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6.29 pm
Mr. John McAllion (Dundee, East): I can tell the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) that to describe me as new or blue is a distortion of the facts, and I think most hon. Members would accept that. I was surprised that the Minister began the debate by referring to the opinion poll in The Herald today. That poll showed Labour leading its nearest rivals in Scotland by 20 per cent. Even worse for the Tories, our nearest rivals are the SNP--not the Tories, who are even further behind in Scotland than in England.
The Minister also ran the danger of drawing hon. Members' attention to the other poll in The Herald in which readers were invited to vote for a fantasy Cabinet in a Scottish Parliament. The Secretary of State for Scotland is one of the most hated figures in Scotland, but he has a positive rating of eight. The Minister has a negative rating of minus five, so it was a mistake for him to begin his speech by referring to those polls.
The Minister also said that his claim--that every council in Scotland will be able to increase expenditure this year--bore repeating. Indeed, he claimed that
councils in Scotland would get an additional £140 million--including some £60 million directly from the Government--or an increase of 2.2 per cent. That claim bears repeating only to show that the Minister is a barefaced manipulator of the facts. It makes no allowance for the fact that the capping limits, imposed by the Government, allow for an increase of £75 million, not £140 million. That is an increase of 1.2 per cent., or half the rate of inflation.
The claim also makes no allowance for the pay awards that are agreed nationally between councils and trade unions and that councils are expected to implement. The settlement does not contain a single penny for those pay awards. It also does not make allowances for the new burdens that have been placed on local authorities, to which many hon. Members have already referred. The Scottish Office claimed that the cost of those burdens would be £90 million, but the settlement does not contain a penny to cover that cost.
Far from taking account of the costs of local government reorganisation and its impact on councils such as Dundee, the Government assume savings for local government from the reorganisation, but those savings do not exist. The Minister's claim was bogus and shows once again that the people of Scotland, and everyone else, cannot trust the Tories' claims.
The Minister also spoke of his trips abroad and tried to justify his trip to Korea by saying that he had brought back more than 4,000 jobs through the Chunghwa investment in Lanarkshire. What arrogance for that insignificant figure on the Front Bench to assume that a multinational company would make a major inward investment decision because he happened to visit there. The arrogance of the man is breathtaking. Nobody in Scotland believes for a minute that he is responsible for inward investment in Lanarkshire or anywhere else.
The Minister is personally responsible for jobs in Scotland through the current local government financial settlement and the one that we are debating tonight. Those financial settlements will mean the loss of 17,000 jobs across Scotland in local government. The Minister may dismiss those jobs as not real if he thinks that we do not need people who look after the elderly, home helps, teachers or people who work in family and child centres. Even if we accept his boast about the 4,000-plus jobs he has provided, he is still responsible for a net loss of 13,000 jobs. I wonder if he will apologise to the people of Scotland for his disgraceful record.
Mrs. Irene Adams (Paisley, North):
The Minister is not listening.
Mr. McAllion:
He is not listening because he prefers debates in which only he and his hon. Friends speak. The debate has lasted three hours, and an hour and a half has been taken up by Tories who have kept Labour Members out because they do not want to face reality. They want to cower and hide in the Chamber because they are frightened to face the people in a general election. They are hanging on by their fingernails until the last possible moment, hoping that we will blow it and their bacon will be saved. It will not happen and everybody in Scotland is waiting for the moment when they can pay back all the Tory Ministers and Tory Back Benchers for the misery of the past 18 years.
Another example of the Minister's distortion of the truth was when he said that it was fascinating that COSLA intended an increase in spending of £500 million. The actual figure calculated by COSLA was £414 million. COSLA also admitted that, even if it used tricks such as phasing and delaying implementation--and other devices that it has learnt over the years to try to cushion Tory cuts--the increase is only £180 million, or less than half the figure that the Minister proclaimed. The Minister cannot be trusted. I cannot say what he is, because of the arcane rules of the House, but everybody in Scotland knows what he is. If he repeats any of his statements outside, he will be accused of being a barefaced--I cannot say what he is.
The Minister referred to his meeting with Glasgow city council and he said, in another example of the way in which he twists and manipulates everything, that the council was effectively asking for other councils to get less so it could get more. The key word is "effectively". I know that Glasgow city council asked for no such thing, but the Minister pretends that it did.
I accompanied a delegation from Dundee city council when it met the Minister. The delegation included councillors and people from local authority trade unions, the churches and voluntary organisations. It also included people from Dundee and Tayside chamber of commerce--who are normally on the Government's side, but who were on Dundee's side that time. We patiently explained the cuts that had been implemented in Dundee as a result of the financial settlement. We described the closure of six primary and two secondary schools. I remember a television debate in which the Minister said that there was no reason to close any school in Scotland because of the financial settlement. Eight schools have been closed in my area and many other schools have been closed, but the Minister has never withdrawn that statement.
Dundee has also seen a 37.5 per cent. increase in school meals charges in the past two years. Rich people can afford that increase. Another 30p or 40p from their purse makes little difference, and their kids will still get decent school meals. Poor people, who are just above the income support level, cannot afford that increase, and it could mean that their kids do not get a school meal. We hear no apologies from Tories for that. Staffing levels in schools have also been reduced. We are told that education is a priority, but the financial settlement means the loss of 50 teachers in Dundee.
Dundee has also had to start charging for home helps. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) mentioned home helps in Springburn. My mother was a home help in Springburn and I know the great work that home helps do. Previously, their services were free in Dundee, but we have had to start charging, and that means that old folk cannot afford them. Cuts have been made in voluntary organisations and concessionary travel schemes--the list goes on. The council tax increases that go with the cuts are even more savage. Morally, ethically, socially and economically, the financial settlement is unacceptable, and no hon. Member who genuinely has the interests of his constituents at heart could argue for it.
We explained all that to the Minister at the meeting. Everyone agreed that he was not interested. Only twice did he show a spark of interest in what anyone said. The first time was when he thought that someone had said that
other services in the Scottish Office bloc should be cut to pay for extra funding for local government: he immediately came to life and asked what other services should be cut. The second time was when he thought that someone had said that other councils should get less so that Dundee could get more: again, he became very excited and pleased.
Those are the same old Tory tactics of divide and rule, turning council against council and service against service, while insisting that public services have to be reduced and that the poor people who depend on them must pay the price because the kind of people who vote Tory can buy privately and do not have to depend on the councils. That is the hidden agenda.
The Minister issued a challenge to us to say what other services should be cut in the Scottish Office bloc. That bloc is between £14 billion and £15 billion--an awful lot of money--but its level is decided by the Cabinet, not from on high by God; it is not irreversible, and the Cabinet can decide what formula should be applied and how much money is needed. If the Secretary of State cannot win a better deal for Scotland, he should not be the Secretary of State for Scotland: someone else should be in his place.
Mr. Malcolm Chisholm (Edinburgh, Leith):
Once again, we have seen the Government playing politics with local government in the vain hope that Labour councils, or even Opposition Front Benchers, will get the blame. I remind them gently that they have been in charge for 18 years and that this local government settlement, the worst for more than 20 years, is the final monument to 18 years of low growth, boom-bust instability and economic failure.
The terms of the debate were set by the Minister, in 46 minutes of obfuscation, fiddles, smokescreen and absurdity. There are two facts that he cannot avoid. First, the job losses and service cuts that he described, in a climax of absurdity, as imaginary, are felt by people throughout Scotland: both those who have suffered this year--6,709 job losses, according to the Pieda report--and those who will be affected by the further job losses and service cuts that will be forced on local councils this week. Secondly, the people in Scotland now understand full well that the Secretary of State controls the service levels via capping and the council tax increases via grant distribution.
There are two ways of comparing this year's Government grant with next year's: in cash terms or in real terms. The simple way is to compare in straight cash terms. Whichever way we look at it, there has been a cash cut for next year compared with this year: the Red Book put it at £50 million, because of estimated outturn; the public expenditure statement in December put it at £25 million; and, even if we strip out the police loan charges and the urban programme specific grant, it is £17 million.
There has certainly been a cash cut, but the Minister talks of a £60 million increase in Government grant. The only way to arrive at that figure is by the imaginary savings from local government reorganisation that nobody
who has studied the subject believes in. The reality is that, as the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy report pointed out, local government reorganisation has cost council tax payers in Scotland £281 million, and they are still paying a reorganisation surcharge in their bills for this year and next year.
The Minister asserted that the amount that can be spent on services will increase next year by 2.2 per cent. Again, the figures can be compared in cash terms or in real terms. In cash terms, the increase is 0.8 per cent., but in real terms we must take account of the new burdens that will be faced by local government next year, and even the Government admit that those burdens will amount to £90 million.
The Government like to talk about disappearing old burdens, such as the £26 million in nursery vouchers, but it is totally illogical to talk about that without balancing against it the £90 million of new burdens that even the Government admit to; the large cut in cash terms becomes a massive cut when we take new burdens into account.
I am glad that the Minister has stopped all the nonsense about uncollected poll tax and council tax that he was going on about a few weeks ago to try to muddy the waters, although he clearly did not understand the Government's rules about such uncollected tax. The reality is that single-tier local government in Scotland is called the Secretary of State for Scotland: he determines the service and grant levels.
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