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Mr. Deputy Speaker: I call Mr. Peter Atkinson.
Mr. Hardy: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understood that hon. Members who had only just arrived would have to wait a reasonable time before being called. Some of us have been here all day.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that observation. Had he been a little more observant, he would have checked at what time the hon. Gentleman came in. I can assure him that the Chair did so. As hon. Members will note, I have called two Labour Members in succession.
9.18 pm
Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham): For the benefit of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), I was here at the start of the debate. I had a reception for some of my constituents, so I have been absent and I apologise to the House. I am glad briefly to take part in the debate, particularly as the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) is back in his seat as I wanted to congratulate him on his efficiency and economy--two issues that concern us both.
I refer to the efficiency and economy in the hon. Gentleman's speech. I read his speech from 1995 and the one he made last year and they are exactly the same. He has taken it back off the shelf, dusted it down, tweaked it a little and gone on about exactly the same lines as last year. There is nothing new from the Opposition tonight. He mentioned the same old names, such as Runnymede, about which he was very keen to talk, as well as Knowsley and Easington. He made the same mistake in constructing the league table as he did the previous time. He picked one line--the social needs line--out of the many that make up the standard spending assessment. Since he has made the same point for the third year running, we should try to impress on him that awarding money to local government is not done simply on the basis of social need. It is about the delivery of services to all members of the community.
The implication of what the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras says is that people in Runnymede, who are apparently all very affluent, should have less money, poorer quality teachers and education and a less safe fire service than, for instance, Easington. That is nonsensical. Fixing the SSA is entirely about providing service and is a mixture of all sorts of ingredients.
When I had to leave the Chamber earlier, Opposition Members were whining on about Westminster. When I came back, they were whining on about it again. The entire debate appears to have been based on the Opposition saying that Westminster gets too much money and other local authorities do not. The system is vastly more complicated than that. I am rather alarmed that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras does not understand local government finance.
I turn to Labour-controlled Northumberland county council in my constituency, which, like the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, is rather like a record. Every year at this time it launches an amazing public relations
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Every year for the past three years, Northumberland county council has had more money in real terms. If one read the local papers that swallow some of the council's press releases, one would think that it is once again facing doom and gloom. It is again threatening to cut school budgets. Last year, it said that it might have to abolish every free school meal due to budget cuts. This year, it is doing the same.
Mr. Jack Thompson:
The hon. Gentleman represents a constituency in Northumberland, as do I. I am sure that he is fully aware that Conservative councillors support the county council's view. His own colleagues in Northumberland do not support his arguments.
Mr. Atkinson:
I think that Conservative councillors would support the argument that the claim that there is to be a £10 million cut is bogus. They can add up the figures. I am glad to say that some of the local press are beginning to add up the figures, too, and are realising that the council is using the problems of their budget--I accept that there are problems and shall turn to them later--to play a political game, which damages the county council's credibility and makes it harder for us to address the real problems in Northumberland.
I am happy to make it clear that there are problems with delivering services to a very sparse rural county. Northumberland has the smallest population of any shire county and enormous expanses of some of the least inhabited areas of countryside in the north-east--indeed, in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, most of its population is tucked away into one small corner of the county, which of course makes it difficult to get the proper sparsity payments out of the system which it needs. I think that most of the Conservative county councillors would accept that.
Instead of running an annual PR stunt to try to blame the Government for purely political reasons, the county council would do very much better to heed the words of the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) that there will be no money coming from Labour, and heed the fact that there will be no more from the Government, and get down to addressing the problems of running services in a very sparse county.
The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) may not know that Northumberland has the highest SSA per head of population of any county, receives the biggest grant per head of population of any shire county and has the highest capping level per head of population of any shire county. When representatives from Northumberland come to see Ministers--I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for receiving an all-party delegation--they should talk seriously about readjusting the budget to deal with elements such as sparsity and the recouping of education fees, another local problem. They should not run stupid campaigns every year in an attempt to persuade council tax payers that this is all the Government's fault.
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Northumberland would have vastly more credibility if it did not waste money. The council is about to embark on an utterly unnecessary public inquiry into the Army's plans for the Otterburn training range. Local people want the project, as it will provide them with jobs and will secure the future of the training area. There is unanimous local agreement that the development is a good idea, yet the local authority is running a full-scale public inquiry which will cost Northumberland county council--according to one estimate--almost £1 million. They would do better to use that money for the purposes that the people of Northumberland want.
Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth):
I shall be brief, as part of the argument that I would have advanced has been presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham). My local authority is in a similar position to that of my hon. Friend, as we too need to know about the position on the supertram, which the Government support.
I am not surprised by the present position. We have had 18 years of Conservative rule, economic incompetence, lost opportunities and other failures. The sheer misjudgment and incompetence that the Conservatives have shown in local government has demonstrated that they are not fit to be in charge. One does not need to look merely at the period of this Administration; during the past 25 years, we have seen two of the most inflationary exercises in Britain's history--the reorganisation of local government in 1974, and the poll tax, which costs up to £20,000 million in administration and related costs.
What grieves me is the slick response that I received from the Secretary of State when I asked him about capital receipts. I asked if we could allow capital receipts to be released to cover the necessary local authority contributions to the single regeneration budget, city challenge and cases of maintenance which would offer serious cost if they were not carried out in the year ahead.
Mr. Curry:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hardy:
No. The Minister will have a longer time to speak than I have.
I was making a prudent point. Unemployment costs about £10,000 per person, and it would be sensible if local authorities were allowed to release their capital receipts to allow people to get back to work. I would be glad if the Minister would reassure me on that matter.
I have not "bleated" about the subject of Westminster in this debate, as I first raised what I called "the arithmetic of corruption" about Westminster 10 years ago. That local authority boasts that it does not levy a rate or that it has levied the lowest rate in the land year after year. But people can see the equation that I offered the House when I intervened on the hon. Member for Harrow, West
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When I got home last week, I read in my parish magazine a piece by the Bishop of Sheffield, who is shortly to retire. The Conservatives in South Yorkshire screamed blue murder. The bishop referred to the prophet Joel, when he said, "Old men dream dreams". He also offered one other quotation, which seems to have offended the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam(Sir I. Patnick) and all the other Tories in our county. It was simply this:
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
If we had gone along that road a little further in the past decade, Britain and local government would be a great deal better off.
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