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Mrs. Fyfe: Has the hon. Gentleman ever made an estimate of the benefit that the residents of Eastwood gain from Glasgow services while contributing not a penny to them?
Mr. Stewart: The residents of Bearsden and Strathkelvin will be very interested to hear that attack from the Labour Benches, which was unanimously supported by Scottish Labour Members who are present. The Labour party believes that the residents of Bearsden and Strathkelvin are all parasites. Let that message go throughout Bearsden and Strathkelvin. Of course they are not parasites, and nor are the residents of Eastwood.
If the good people who run the city of Glasgow believe that people are getting services for free, I would not stop them charging for their libraries, galleries or whatever. I would be in favour of charging. Let them stop complaining, because they have £21 million of mismatch money. That is other people's money. It rightfully belongs to the people of Strathkelvin, Bearsden, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire and elsewhere.
Mr. Gallie:
Does not at least 65 per cent. of local government funding come from general taxation? Therefore, do not the residents of Eastwood probably contribute more than their fair share?
Mr. Stewart:
My hon. Friend is being modest in that figure. The real figure is some 85 per cent. It would not
Mrs. Fyfe:
Give us the figures.
Mr. Stewart:
I will give the hon. Lady an important figure if she will just pin her ears back. Aggregate external finance per capita for the city of Glasgow is 80 per cent. above the English average--that is money from the general taxpayer--so let us have none of this nonsense about Glasgow not getting a fair deal from the Government.
The hon. Member for Hamilton implied fairly clearly that Labour would not change the overall settlement, except for assisted places and nursery vouchers. As I have said before, the House is indebted to the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) for pointing out in detail what Labour's assisted places pledge means in terms of the figures. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries rightly and properly talked about the argument. There would be one extra teacher per constituency--a wonderful pledge. Labour would also abolish nursery vouchers. I know something about nursery vouchers, because East Renfrewshire was one of the pilot authorities for the scheme in Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), the Minister with responsibility for education in Scotland, should go into the "Guinness Book of Records", because he introduced the nursery voucher scheme--a major Government initiative--and nobody is complaining about it. Not a single resident of Eastwood is complaining about the scheme. It has been an enormous success in a Labour-held authority, but it would be swept away by the ideology of the Labour party.
I hope that my hon. Friend on the Front Bench will confirm my understanding of the figures for East Renfrewshire council. I understand that the permitted increase in expenditure is some 7.63 per cent. and that the grant-aided expenditure is up 6.79 per cent., before allowing for the mismatch adjustment. Those figures seem perfectly reasonable, if not generous.
I shall say a word on the trips-for-votes controversy, as hon. Members from Glasgow seem a bit edgy about it. Nobody is suggesting--or has suggested--that Glasgow councillors have done anything financially improper. On the point about roses, it is reasonable, however, to ask, why councillors did not just get into one of their 27 or 28 limousines and go across the boundary into Eastwood, where, of course, we have blue roses. Looking down the list, I can see that they went all over Europe to look at roses--Rome, Dublin, Belfast, Paris, Geneva. I do not complain about that, but they cannot say, "We have the worst financial crisis in history," and, "We are wholly underfunded by the Government," and at the same time go around the continent looking at roses. That results in a certain lack of credibility about their initial posture. That is a valid criticism. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, it is a question of priorities.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire):
This is a terrible debate. The temptation to blame others for what is going on is strong. Indeed, we are all guilty of it. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) rightly said, people's jobs are at risk, schools and residential homes are being closed and pools are being shut. I do not know who is to blame, but anybody involved in what is going on would be disappointed if they listened to the debate.
All hon. Members know that the Government set total spending limits and grants. They also set overall and local expenditure. If the Red Book three-year public expenditure survey allocations are adhered to--whether by a Labour or Conservative Government--local government will have to change fundamentally.
If Governments insist that local government save money year on year--we are in the fourth year of funding salary increases from efficiency savings--it will have to consider displenishing in its entirety all community care provision in residential care homes. It will have to consider moving out of local education authority service provision and leave schools to manage themselves. Local authorities will have to consider full-scale privatisations to such an extent that they will become nothing more than contract-fixing bodies.
It is possible that that could happen and the world would not end, but if my constituents were given a choice between what I have described and finding the appropriate finance I am pretty confident--I can speak only for my area, as I do not know about Glasgow--that they would be willing to spend more to get properly funded services. I stood in the sleeting rain on Saturday morning in Jedburgh square, where 1,500 people were shivering in the rain. They were incensed that, on Thursday, the local authority will probably shut their swimming pool. Young people will not have a pool in which to swim, and worse still, doctors will not be able to recommend therapeutic services for elderly people who now receive new treatments in fitness centres instead of taking pills. Youngsters who used to go to the pool on a Friday night will be thrown out on the streets. People are incensed that, for want of £100,000, that facility is to close.
Jedburgh has a sizeable community: it is one of the largest towns in my constituency. The people of Jedburgh cannot just get on a bus and travel to another pool. Even if there were a bus, they would have to travel miles to get to a pool and back, and would take two days to do so.
Local government finance is supposed to enable local authorities to provide a generality of services that are standardised throughout the country. Small authorities may have special circumstances and special problems, because they start with low baseline budgets and cannot find the efficiency savings that the Government require them to make. It may not be the end of the world, but this
year, for the first time, Scottish Borders council will close pools, rural schools--not for educational but for financial reasons--and residential homes. That will not only hurt those who will lose their jobs or access to the services, but cost more in council tax.
People in my part of the world are bamboozled. They do not know how this has come about and whom to blame. The system is opaque, defying attempts to work out whether the local council is doing the right thing. All people know is that they are suffering: their kids are suffering, and their old folk are suffering. On Thursday, decisions will be handed down by the local authority which will cut the fabric of society to the bone, and people will resent that.
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