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Mr. Keith Mans (Wyre): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dobson: Not yet; I shall finish this point.
The teachers' pay award, which the Government decide, was fixed at 3.1 per cent. This year, that will cost Birmingham an extra £9 million. Other pay and price increases will cost Birmingham an extra £21 million. Birmingham will have to find an extra £5.5 million to pay for the implementation of new legislation on pensions and waste disposal. Increases in the number of school children and elderly people in Birmingham will cost £5 million, yet the capital available for school buildings in Birmingham has been reduced by 40 per cent. The budget shortfall will cost 727 council jobs. Birmingham made savings of £20 million but still had to increase its council tax.
Mr. Mans:
In view of what the hon. Gentleman said about Birmingham's spending limit, is it now Labour party policy to encourage all local authorities to spend up to their limit?
Mr. Dobson:
As far as I know, it appears to be the Government's policy. I understand that speakers at successive Tory local government conferences have said that setting capping limits and such like has had the effect, even in Tory areas, of encouraging councils to spend up to their limit, which they might not have done if such limits had not been set. That may or may not be true, but it was certainly said at Tory conferences. The hon. Gentleman might be a better judge of whether what is said at Tory conferences is true, as he attends them more frequently.
The Government's revenue support grant for Greenwich has been cut by £4.13 million, and the council has held its increases in expenditure to just 1 per cent. although inflation in its services is running at about 3 per cent. Total Government support for Hackney has been cut by £5.2 million, the bulk of which represents a reduction in the money available for education in that borough. Tamworth, despite facing a by-election, has seen a reduction of £141,000, and the great city of Newcastle upon Tyne has had its rate support grant cut by £1.3 million.
I could go on and on citing examples of cuts that have been made, but I do not want to trouble the House by listing them at enormous length. All hon. Members know from their constituency experience that there have been local tax increases, increased charges and cuts in services, but that is not the end of the story.
This year's increase in taxes is not the only increase that the Government have in mind. On the day of the Budget, the Department of the Environment published figures showing that the Government expected the total amount of money taken from council tax payers to increase by £3.5 billion over the coming three years. That equals an increase of almost 2p in the standard rate of income tax--that 2p increase would raise the same sum of money from ordinary people as the £3.5 billion that the Government expect, were they to stay in power, to raise from council tax payers in the next three years.
That, of course, is not the only sign of the Tory commitment to increase council taxes. The former head of local government finance at the Department of the Environment said:
That is certainly happening and was confirmed recently by the deputy secretary at the Department of the Environment in his evidence to a House of Lords Committee on relations between central and local government. He said of a 25 per cent. contribution on average from the council tax towards council services that it was
Mr. Pickles:
Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the council tax in Camden would be lower if the council collected it and reached the average collection rate? Does he think that it would be lower in Haringey if it were collected there? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that most of the top 10 councils that collect the least taxes are Labour authorities and that they are responsible for £90 million
Mr. Dobson:
There is certainly scope for improvement in council tax collection--[Interruption.] I am answering the question. There is scope for improvement in the rate of council tax collection--
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster):
What about collecting rents?
Mr. Dobson:
And rent collection for that matter. If we are to bandy facts around, I have to say that the only reason why Brent does not feature in the lists of councils with massive council tax and rent arrears is that Brent has written them off to make the figures look better. As everyone knows--this of course applies to Brent--in areas where the people are predominantly poor, it is bound to follow that it will be harder to get rent and council tax out of them, as they find it hard to pay. There will always be some relationship between the standard of living and the level of income in an area and the council's capacity to collect taxes.
One line that the Government have been peddling--the Secretary of State has been doing the same--is that they would provide more money for schools. If more money is being provided for schools, it is no thanks to the Government. The Government have allowed councils to spend more of their own money on schools but have not provided any extra if we take into account inflation, the cost of pay increases and the increased number of pupils to which I have already referred.
Mr. Den Dover (Chorley):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dobson:
Hold on a minute. It is worth remembering that the Government have acknowledged that there was not enough money to cover the pay increases. They have had to accept that the teachers' pay increase should be phased in because councils would not have enough to pay it outright. That is an admission by the Government that the funds would simply not be available.
I make it clear that if, in the coming year, education authorities were to spend on schools what the Government think ought to be spent on schools, there would be not an increase in spending but a reduction of, on average, £41 per pupil across the country compared with the year just finished. I repeat that if education authorities spent to the Government's target in the coming year, there would be not an increase but an average decrease of £41 per pupil.
Mr. Dover:
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Lancashire council scaremongered and said that this year there would be a further reduction on school spending of 8 per cent. on top of a cut of 5 per cent. last year? The Government have in fact given £26 million extra to Lancashire this year and, at long last, the chairman of the education committee has admitted that there will be a real increase in spending, which is quite different from the scare stories that he was spreading a few months ago.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
Scandalous.
Mr. Dobson:
Compared with Conservative Members, it beggars belief to refer to anybody in the Labour party as scandalous when it comes to scaremongering. I do not have at my fingertips figures on the circumstances prevailing in Lancashire. All I know is that, generally speaking, Lancashire county council has been trying hard to provide decent services to the people of Lancashire and has been making a pretty good fist of it. It is a pity that it has not had more help from the Government--or, from time to time, more help from Tory Members representing Lancashire constituencies in arguing with the Government to get some resources for the county.
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire):
Is it not a fact that Lancashire, like Derbyshire, has the largest primary classes of any English shire--an average of 27.9 pupils across the whole area? That is indicative of its financial problems as a result of the Government.
Mr. Dobson:
I freely admit that my hon. Friend, who is very familiar with Derbyshire and who has obviously been looking around for comparisons and spotted that Lancashire is in similar circumstances, displays more expertise on the matter than I. I congratulate him on pointing that out.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
The hon. Gentleman should be aware that the reason why class numbers are high in some parts of Lancashire is that, unfortunately, the county council chooses to keep open surplus places in east and central Lancashire secondary schools, where the population is falling, thus depriving north Lancashire of teachers that it should have.
Mr. Dobson:
One of the problems that education authorities face these days in getting rid of surplus classes, or indeed surplus schools, is the possibility that when they try to take the sort of action for which the hon. Lady seems to be calling, the people in the schools concerned will go rushing to the Secretary of State to say, "Can we opt out?", and that there is a reasonable chance that, on base political grounds, the Secretary of State will agree. Virtually everybody connected with education, including some officials at the Department for Education and Employment, acknowledge that that is true. I suspect that even some officials at the Department of the Environment might think that it is true.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raised the question of Derbyshire's fire service settlement. I must repeat to Conservative Members that, unless they happened to be absent for the vote, they voted for the general local government settlement. It is worth reminding them what that settlement has provided for fire authorities around the country. The Tyne and Wear authority will have £2.3 million less to spend than it had last year on the fire service. In Wiltshire, although the deficit is just £260,000, it is not a large brigade and that is quite a lot of money. On Merseyside, the cuts contemplated range from £2 million to £6 million. In Cambridgeshire, the figure is £700,000. In Essex, Labour county councillors have proposed cuts of £1.5 million, but Conservatives and Liberals are still gnawing on the bone over whether to make much bigger cuts and reduce spending on the fire service by between £3 million and £4 million.
"Ministers want to increase the proportion of council tax spending from 21 to 26 per cent. by 1998-99 . . . The downside is that your taxes go up sharply".
"as much as I felt the council tax could properly bear".
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