| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am most grateful to the hon. Lady. I think that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) had the Floor.
Mr. Dobson: I was just about to give way to the Secretary of State.
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras knows perfectly well that he asked for details that are in the Library. These prove him to be wrong and me to be right. The hon. Gentleman has repeated something that is not true. The Labour party gave a greater grant proportionately to Westminster than the present Government, and that shoots his argument below the waterline.
Mr. Dobson: The fact that the Secretary of State--who is privileged to come to this House armed with innumerable advisers--has not produced a figure suggests that there is something amiss in his argument.
Sir Peter Fry: The hon. Gentleman should give us the figures.
Mr. Dobson: It is not my argument--I do not need to produce the figures.
Why do the Tory Members support this unfair settlement? If every council received the same help per head as Westminster, most would not need to collect any council tax at all. Most would be able to pay rebates instead. In Luton, the council would be able to pay a rebate of £529 to every council tax payer. In Bedford, the figure would be £499; in Erewash, £812; in Burton-on-Trent, £796; in North-West Leicestershire, £798; in Corby, £795; in Stourbridge, £700; in Gloucester, £831; in Lincoln, £731; in Staffordshire, Moorlands, £781; and in Slough £865. People in those places will want to know why their Members of Parliament have not got them a better deal.
The fiddling of the deprivation rankings does not stop with the residents. Councils get their grants increased in proportion to the number of visitors they get--in Westminster, it amounts to 81 per cent. The fiddling does not even stop there. According to the Government, visitors to an area are just as deprived as the inhabitants. So, according to the Government, all the people who stay overnight in Westminster are--like its residents--the fourth-most deprived in Britain.
We all know that homelessness and the numbers of people sleeping rough reach record levels under the Government, but the typical overnight visitor to Westminster is not homeless--far from it. Yet the settlement assumes that all Westminster's visitors are deprived. So we have the unbelievable situation that, for the purposes of calculating the Government grant, 12 per cent. of the people who stay at the Ritz, the Savoy, the Lanesborough and the Park Lane Hilton tonight will be regarded as living in grossly overcrowded conditions. Westminster is therefore entitled to extra grant to deal with that overcrowding.
If I said that, the Tories would accuse me of jeopardising the tourism industry by talking down the quality of London's hotels, but that is the Government's official position. Westminster does not just get a grant to match the number of overnight visitors--it gets extra
3 Feb 1997 : Column 699
I will use one example to illustrate how crazy the system is. Let us follow a couple of foreign tourists as they visit places of historical interest in England. They come to London and stay at a hotel in Westminster. While they are in Westminster, they are regarded as being among the fourth-most deprived people in the country, and Westminster receives extra grant to meet their needs. When that same couple tire of sightseeing in London, they go to see the Brighton pavilion and immediately go up in the world. They become only the 32nd-most deprived people in England.
When this upwardly mobile couple go to see the imp in Lincoln cathedral, they move up to 59th, and they move up to 62nd when they pass through the Erpingham gate into the cathedral close at Norwich. They move up to 68th when they visit Exeter cathedral, and 87th when they visit Gloucester cathedral to see the first perpendicular gothic window in the world. They move up to 125th when they visit Worcester cathedral, and 219th when they gaze down from the ancient walls of Chester. A visit to York minster further improves their social standing to 274th, while a visit to the red sandstone of Carlisle elevates them to 288th. A visit to the High Peak secures them yet higher status, 290th, but even that cannot compare with the superiority they gain from a view of Durham castle and cathedral, which puts them at 334th.
Let me remind the House--these are the same tourists, but, according to the Government, they are not the same. The further they get from Westminster, the less deprived they become. That is social climbing with knobs on. It is not just ridiculous--it is unfair. It is also serious because, as the Government's ranking of deprivation is reduced, so is the grant that the councils receive.
The fiddle does not end there. Westminster council takes in more than £20 million a year in parking charges levied on those poverty-stricken visitors. It is allowed to keep all that money, which is not netted off against the grant for visitors. It is true that the same rule applies to every council. It is just that Westminster has more visitors who are more impoverished--according to the Government--and who pay more parking charges. The arrangement may apply to everybody, but it was custom-built to benefit Westminster.
The Government always claim--the Secretary of State has done so today--that the allocation of funds is backed by the local authority associations. That is not true. They are consulted, but they do not make the decision. As the Secretary of State has said--
Mr. Robert G. Hughes:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dobson:
Please do not interrupt--I am about to quote the Secretary of State. He said last year:
3 Feb 1997 : Column 700
Mr. Dobson:
The hon. Gentleman's electors in Harrow will probably think that his time would be better spent ensuring that he does not vote for a system under which, if his area got the same help per head of population as Westminster, people would get a rebate of £416, or for a settlement under which his local people will have to pay 26 per cent. of the cost of the council instead of 10 per cent. as they do in Westminster.
Mr. Gummer:
Can the hon. Gentleman just answer this question? If it is as he says, why have the local authority associations not asked for the root and branch change that he is proposing? Given that he has made this speech on previous occasions, why have none of the four associations supported him? He has made it at least five times to my certain knowledge.
Mr. Dobson:
First, on an issue of principle, I am not the mouthpiece of the local authority associations. Secondly, as I have explained, those associations believe that they cannot expect any root and branch change from the Government and so, as long as they remain in power, they are looking for limited adjustments.
Mr. Charles Hendry (High Peak)
rose--
Mr. Dobson:
I shall not give way at the moment. Recently, Ministers--including the Secretary of State today--have started to claim backing from the Audit Commission for their system of funding local councils. The Secretary of State quoted an Audit Commission report today, but the quote was pretty partial. The commission said that the present system was more sophisticated than foreign systems and better than the Tory scheme that preceded it. It did not leave it at that, however, and went on to say:
3 Feb 1997 : Column 701
Mr. Hendry:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
On top of that overall plan to blame councils for the cuts in services and council tax increases that will follow this settlement, the Government are persisting in their now discredited, unfair share-out of grant between councils. So, if the Government force through the settlement, the distribution will be unfair and we shall vote against it. As I made clear before Christmas and on 6 January, if the settlement is forced through tonight, councils will perforce have to live with it. That is because the Government's craven postponement of the general election means that there is no alternative.
Under laws passed by the Government, councils have to decide their budgets by 11 March, which means that they have to know the level of Government grant that they will be getting well before that date. To ensure that all councils knew where they stood, I made it clear in December and January that, whatever the settlement forced through by the Government tonight, it will be the settlement for the forthcoming year and that that must include the capping levels.
We want to get rid of capping, subject to fall-back powers to deal with any council that might get totally out of line, but that certainly cannot be done this year. Councillors and council officials were entitled to know that, so we made it clear. Councils know where they stand. We are determined not to do as the Tories did at the last general election, when they made promises that they knew they could not keep. They promised tax cuts; they delivered tax increases. They promised increased public services; they delivered cuts in public services. Then they tried to blame everyone but themselves for what they had done.
"Someone has to decide . . . That is a responsibility of mine".
Mr. Hughes:
Is not one of the holes in the hon. Gentleman's argument the fact that local authority associations have not seriously queried the Secretary of State's methodology? If they did, as the marionette sitting
"there is nothing indisputably right about the present system . . . Its basis is simply a set of imperfect statistical models. Yet immense authority is invested by the Government in the current SSA formula".
The Audit Commission went on to point out that
"some of the system's objectives were contradictory".
For good measure it added:
"Comparing the system with a checklist of objective criteria reveals that it is deficient in several ways . . . The technical performance of the system delivers a degree of fairness which could be improved."
The commission continued:
"The system is neither simple to understand nor stable in outcome",
adding that
"Some authorities receive grant and spending power for services they do not provide."
As I said, the Government have been planning for months to drive up council tax bills this coming April by an average of 6 per cent. or £40 per average household
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |