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5.5 pm

Mr. Michael J. Martin (Glasgow, Springburn): The director of finance of Glasgow district council told the Minister on Friday that it was all very well for the Minister to say that Glasgow had more money, but in respect of police and fire services and the nursery voucher scheme, more burdens have been put on the city of Glasgow. In real terms the capping limit is down by £2,683,000, which means that Glasgow is getting less than it got before. The Minister should take that on board.

I heard the Minister comment on Friday about trips that councillors made abroad, and the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) also referred to the matter, but not for any vexatious reason. The Minister is the Minister for Local Government, and at any time he can call Glasgow or any other local authority to account. He started making public utterances only when the matter was raised in the press.

I am not here to question the wisdom of any of those trips, but I want to put it on record that every councillor in Glasgow, especially those who met the Minister on Friday, has behaved honestly and worked according to the legislation. No one should imply otherwise.

Mr. Kynoch: That is not what I was suggesting. I suggested that it was a strange prioritisation of

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expenditure for councillors to go on those trips at a time when they were trying to make massive cuts, as they call them, and reduce jobs. Prioritisation is the responsibility of government, whether national or local.

Mr. Martin: I was worried that in his public utterances the Minister had implied that the councillors had acted dishonestly. If he thought so, he as the Minister responsible should be able to call anyone in local government to account.

For the first time in my parliamentary life, and for the first time, I think, in the lifetime of Parliament, following the activities of certain hon. Members, we have been required to employ the services of Sir Gordon Downey, because hon. Members have not conducted themselves as the House would expect. If anyone wants to hurl stones, he should look at our own problems. I speak as a Member of Parliament who is not one for travelling abroad. I am deeply ashamed of the fact that we had to bring an outsider into the House to regulate our affairs. Perhaps we should examine our own priorities.

The £9 million deficit of which the Minister spoke was left by Strathclyde regional council, an organisation that he disbanded--against the advice of the vast majority of hon. Members who lived in the region or represented seats there. Glasgow cannot go to Strathclyde council and say, "We want our £9 million", because the Minister has disbanded it. The Glaswegians would have had £9 million in the current year had it not been for the Minister's decision.

The Minister went way over the top when he said that the councillors were only scaremongering. Ninety-day notices have been sent to every employee in the city of Glasgow. Is that scaremongering? Because the councillors must act in accordance with legislation laid down by the House, people are in danger of losing their jobs. That is far from scaremongering. If it is scaremongering, can I tell the home helps in Dennistoun, Possil Park and Springburn that they will not lose their jobs? Two thousand decent men and women may have to go down the road unless we can persuade the Government that more funds should be put into our city.

I hope that the Minister will stop attacking local government, which is in the front line of our caring services. Without home helps, many old people would go from one day to the next with no human contact--without hearing words of comfort from another human being. Our old folks' homes in Glasgow are second to none. They were not built last week or the week before; they were built up through the dedication of men and women in local government. Those people gave their all to local authorities: they worked during the day, and went to council and tenants' association meetings at night. They got rid of places such as Forest Hall, which used to be a workhouse.

When I was a young councillor in Springburn, that old workhouse--set up under the old poor law--was still there. That it is no longer there is to the credit of Pat Trainer, a union official and councillor who was one of my colleagues. Some of my hon. Friends know him. His life's dream was to see Forest Hall destroyed, and replaced by three old folks' homes. How can the staff in those homes, which are second to none, continue their dedicated work if they risk losing their jobs? The great law-and-order party tells us that it will give more money

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to the police. What is the point of lifting young delinquents off the streets if we are closing youth and community centres? That is what we are doing now, because of the Government's decisions. We are giving more power to the police. When we were youngsters, the police always told us that the best thing that we could do was keep off the streets and not get into trouble. How can policemen say that in this day and age?

We have lunch clubs enabling elderly people to get out for half a day, giving their carers some respite and time to draw breath. Those clubs are now going to close.

The Minister knows the city of Glasgow. Indeed, he was there last Friday. He will be aware that there are no green fields in the city; it is surrounded by other local authorities. Some of those authorities are, quite unfairly, feeding off Glasgow's services, and are not prepared to put anything into our city. The Minister will say, "But I meet members of COSLA, and they reach a collective decision. They all feel that the formula is fair." Every time I meet councillors from outside Glasgow, they say that Glasgow is a special case because thousands of people go into the city to work and then leave at night--including a good many of the constituents of the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart). I hope that he will fight the cuts, because some of the 2,000 people who are going to lose their jobs come from his constituency.

Every councillor whom I have met has said that Glasgow is a special case, but none of them is prepared to say the same when they get together in organisations such as COSLA. Anyone who knows Glasgow and its problems must accept that it needs extra finance. The Minister is doing a disservice to men and women who have dedicated their lives to local government, and I hope that he will reconsider.

5.15 pm

Mr. Allan Stewart (Eastwood): The hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) spoke mainly about the city of Glasgow. As the House knows, he speaks from a base of enormous personal experience and knowledge of local government in that city. I shall return to one or two of his points, but first let me tell him that, if the Scottish Labour movement regards Glasgow as a special case, the solution is in its own hands. It runs COSLA; it has the dominant majority on the distribution committee. No formula to change the figures has emerged from that dominant body, however.

The first Opposition speaker today was the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who has slipped out of the Chamber. I make no complaint about that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) said, the hon. Gentleman seemed a bit ratty today: he was not at all his normal sunny self. I do not know whether that was due to the company that he kept this morning or to the opinion polls--

Mr. Gallie: He is always like that.

Mr. Stewart: No, he is not. My hon. Friend is unnecessarily critical of the hon. Gentleman.

I think that the hon. Gentleman was ratty because he was rattled by my hon. Friend the Minister. My hon. Friend asked him about the silence of the Opposition Front Bench, and he remained silent on that key point throughout his speech. Surely it is not unreasonable for

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those in local government in Scotland, and Conservative Members of Parliament, to say to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, "We are within a few weeks of a general election. You hope to become Secretary of State. Will you tell us--not every detail but in broad terms--what you would actually do?" The answer is fairly clear--for there was an answer: there is going to be an independent review of relationships between central Government and local government in Scotland. "Vote new Labour. Paradise regained. Another quango." That is a message to have them rolling with enthusiasm to the polling stations on election day: a new vision for Scottish local government.

It was unworthy of the hon. Member for Hamilton to suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that there was something wrong in his opening the debate, rather than the Secretary of State. I recall opening such debates myself, when Opposition Members consistently made speeches, year after year, in which they said that the end of the world was nigh. The same message--"This local government settlement is the worst thing that has happened to the people of Scotland since Flodden"--came from the Opposition Benches year after year after year. Every year until now, Opposition Members have said, "It will be all right. Wait for a Labour Government." The message is different this year, however. It is, "If you get a Labour Government, we will not change the figures at all." In fact, as the hon. Member for Hamilton did not admit, the figures in the second and subsequent years would be worse, because the Opposition plan a Scottish parliament with no net increase in public expenditure. Where would the money come from? It would have to come from local government.

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