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Mr. John Marshall (Hendon, South): My right hon. Friend spoke earlier about the need for efficiency in spending public money. Is he aware that when the London borough of Barnet put its refuse collection contract out to tender, it refused to accept the lowest tender, and voted instead for an in-house contract that would cost the
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ratepayers an extra £500 million--I mean £500,000--over the life of the contract? Is he surprised at that and at the fact that the Lib-Lab pact has censured those of us who pointed out the cost?
Mr. Gummer: I noticed that Labour Members laughed at the figure of £500,000, as if that were not a large amount or one that really mattered. We know their attitude to mathematics. We are currently investigating the case, to determine whether it is in accordance with compulsory competitive tendering. It is no surprise that the Labour party is opposed to competitive tendering, as it knows perfectly well that it does not want the competition or to look after the ratepayers; it wants only to pay for the trade unions, in whose pocket it increasingly is.
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gummer: I have not given the Liberals an opportunity to speak. As only one of them is here to take such an opportunity, I shall give way.
Mr. Rendel: The Secretary of State argued at length that there are always opportunities for efficiency savings. Since the Conservative Government came to power in 1979, by how much has real central Government spending been cut?
Mr. Gummer: We have done a great deal of efficiency saving. I shall give one example. There has been an enormous reduction in the number of civil servants and an enormous extension of outside contracting in my Department. I am now happy to preside over a Department that does a great deal more at a very much lower cost than before. That is the result of efficiency savings--something to which the hon. Gentleman cannot point in Liberal-controlled Newbury. I shall have something to say about that later.
I must ensure that we are making equal comparisons. We need to compare the total standard spending for each year to be able to discern the difference. We cannot compare the total standard spending figure for the next financial year with what local authorities are spending this year. Each year, there is an additional spend that comes from what local authorities bring down from reserves and from the levies, fees and charges that they make. Those make a difference. This year, local authorities are budgeting some £2.5 billion more than this year's TSS. No doubt they will do that next year. We have to compare like with like.
The Labour party is committed to TSS being at the level given in the Red Book. If it wants the TSS to be at the level at which local authorities actually spend, they must tell the House where in the Budget the money will come from--or will this be another occasion on which Labour's Front-Bench spokesmen say something different in debate from what the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East says? We shall no doubt find out when the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras speaks.
Mr. Roy Thomason (Bromsgrove):
On budgeted expenditure, will my right hon. Friend confirm that he has
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Mr. Gummer:
At the request of local government, we have a system that gives two tranches. Local government felt that it would be easier to account for the real cost of redundancies after reorganisation if it were done in that way. My hon. Friend is right. Anyone who has said the opposite in Hereford and Worcester can have done so only for party political reasons.
The total of aggregate external finance for England for 1997-98 will be £35.77 billion, as previously announced. That is an increase of some £530 million, or 1.5 per cent., on 1996-97. Within that total, revenue support grant will be £18.68 billion. That is slightly lower than the figure announced in the provisional settlement, largely because grant to provide transitional relief to council tax payers in reorganised authorities will be correspondingly higher.
The increase in aggregate external finance is less than the increase in total standard spending, reflecting the Government's belief that local taxpayers could meet slightly more of the cost of local services. However, the responsibility for council tax bills rests firmly with local authorities and not with the Government. The level of the council tax will depend on the decisions that they take, and I do not intend to speculate on what those decisions might be. However, I will say that, contrary to the claims made by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, local authorities do not have to increase council tax bills next year if they want to maintain or improve services. That is not only my view, but one shared by many commentators and even by some Labour council leaders.
Councillor Mike Bower, the Labour leader of Sheffield city council, speaking to the Sheffield chamber of commerce, said:
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West):
I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that, regardless of party affiliations, a council leader's comments should be examined carefully. I hope that he shares my astonishment at the fact that the mention of Councillor
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Mr. Gummer:
I understand the reason for that attack: Councillor Bower seems to have discovered that, over the years, two prominent members of the Labour party did not have the fingertip control of finances that the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East claims that the Labour party has caught on to. Councillor Bower has let the cat out of the bag.
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West):
It is clear that leadership of Sheffield city council is a passport to becoming a Member of Parliament, so no doubt we shall eventually welcome Councillor Bower to this place.
Does the Secretary of State accept that certain local authority problems derive essentially from central Government decisions? I am thinking of the issue of refugees who are allowed into this country and who move to areas such as Newham. There are 15,000 refugees in Newham, which puts enormous pressure on local services. What are the Government doing to recognise that problem and what additional assistance will be made available to boroughs such as Newham?
Mr. Gummer:
The hon. Gentleman knows that we are discussing with local authorities precisely how we should deliver on our commitments, and he will no doubt find that those commitments are honoured fully. Perhaps he will recognise in future that this problem, like many others, must be faced squarely. We cannot allow problems to continue to arise in the way that they do at present.
However, that is not a key issue for Sheffield--I have outlined its problems already. We shall take Newham's problems seriously, and I hope that we shall be able to solve them.
Sir Irvine Patnick (Sheffield, Hallam):
The situation in which Councillor Bower finds himself is not of his making. As my right hon. Friend correctly points out, it is the result of the actions of the hon. Members for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) and for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett). Council tax and rents were not collected. When I explained to the House the litany of mistakes in Sheffield, my comments were greeted with derision by the Opposition. Anyone who wants to see an example of Labour in power should look at Sheffield. We should also remember that Sheffield has had socialism for longer than Moscow had communism.
Mr. Gummer:
My hon. Friend might also have said that all the things that the Opposition education spokesman wants in our education system could have been his when he was in Sheffield. However, there were no school uniforms, no standards and no comparisons then. The issues that matter so much now did not arise when the hon. Gentleman was in Sheffield. That is why most of us do not believe him when he speaks on education now. When he had the chance--it is the only chance that he will have--he did nothing to promote the very causes that he now takes so much to heart.
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"The Council probably has the capacity to make enormous improvements in the services it currently operates, with the resources it currently has".
It is a shame that Councillor Bower's colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench will not accept that what he says is true. However, that is hardly surprising--after all, two of his predecessors from Sheffield sit on the Opposition Benches. One has pretensions to preside over Britain's education system and both have an almost unrivalled record as leaders of a spendthrift, wasteful authority. It is no wonder that Councillor Bower has so much elbow room to improve services at no extra cost. We must recognise that the record of the hon. Members for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) and for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) is a warning of the true nature of new Labour.
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