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Mr. Clifton-Brown: The hon. Lady may be deceiving my electors in Gloucestershire. Opposition Front Benchers have already agreed not to increase expenditure next year, the year after and the year after that. If the hon. Lady is proposing an increase in overall expenditure for local authorities, will she please tell us where the money will come from?

Ms Corston: It is amazing that Conservative Members are increasingly behaving as if they were in opposition. We are debating a settlement that has been imposed by the Government and their record of 18 years. Let the hon. Gentleman defend that to the people of Gloucestershire; I do not have to do that.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Ms Corston: No. I have given way to the hon. Gentleman and he can make his own speech later.

Bristol also has regional responsibilities. Bristol council tax payers are expected to provide cultural, arts, leisure, recreational and tourist facilities and regional shopping for people who live in the surrounding area--those people do not have to make any contribution; Bristol council tax payers have to pay the bill.

On 10 January, there was a conference at the Council house in Bristol to enable the city council to explain to representatives from different sectors of the community the depth of the funding crisis facing the city. The chairman of Bristol 2000 asked:

"Why is the Government behaving so illogically towards Bristol?"

A head teacher said:

"The only remaining cuts are of people."

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The chief executive of the Bristol chamber for commerce and initiative said that there was an obvious disparity in funding and, although there were exemplary partnerships between the public and private sectors in Bristol, the private sector could not possibly fill the gap.

The conference debunked many of the myths about Bristol which had been put about by Tories in and outside the city in respect of money being wasted on bureaucracy--an accusation that did not stick--and collection rates for the council tax. The latter story was put about by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), but it has been demonstrated that Bristol's council tax collection rate is only 2 per cent. below the national average. The most amazing aspect is that the architect of the two budgets that have caused Bristol's problems is none other than that right hon. Gentleman. No one would deny him his place in the Cabinet or the opportunity to sit on the Government Front Bench, but he should stop and consider that his prime duty is to the people of Bristol, who feel angry at the way in which he has sought to evade responsibility.

The right hon. Member for Bristol, West attended the conference on 10 January, as I did, and it was extraordinary that he did not take the opportunity to explain or defend the Government's financial settlement for Bristol and other local authorities. I gather that he is now writing to constituents acknowledging that Bristol is hard done by--but it was done by him.

The Tories have grown used to pushing certain buttons in respect of local government. They talk about high-spending Labour local authorities, but that is a bit rich, considering that people have rejected Tory authorities wholesale. The Tories can no longer rely on that. The local press reaction in Bristol was not what they expected. The leading article in the Bristol Evening Post on 13 January said:

"making final choices will not be easy."

It acknowledged that

"no one will envy the councillors the tough choices they must make."

and asked:

"How do you choose between employing fewer teachers and closing an old folks' home?"

That was a sympathetic and understanding response.

The choices facing the city of Bristol are: axing up to 450 teaching posts, closing up to three homes for elderly persons, and closing youth clubs and up to two child and family support centres. This year's settlement will inflict real damage and harm on one of our foremost cities. Not a single alternative proposal has come from local Tories.

We cannot put children on a waiting list for their education in the same way as patients are on waiting lists for hip replacements. Children must have their education tomorrow, this term and this year. They cannot wait another two or three years for things to get better. Parents in Bristol want an assurance here and now that they will be able to provide the best for their children. Many of them have written to me saying, "We shall have a Labour Government in May, so things can change on 2 May, can't they?" However, the measures that we are debating now

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will take effect next year. Local authorities have to set their budgets by the beginning of March, so any changes will not come through for a couple of years.

We have such a thing as local democracy. Many of my hon. Friends and I have been astonished at the Government's denial of local democracy and accountability and the overcentralisation of power. It was once explained to me somewhat patronisingly by a Conservative Member, who said, "We do not have to take quite so much notice of local government as you suggest, because more people vote for us than vote for them. Only a few hundred people vote for local councillors, whereas tens of thousands of people vote for us." That seemed to be a pretty bogus argument, because local councils and local government have the same political legitimacy as we do and the way in which the Government have treated local authorities in general, and my city of Bristol in particular, is one reason why at the next general election there will be no Conservative Members left in our city.

7.9 pm

Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West): Normally, one thanks Madam Speaker or the Deputy Speaker for calling one early in a debate. I am glad that I have not been called too early in this debate, because I have been able to listen with interest to various voices on the Opposition Benches. Opposition Members have been very good, followed their brief, kept their heads down, avoided the arguments and banged on about points made by Labour party researchers, which is very commendable from their party's point of view.

Such speeches have been interesting, because Labour Members have been trying to peddle points that are incompatible with each other. They have been trying to tell people that, if there were a Labour Government--the hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Ms Corston) said it too--they could do nothing for a couple of years because the budgets would have been set by the councils. Let us be clear: that is simply not true.

If there were a Labour Government and they wanted to increase the money going to local authorities, they could do it in a new Budget. They could make extra money available, change the regulations, change the capping levels and give more spending and borrowing permission. Labour Members recognise, however, that, if they say all that, the financial writers and people who understand the economy will rumble what the Labour party is about. Labour Members recognise that they cannot breathe a word of all that before the election. If the Labour party wants to pretend to be a tax-cutting party--

Ms Corston: What about the Government's policy?

Mr. Hughes: With the greatest of respect, the hon. Lady spent most of her speech talking about Conservative Members. It is therefore perfectly reasonable for me to talk about Labour policy. I shall come to Conservative matters in a moment. [Interruption.] Oh, God, I see that twittering Hilary is back just in time for my speech.

Mr. Deputy Speaker): Order. The hon. Gentleman should retract what he has just said. That is not the type of language that should be used in the House.

Mr. Hughes: I should have said the twittering hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong).

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The Labour party wants us to believe that it is financially responsible and would not increase taxes, yet we get all the talk about Westminster. Why do Labour Members go on and on about Westminster? It is because they want us and their constituents to believe that what happens is all a political fix--that Westminster and Wandsworth are given all the extra money because they are Conservative authorities. Why do Labour Members not look at the figures? I see that all the Labour Members have briefing notes in lovely Labour party yellow.

Ms Corston: I have the report.

Mr. Hughes: If the hon. Lady had read it--it is a rather nice yellow--she would have the same figures as me.

Mr. Dobson: The hon. Gentleman is a clown.

Mr. Hughes: Being called a clown by the hon. Gentleman is praise indeed.

Mr. Hardy: Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment on his calculation? He will agree that roughly two thirds of local authority expenditure goes on education. If the proportion of Westminster's population of children in school is half that in Rotherham, why does Westminster get between four and five times per head more from central Government?

Mr. Hughes: Obviously, I do not know, because I do not know the hon. Gentleman's constituency well. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene again, I shall let him do so in a moment. The point is, why does Islington get much more than Westminster? If I represented Westminster or Wandsworth, I would demand to know why my council was not getting as much as Hackney, Tower Hamlets or Islington. I do not think that anybody in the House would disagree that the cost of running services in inner London is higher than in the rest of the country. Why does Westminster, which is so often quoted by the Labour party, come only about halfway down the league table of inner-London authorities? There are only 12 authorities in inner London, yet Westminster is sixth in the table.

Why does the Labour party bang on about Westminster? It is because Westminster is Conservative controlled and Labour Members can make a cheap political point, and because they want people to believe that, were there ever to be a Labour Government, somehow more money would be given to each of their Labour local authorities, just like more money is given to Westminster. There can be no other reason for banging on about the same point speech after speech. They do so simply to mislead people into thinking that more money will be forthcoming.

The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) has told us that there would not be any more money. His speech was designed for the shadow Chancellor and the City. We are, however, told that more money would go to some local authorities because the way in which the grants were allocated would be changed. What the hon. Gentleman omits to tell people is that calculations must be made on the basis of the most recent information in the Secretary of State's hands and that, if the Secretary of State does not use it, that Secretary of State will be up for judicial review.

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If the system were rigged as the Labour party claims, and it were based on the Secretary of State's political will, it would be inconceivable that Labour local authorities would not try for a judicial review and win it. If the money were there, they would go after it. Many of us, on both sides of the House, who have served in local government know that. It is notable that authorities have not taken such an opportunity. Why have they not done so? It is because they know that what the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras says is complete nonsense. They know that, were there to be a Labour Government, the formula would have to be of the same sort, however it was tinkered with, and that such a formula would inevitably produce a system that could be parodied as unfair.

Hon. Members who probably have almost no knowledge of Wandsworth or Westminster ask how such areas can possibly be more deprived than others, especially the ones that they represent. They do not know whether such areas are more deprived. Such a judgment can be based only on the proper indices. If the indices were not the correct ones, they could not have been used because the Government would not have been able to sustain them.

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