House of Commons Hansard Debates for 4 Feb 1997 (pt 26)

Sir Wyn Roberts: I really cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to get away with that. The standard spending assessment for Blaenau Gwent is £65.268 million and its external support is £62.9 million. He really cannot expect more generous treatment than that.

Mr. Smith: It is convenient that the right hon. Gentleman should intervene at this point, as I am about to deal with the settlements for last year and for this year and how they affect my constituency. My conclusion--and that of the people who make up that community--is, to say the least, somewhat different from the right hon. Gentleman's. For instance, in our first budget as a county borough we had to make cuts of £5 million--and that was in addition to the £2 million that we had to take from our reserves. We also had to increase our council tax by some 25 per cent.

Cuts were made across the board by reducing social services after-care, cutting much-needed building maintenance and closing a cinema. Charges were also increased substantially. This year we have no reserves on which to call. It is estimated that the council tax will rise by 16 per cent. and that cuts of £6.3 million will have to be made. Within the past year, there have been cuts of £11.3 million in the two budgets to which I referred, and we have taken £2 million from our reserves. Clearly, this has hit some of the most vulnerable people.

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As the Secretary of State was reminded by the placards that greeted him when he visited my constituency yesterday, those cuts represent about 20 per cent. of the money to be wasted by the Government on the royal yacht. The Government clearly regard the royal yacht as a greater priority than education or social services. In education, social services, economic development, highways, finance and leisure, the effect will be the same: cuts and more cuts. In the forthcoming year, cuts will total approximately 10 per cent. I may be old-fashioned, but I was brought up to believe that it was the task of local authorities to provide local services, whereas the Government believe that the role of local authorities is to dismantle those services.

The Secretary of State visited my constituency yesterday to meet the Heads of the Valleys Standing Conference. Perhaps he would like to return to my constituency and meet some of the people whose lives will certainly be blighted by the cuts. The council has not yet taken any decisions, so the Secretary of State could still examine the options that it faces. They include what is to happen to the elderly and most vulnerable if the home care service is reduced, or to those youngsters in education whose future will be even bleaker if teachers are made redundant and school budgets cut or cash-limited because of increased expenditure on items such as salaries.

The Government want to create the impression that the cuts are the fault of inefficient Labour-controlled local authorities, but people in communities such as mine are far too sensible to believe such nonsense. They know that the real reason for the cuts is that the Tories do not believe in public services--and even if they did, their expenditure is restricted by the convergence criteria of the single currency. Neither the Tories nor the single currency have any relevance to our communities: that feeling is reflected in the opinion polls, and it will soon be reflected in the polling booths.

8.38 pm

Mr. Roy Hughes (Newport, East): We are debating the Welsh revenue support grant reports, but it is necessary to consider them in the context of Welsh local government and its structure following the recent reorganisation.

The reorganisation of local government is a costly business, but there have been two major reorganisations in Wales in just over 20 years. They were both carried out by Conservative Governments. I suggest that we have still not got the right structure.

I shall illustrate the absurdity of the present structure with a blatant example. Before the recent reorganisation in Gwent, we had one director of education; now we have five. That is just one example, and I could cite many more. Such arrangements are wasteful, extravagant and unjustifiable. Compare that with the parsimonious

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revenue support grant settlement that the Government are trying to foist on Welsh local authorities. It all goes to show that the Conservative party has never understood Wales. That is why it has always fared so disastrously at the polls at parliamentary and local government level.

Mr. Sweeney: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hughes: No, I am not giving way.

Having willed the end, the Government have a moral duty to provide the means, so that adequate and efficient local government services can be provided for the Welsh people. That is not happening.

Mr. Lawrence Nippers, Newport's director of finance, is an experienced and much respected local government officer. He wrote to me on 31 January, pointing out that the RSG settlement for next year has been a massive disappointment to the new unitary councils in Wales. He says:

"Our spending on both revenue and capital is being squeezed . . .

Newport, in common with almost all other councils in Wales, is being permitted to spend an additional 1.8 per cent. next year".

That increase, he says,

"is insufficient to meet the cost of pay and price inflation. . . . the pay review bodies are considering awards at over 3 per cent. for some groups of public service employees."