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8.29 pm
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): Like many other speakers, the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) expressed his dissatisfaction not only with the system but with the way in which the revenue support grant is allocated. In my county, there is certainly continuing dissatisfaction with the weighting given to the sparsity factor--to which the hon. Member for Wansbeck referred--and to the area cost adjustment, to which able reference was made by my hon. Friend for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown). In Shropshire, the sparsity factor is now a serious consideration--we do not feel that enough weighting is given to it--but the problem will become even more acute after reorganisation. Once Telford becomes a unitary authority, the rest of the county, far from experiencing sparsity problems, will experience super-sparsity problems.
Let me offer the House a little homespun philosophy. I say to my Front Bench that, regardless of who wins the next general election, the incoming Administration will have to re-examine the structures of local government. There will have to be a further attempt to improve the present system, which, as hon. Members have already pointed out, leaves much to be desired. I am aware that we have had two reorganisations of local government. We have had three local government finance systems: the old rates system was followed by the community charge, which has now been succeeded by the council tax. What we seem never to have done satisfactorily is sit down and decide exactly what we expect local authorities to do. We have not agreed on a division of responsibilities between local government and central Government. I am anxious that there should be a clear-cut division, rather than the continuing confusion that results from central Government's having so much hand in what goes on in local government.
I believe that, sooner or later, Parliament will have to consider making education and social services a direct responsibility of the national taxpayer, leaving all other services as a charge on the council tax payer. The present system is a recipe for failure: as long as it is perpetuated, there will be continual wrangling between local government and central Government. We have seen that
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In Shropshire--and I am sure that the position is mirrored in many other counties--there is currently wrangling about the winter road maintenance expenditure. In former times, no one doubted that that was a local authority function, and that the local authority would decide how much provision to make and how much to spend. Now, when the electorate complain about winter road maintenance in Shropshire, councillors immediately blame the Government for not providing enough revenue support grant. That cuts across all the best traditions of local democracy, and it must end. I do not accept the Whitehall view that the way in which to improve local government is to impose ever-greater limitations and control from the centre.
I know the old argument--used by many in Whitehall and Westminster--that, if such matters are not controlled from the centre, the calibre of local councillors is such that the whole process will run amok. I do not believe it. This is a case of cause and effect: if the authority for discharging such responsibilities is removed from local councillors, the calibre of people who are attracted to local government will continue to spiral downwards.
If we are to have local democracy, there must be clear accountability in local government. It must be plainly demonstrated to the voters that, when they elect councillors, those councillors will be spending council tax payers' money. The financial picture must not be confused by the granting of money from the centre, in accordance with the complicated formula that we are now discussing. If we are to have local democracy and local accountability, the system must be intelligible: the voters must be able to understand it. I stress again the importance of placing authority and responsibility in the same pair of hands.
May I draw my right hon. Friend the Minister's attention to a specific aspect of local government finance affecting my constituency? He will, I am sure, be aware that Shropshire will have no transport programme policy allocation for the 1997-98 financial year. How can that possibly be equitable, given that Shropshire is England's largest inland county? My right hon. Friend also knows that we have been unsuccessful in bidding for capital challenge money. The Whitburn street relief road in Bridgnorth, in my constituency, has been half built, and £250,000 from the district council is promised for its completion. The county council has confirmed that, if there were any money in the TPP allocation, the relief road would be its top priority; but the whole project has now stalled.
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle):
I agree with some of what the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) said, but it is a pity that it has taken him 18 years to discover the truth.
Mr. Gill:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Prentice:
No. I have only a few minutes.
Mr. Gill:
I simply want to point out--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
Order. The conditions in this Chamber are that an hon. Member either gives way or does not and they must be respected.
Mr. Prentice:
Ordinarily, I would give way, but I am conscious that many of my colleagues have been in the Chamber all day and will not have an opportunity to make a contribution, so I want to keep my comments brief.
The Conservatives are an endangered species in local government. There are only 13 Conservative councils nationwide. There is only one Conservative county council--Buckinghamshire--and a handful of Conservative London boroughs. There are no Conservative councils in Scotland or in Wales, yet Conservative Members come to the Chamber and thunder their prejudices with nothing behind them. After the general election, the House of Commons will be devoid of many Conservative Members as well.
A story in today's press is testimony to our times. It shows how local government services are fraying at the edges. Hammersmith bridge, which is 110 years old and is located in a region of London that I know well, is being closed indefinitely because it is unsafe.
Mr. Toby Jessel (Twickenham):
It is a Labour council.
Mr. Prentice:
The hon. Gentleman says that the bridge is being closed by a Labour council. A total of £130 million is needed to repair all the London bridges, including Westminster bridge. The riparian boroughs made a submission for £44 million, but the Government allocated only £22 million and that is why Hammersmith bridge is closed. West London could seize up because of that. For Conservative Members to try to make cheap party political points beggars belief. The revenue support grant settlement contains no increase at all for highway maintenance.
We never hear about the other services block. One may ask: what on earth is the other services block? It includes things such as food safety. Only a few days ago, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said in the House that the Government were going to appoint a food
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I have examined the food safety inspection figures for all districts in England. In 1992, 22,414 improvement notices were served; by 1995, 2,314, a tenth of that number, had been served. In my authority of Pendle, in 1992, there were 1,241 visits to cafes and food establishments by environmental health officers, yet, by 1995, there were 728 visits. It is one of the services that does not receive the Ritz treatment, but it is important and should be important to the Secretary of State for the Environment, who famously ordered his daughter to sink her teeth into a hamburger, saying that there was no problem with food safety in Britain, when people were first nervous about BSE. We now have E. coli and listeria. In 1990, there were 90 deaths from food poisoning in Britain; in 1995, there were 202 such deaths.
After the deaths in Wishaw and elsewhere, I shudder to think what the 1996 figures may be. In December, there was an E. coli outbreak in Pendle, yet Conservative Members seem to think that this is amusing and that they can make cuts in food safety, while making glamorous speeches in the Chamber that do not accord with the reality of what is happening outside. Under 40 per cent. of all the food establishments in Blackpool that were subject to food enforcement law were inspected in one year; they should all have been. The figures come from an Audit Commission report, so those matters are not trivial, but important.
In the few minutes left to me, I shall say a word about my own local authority and about Lancashire as a whole. For the fourth year running, Pendle council, which is responsible for the food safety enforcement that I have been discussing, has a standstill budget. It has been allowed to increase its budget by a miserly £2,000 a year and it just cannot cope.
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