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Sir Irvine Patnick: I am sorry. I thought that I was going to have an aberration. The jokes have been the same, but there has been no new policy. I am sure that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras will not mind me saying that he has increased his volume of delivery.
The Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), said:
A new Labour Government would mean higher council taxes and higher council debts as a result of Labour's commitment to allow councils to spend their capital receipts, which are currently set aside to offset council debt. We never hear in the Chamber about the fact that, because councils have capital receipts, they are reducing council debts. We just hear capital receipts talked about as a separate chunk of money which should be available to councils.
Across the country, Labour councillors have been criticising the amount that they will get from the Government next year, yet before the settlement, the chairmen of the Labour-dominated local government associations called for an increase in local authority spending of 5.1 per cent., which works out at £2.3 billion. That is a modest figure, so they advise me.
A survey conducted by the Sunday Times on 28 April 1996 showed that four out of five Labour council leaders hoped that a Labour Government would increase the money that councils could spend. Of the 80 council leaders questioned, 46 said that their authority would have spent more in the current year if it had been allowed to do so by the Government. The total amount required by
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The Liberal Democrats are not the angels they would have us believe. We heard nothing from the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) about what the Liberal Democrats would do about council tax. They confirmed in their "Alternative Budget" that they are the party of high taxation. In that document, they restated their intention to put a penny on income tax if they were in government, which would cost £12 a month for people on average male earnings. They announced their intention to introduce a higher rate of income tax of 50 per cent. on incomes above £100,000 and to introduce a new carbon tax which, they admitted, would cost everyone a "great deal of money".
One thing that becomes clear from the council summons for this year--this great book--is that the Liberal Democrats are fiddling while the city burns. While the city council was juggling away to balance the books in 1996-97 and setting a budget for 1997-98, Liberal Democrat councillors proposed a motion for the council minutes, calling on the city council to support the
A confidential internal review of Liberal Democrat policy, "Towards 1996"--it was so confidential that it was leaked to The Daily Telegraph--contains a number of insights into the Liberal Democrat approach to finance. It admits that the Liberal Democrats are a "high tax party" and suggests that they
The Audit Commission, in its report "Paying the Piper" which was published on 6 January 1995, highlights clearly the areas where further efficiency savings in local government can be made. It says that 60 per cent. of council expenditure is on staff, yet its study of non-manual staff has found that
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Ms Jean Corston (Bristol, East):
I welcome the opportunity to talk about the funding crisis facing the city of Bristol. For this financial year, Bristol city council had to reduce its budget by £20 million to £310.1 million just to stay within the capping limit set by the Government; half the £20 million of cuts have yet to be implemented. Just to stay within the capping limit for 1997-98, the council will have to reduce its budget by a further £16 million.
It is important to remember that Bristol gets less Government financial assistance per head of population than any comparable city in England. Indeed, when I quoted some of the figures to colleagues who come from other metropolitan and large urban authorities, they thought that I must have made a mistake. There is no mistake. Bristol gets £538 per head of population compared with £747 in Birmingham, £835 in Manchester and £741 in Leicester. Bristol is, of course, an education authority. Next year's contribution from the Government is set to fall to £530 per head, so Bristol city council will remain the lowest spender per head of all the big urban authorities while we have the third highest council tax in England.
Bristol city council has made representations on the area cost adjustment--the Under-Secretary seems to think that this is funny--to the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration. During the time in which I have been a Member of Parliament, Bristol--this was also true of the old county of Avon--has sent annual deputations to the Department of the Environment pointing out that Bristol is a high-cost area in a low-cost region and that the area cost adjustment is manifestly unfair. The Government must have accepted that there was some unfairness in the area cost adjustment, because they would not otherwise have asked Professor Elliot of Aberdeen university to conduct a review. If that review were implemented, Bristol would get an extra £11 million a year.
In Bristol, the uniform business rate is beginning to be called the missing millions. The Government say that they are against nationalisation, but they seem to have nationalised the business rate. Many people in Bristol are angry about the fact that £15 million of the money that Bristol businesses pay in their business rate to the city goes straight to Whitehall and is distributed by the Government to other councils. We were astonished to discover that in the uniform business rate regime Bristol lost, while towns such as Tewkesbury gained considerable sums. Nobody can say that the costs of running Tewkesbury are comparatively greater than the costs of running Bristol.
Bristol also had to face the costs of reorganisation when it became a unitary authority earlier this year. The Government have not fully recognised those costs.
Bristol was proud of its record as an education authority until local government reorganisation in the early 1970s. We have an excellent nursery education system and there are seven nursery schools in my constituency. There is
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"You may have heard Frank Dobson say a couple of nights ago to local government:'You have to work within the existing spending limits.' We could not be clearer about this, and if there are any proposals at all they will be made clear to people, but nothing in this programme implies rises in personal taxation."
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State remarked, the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), has said similar things.
"replacement of the House of Lords by a democratically elected second chamber . . . establishment of democratic parliaments in Scotland and Wales . . . devolution of power to the regions and communities of Britain",
and the introduction of "fair voting" and a "Freedom of Information Act". As I said earlier, Sheffield city council looked at foreign policy and the constitution. Years on, councillors are still doing that.
"should not be prevented from stating . . . strong principled support for an issue, just because it would unbalance the books."
The Liberal Democrats just want to throw money at education. That is a regressive party because its education policies are designed merely to thwart and dismantle Conservative reforms.
"few authorities have a consistent and coherent approach to three crucial questions: How many staff do they need? How much should they be paid? How can they get the best from their staff?"
I want to put on the record the words of Councillor Bower, the leader of Sheffield city council. He said:
"There is a great deal we can do with a budget of £600 million a year, and we ought to be doing it better than we currently are."
He was speaking at a meeting of the Sheffield chamber of commerce, and he added:
"The Council probably has the capacity to make enormous improvements in the services it currently operates, with the resources it currently has."
That was reported in The Sheffield Star of 17 December 1996.
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