
Sir Jim Spicer:
Just get on with your speech.
Mr. Bruce:
My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir J. Spicer) suggests that it would be a good idea if I got on with my speech and did not give way. It clearly would have been wise not to allow the hon. Lady her to make a fool of herself over that issue.
We all know--I am glad that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) emphasised it--that this year Dorset county council received its best ever settlement. Despite that, it issued press releases saying that it was losing £4.7 million, and my constituents believed that all their services would be cut. Yet the truth is that budgets will increase by 6 per cent., which most councils would have been amazed to receive from the Government in such a tight spending round.
Mr. Bruce:
If the hon. Lady can contain herself a little more, I shall try to explain exactly why it was so difficult to get to the truth about the county's financial arrangements.
When Dorset received what we all agree was its worst settlement, we had great difficulty in understanding why, when the Government allocated only half the cost of the increase in teachers' salaries, the Liberal Democrat-controlled county council decided not to allocate even that amount to schools. It gave the schools zero per pupil from that amount. The newspapers then of course reported how terrible that was and advised people to write to all their lousy Conservative Members of Parliament about it.
At the end of that year, when we were looking for about £5 million to give to schools, we found that the county council had been able to put away, apparently in its back pocket, £10 million. Some people have been rather upset about my use of the word "filched" concerning that money, and I withdrew it in December in a letter to the chief executive.
I should explain to hon. Members exactly what happened. I had the greatest difficulty understanding the reports on the county's funding. Although it said that it had been able to put £5.5 million in one year into its balances, I could not find the other £4.5 million that it claimed it had underspent. I wrote to the chief executive and received a rather interesting reply. Rather than what I had expected him to say--that the money was to be found in this fund or that--I was told:
In other words, one can look as hard as one wants at the county's accounts and one will not find that money. How can councillors, Members of Parliament and head teachers put a case for funding to the county when money is hidden so well?
I should like to turn to local government reorganisation, where I am afraid that again we find the Liberal Democrats' sleight of hand, at which they seem to be so adept. It is interesting that, when the county council suddenly changed its policy on the way in which the county should be divided, a campaign, financed at county hall, was launched to keep the county as one body, and resulted in the distribution of petitions, posters and all sorts of literature, which were so misleading it was unbelievable. The official line was in fact that the county should be split into three and that all the district councils should be retained.
The House will be pleased to know that the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Geoffrey Tapper, wrote to me when I made allegations about that campaign and passed them to the district auditor. He said on 29 April:
I hate to tell Geoffrey Tapper, but I spoke to the district auditor this morning and discovered that he will be having a meeting on 3 April with the county council's chief executive. That will give the council the chance to comment on the district auditor's report. I think that Geoffrey Tapper ought to start having a few sleepless nights.
The allegations have been levelled not only by the Labour mayor of Dorchester and myself, but by many others. I discovered them at a dinner party where a lady arrived late because she had to load into her car all the material that was being produced and photocopied in county hall in order to spend the first few hours of the following morning passing the stuff out to all the education institutions. When I challenged the county council about whether such a practice was a proper use of council funds--I assumed that it must have voted on it--I was told that the cost had been absorbed in the budget. Which budget? It was of course the education budget, the one that was under such pressure that all the allocation could not be spent. We ought to find out what is going on.
The hon. Member for Christchurch wanted to jump to her feet to challenge the fact that there have been fewer police officers recently, which is right. The reason for
that, however, is that, when the council became Liberal Democrat-controlled, it got rid in a by-election of Chips Selby-Bennett, who had been the biggest campaigner among the Conservatives for more bobbies on the beat.
The Liberal Democrats attacked him on the premise that the Conservatives were not doing enough for the police, yet the first thing they did was pass an emergency budget to cut police spending. The proposal was sent off to the police committee, which was not Liberal Democrat-controlled and included magistrates and all sorts of other representatives. The committee of course threw out the proposal, and forced the council to think again and retain the Conservative commitment to spend an extra £2 million every year on policing.
When the Government decided that policing should be funded separately, the county could still have allocated that £2 million to the police force if it had wanted to and if it had believed its own propaganda that was being sent out week after week. Of course it did not. It said that the funding was separate, and it was therefore able to dump it without being blamed. Press releases then said that the council had to get rid of some of its police officers. That is the sort of lie that we shall nail in this debate.
We have heard a little about the European office. Does it cost £50,000? Does it cost £100,000? Direct costs may be about £50,000, but we would like to know all about the indirect costs of having officers in this country.
The hon. Member for Christchurch talked about a parish council asking, "Where can we get help?" Well, when I asked councillors from Weymouth and Portland council, which is not controlled by my party, how much help they got from the county council's spending on the office in Europe, they replied, "Nothing." They do not even know where it is, and have never had a report from it. Nor has any Member of Parliament. We have never heard anything from that office.
I have told councils time and time again that we are allowed at least one free visit to Europe every year, and that we have an excellent Member of the European Parliament in Bryan Cassidy, who knows everybody. "Please use him," I say. Of course they do not, because that would not give them the headlines, or allow councillors to go and open offices and have freebies in Europe.
Another forthcoming report suggests that we join yet another such organisation. That would be fine if it saved us money or got us more money, but if it does not, we must find out what is happening.
I know that I am rapidly running out of time, but I must say something about waste disposal. In my constituency there is a site at Crossways, and I worked with local people who were upset about the life of that tip being extended. I also worked closely with the Liberal Democrats--they were in the Social Democratic party then--and the campaign was successful. It was fought on the planning issues, and the application was turned down, so we thought that there would be no tip there.
Then the county spent a lot of money--about £1 million, I think--deciding on Holnest, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset has mentioned. It spent that money producing a scheme that had the total support of all the political parties--until election time came round. Then
the Liberal Democrats went out and campaigned with other people, many of whom were Conservative supporters, against a tip at Holnest. They promised to dump the idea straight away and choose another type of waste removal.
The council then decided on an incinerator, and even negotiated a contract with a company, which must have spent tens of thousands of pounds getting it organised, with details of the pricing for the incinerator and everything else. But of course, when a decision had to be made on the siting--the choice was between two sites in my constituency--the local people would not have it. Indeed, the local Liberal Democrats would not have it, either, and they campaigned against it. So that idea was knocked on the head. We are now back to Crossways.
"The cost centre underspends in 1994-95 are not included in the general balances; as explained they are earmarked for spending in the current year and are playing a vital contribution to maintaining existing services."
"I shall not lie awake at nights worrying about the district auditor checking out your allegations."
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