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Private Members' Bills
35. Mr. Mackinlay: If she will take steps to increase the time available for private Members' Bills. [17127]
Mrs. Ann Taylor: I have no plans to do so.
Mr. Mackinlay: Does my right hon. Friend realise that that is a very disappointing reply, bearing in mind the fact that we were elected as new Labour--[Interruption.] Some of us are Labour mainstream. Does she agree that, as well as checking the Executive, the role of Back Benchers is to be proactive in the House? It would therefore be greatly welcomed if she were to find parliamentary time so that the rank and file in this place could contribute to the legislative process.
Mrs. Taylor: I can confirm that my hon. Friend was absolutely on message about increasing the role of Parliament. I realise that Back Benchers have opportunities to be proactive, and that he is one of those who takes many of those opportunities and uses them to good effect. The Standing Orders of the House provide 13 Fridays in each Session for private Members' Bills. I know that some hon. Members think that that is not enough, but it is a rule of the House.
Mr. Forth: Does the right hon. Lady accept that many, if not most, members of the public do not wish to regard this place as a legislation factory? The thought of random, if not bizarre, legislation by private Members would scare the wits out of the public.
Mrs. Taylor: The public, like the House, have made their views on certain private Members' Bills very clear.
Mr. Rooney: Does my right hon. Friend agree that extra time would not be needed if certain hon. Members recognised the will of the House as expressed last Friday and did not try to obstruct it?
Mrs. Taylor: One of the most disappointing things about last Friday was the intervention by the hon. Member
for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who made it clear that, no matter how much time was provided for certain Bills, some Conservative Members would try to block them. Hon. Members have a responsibility to consider not just the strong views expressed and the strong majority last week, but public opinion.Consideration of Bills
36. Mr. Chidgey: What assessment she has made of the advantages of spreading consideration of Bills more evenly throughout the parliamentary Session. [17128]
Mrs. Ann Taylor: The annual nature of the legislative programme inevitably means that it cannot be spread evenly throughout the Session. The possibility of carry-over, which was approved by the House on 13 November, creates an opportunity to improve the House's consideration of Bills. I hope that we shall be able to test that out on appropriate occasions.
Mr. Chidgey: I thank the right hon. Lady for that reply. I welcome the advance publication of certain Bills, which is helpful. To return to a previous point, however, is the right hon. Lady aware that, following the Jopling recommendations, there is less and less time for Back Benchers to debate issues in the House? A case in point was the wild mammals Bill last Friday--[Hon. Members: "Wild Members?"] Hon. Members must have misheard; I am referring to the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs) Bill, which had overwhelming support in the House and elsewhere. It is not tenable for a Government who have such a large mandate to rely on the Opposition not to oppose in order to get their Bills through. I ask the right hon. Lady to allow Government time so that the Bill can progress.
Mrs. Taylor: I do not think that there is anything I can add on that Bill. I believe that, post-Jopling, there have been a number of useful extra opportunities for hon. Members to raise issues. The Wednesday morning debates, for example, have proved extremely important for Back Benchers; that comment is slightly wide of the hon. Gentleman's original point. I believe that it is a question of swings and roundabouts, and that the interests of Back Benchers have been protected.
Mr. Pike: Was it not a fact that, in the debate on the report by the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, it became clear that the carry-over of certain legislation would lead to the better distribution of legislation? Was it not particularly notable that a well-respected former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), wished to go even further than the report suggested?
Mrs. Taylor: I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me of that point. It is true that the very distinguished former Leader of the House, who happens to be in his place this afternoon, strongly supported the principle of carry-over. I am pleased that the second report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Procedure also accepts that there is a case for the carry-over of some Government Bills. This is the first Session of this Parliament; I am not sure whether there will be any Bills that are candidates during this Session. I hope that we can move towards looking at
legislation, especially if we can manage to publish draft Bills, in a more ordered way and I believe that carry-over will have a part to play in that.Oral Questions
37. Mr. Canavan: What assessment she has made of the allocation of time to different Ministers to answer oral questions. [17129]
Mrs. Ann Taylor: We will review the rota from time to time. There have not been many criticisms of the existing rota, but I am always willing to listen to representations.
Mr. Canavan: Did my right hon. Friend notice that, in Scottish Question Time earlier this afternoon, we reached only Question 8? Until such time as the Scottish Parliament is established, can we have the restoration of a full hour of Scottish questions?
Mrs. Taylor: I sat through some of Scottish Question Time and I noticed that at 3 o'clock we were still on Question 3. I did not hear all the exchanges, so I do not know the reason for that. I know from conversations on the Bench that Scottish Ministers were disappointed by that situation.
Mr. Garnier: How many minutes has the Minister without Portfolio, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), spent answering questions or making statements or speeches at the Dispatch Box since his appointment to the Government?
Mrs. Taylor: I do not monitor those figures.
Modernisation Proposals
38. Mr. Rhodri Morgan: What are the main recommendations of the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons which (a) have been implemented, (b) were rejected and (c) are pending further decisions. [17130]
Mrs. Ann Taylor: A new style of Order Paper has been implemented. The recommendations of the Modernisation Committee on the legislative process were approved by the House on 13 November. I am pleased that none of the recommendations has been rejected.
Mr. Morgan: I thank my right hon. Friend for her reply. Has she received any representations about better protection of time for private Members' Bills? For example, has she received any representations that any private Member's Bill that gets a majority greater than one third of the total membership of the House should be able to proceed without let or hindrance from delaying tactics? I say that in the hope of encouraging private Members to be more proactive, rather than "Prozactive".
Mrs. Taylor: I answered that point earlier, to a certain extent, but my hon. Friend is entitled to make it again. If Conservative Members do not frustrate the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs) Bill which was given a Second Reading last Friday, there is no reason why it should not progress further.
Local Government Finance (England)
3.30 pm
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. John Prescott): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the local authority revenue finance settlement for England for 1998-99. The Secretary of State comes before the House at about this time each year to make a statement about local authority finance for the following financial year.
There will follow a period of consultation with local authorities and others, after which I shall bring a report to the House, which, when approved, will finalise the arrangements. Today's statement is important to local authorities, because it gives them firm information on which to make progress in setting their budgets. The statement concerns England only. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will make an announcement today and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will make an announcement shortly.
As this is the first such statement of the new Parliament, I hope that it will be helpful if I put it into a wider context. We were elected on a manifesto that pledged us to a renewal of local government. We aim to achieve the reinvigoration of local democracy, a commitment to best value, a prospect of greater fairness and increased local discretion allied to greater local accountability.
We have made good progress so far, although we still have some way to go. We have set up a new central-local government partnership to help local and central Government work in harmony. We have signed the European charter of local self-government, which the previous Administration refused to sign. We have brought forward legislation to provide for the release of £800 million in additional capital expenditure in England under our capital receipts initiative. That money will help the unemployed, it will be used to build and refurbish homes for those in need and it will support our wider new deal objectives. We have put local authority public-private partnerships on a clearer footing. We are supporting Lord Hunt's Bill on local authority innovation, which will allow for greater experiments in local democracy.
We are discussing ways of renewing local democracy with the Local Government Association. We are decentralising decision making to the local level. We have introduced a Bill to give London a voice once again. Tomorrow we shall publish our White Paper on regional development agencies, setting out how we shall work with local government and others to revive the regions of England. Shortly, we shall announce the pilot local authorities for our best value programme. Finally, in co-operation with the Local Government Association, we have started a review of the system of local government finance--and not before time.
Each of those items is important in its own right. Taken together, they demonstrate that we mean what we say about a new relationship and partnership with local government. We have done all that in just seven months in government, but our full progress will be judged not in seven months but over a full five years of a Labour Government.
We shall issue consultation papers starting later this year. Following that consultation, we shall publish a White Paper in the late spring.
This new relationship follows many years when the previous Government did not listen to local authorities and squeezed their expenditure year after year. Despite all that, local government has survived, I am glad to say. My aim is to build a strong partnership between central and local government to the advantage of our citizens and our communities.
The first important element of the local authority settlement is my proposals for the Government's provision for spending by local authorities. In forming my proposals, I have of course considered the pressures that local authorities will face in the coming year--which are considerable--and I have listened carefully to the views of the Local Government Association. In line with those views, we have chosen in the settlement to concentrate on the policy priorities--above all, education--that we set out in our manifesto, which was endorsed by the electorate.
We were elected on a pledge to stick to the previous Government's public expenditure totals for 1998-99. Nevertheless, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget on 2 July that, by careful consideration of the priorities for public expenditure, we had been able to make available an extra £835 million for revenue expenditure in English schools in 1998-99. I can confirm that we shall provide an extra £835 million of revenue support grant for our schools. That means that none of the cost of the extra schools spending will fall on the council tax payer, as was so often the case under the previous Administration.
We are providing £662 million for local authorities for the education of four-year-olds, following the abolition of nursery vouchers, as promised in our manifesto. I also propose to provide up to £130 million for the transitional costs of local government reorganisation, such as for the unitary authorities. We have also taken into account smaller changes that will take place in local government functions. Taken together, those factors mean that the Government's view is that the appropriate level of total standard spending for local authorities in England in 1998-99 will be £48.2 billion.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will today be making a separate announcement on resources for community care. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will today be making a separate announcement on resources for the police. Both are included in the figure that I have just quoted.
The £48.2 billion provides for an increase of £1.78 billion--or 3.8 per cent.--in local authority spending year on year. That is expected to be 1 per cent. above inflation, therefore allowing an increase in real terms, to reflect our key policy priorities.
Education is the top priority for this Government and, indeed, for the nation. Raising standards in schools is not only of benefit to children. It is an investment in our country's future. Altogether, we have made provision for an extra £1.06 billion--or 5.7 per cent.--to go into English schools in 1998-99. It can and should be spent in the classroom, reversing the years of neglect. It meets the pressures identified by the Local Government Association and enables a start to be made on raising educational standards, which we all are determined to see. That is a big step.
Community care is another important area in which local authorities are facing up to the difficulties involved. Local authorities provide a vital service by looking after elderly and disabled people. We have maintained previous plans to make resources available in that area--£350 million. We expect a reduction in the net costs of financing outstanding debt. Therefore, we have been able to make a larger than average increase in provision for some services, including a further £70 million for children's social services--the first substantial increase for three years.
As the House will agree, fire services provide an essential and much appreciated service in the community. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that we have increased provision for the fire service by 4.8 per cent. within the overall increase for other services of 1.4 per cent. Other services include highways, libraries, probation services and environmental services.
I now refer to how much assistance local authorities will get from the business rates and the national taxpayer, which together totals £37.51 billion. That includes the extra £835 million, to ensure that the cost of our extra provision for schools does not fall on the council tax payer. It also includes an extra £20 million to make possible the development of £200 million-worth of local authority private finance projects.
The business rate will be increased to 47.4p in the pound, as provided by the legislation, following the 3.6 per cent. increase in the September retail prices index. That means that we can distribute £12.52 billion of business rates to local authorities in 1998-99. I am today publishing the detailed basis for that distribution to local authorities.
I propose that the revenue support grant should be £19.5 billion. In addition, some £5.49 billion of specific and special grants will be available. The total revenue support grant for England on which I am consulting may need to be altered slightly as a result of consultation. The total may be increased if it appears that less provision is needed for the transitional costs of local government reorganisation.
I come now to the means of distributing the revenue support grant. At its heart is the standard spending assessment for each authority. An authority's SSA is its share of the total provision for all authorities, taking account of its local circumstances. It is not a spending target.
We were elected on a pledge to remove the unfairness that has dogged standard spending assessments since they were first introduced. We have discussed with local government during the summer a wide range of ideas for improving fairness. I am today announcing changes that are well founded in research evidence, which respond to long-standing concerns of many local authorities of both parties, and which remove the more blatant cases of unfairness.
I first propose a new basis for assessing spending needs for the education of under-fives. The nursery voucher scheme was wasteful and a bureaucratic paperchase. The money released by its abolition will assist in our programme to make universal provision for four to five-year-olds. The new distribution will recognise the number of pupils for whom local authorities currently provide. Authorities that need to expand their nursery education, and put forward sound plans for doing so,
will be able to get an additional grant from the Department for Education and Employment. That is just one element of the national child care strategy, of which after-school clubs form another part.
Secondly, I propose to tackle a piece of nonsense in the present formula. Currently some authorities have an incredible ranking on the measure of neediness. It is hard to believe that leafy Kingston upon Thames is as needy as beleaguered Barnsley. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am sure that the Liberal Democrats also agree with that. We have carried out, with the Local Government Association, a thorough re-examination. We have at last applied explicit principles to those calculations. I believe that the new measures of neediness that we are proposing are a clear improvement on what went before.
Thirdly, I propose a new basis for the allocations for elderly residential social services. The formula has had a thorough overhaul, using research commissioned by the Department of Health from the university of Kent. For the first time, it takes proper account of the changes in social services in the past five years, following the introduction of community care.
Fourthly, I propose a new treatment of debt incurred by local authorities before the current system was established in 1990. During the 1980s, local authorities had a choice. They could use capital receipts to pay off debt or they could use them to finance new capital expenditure. However, in 1990, the previous Government decided to penalise those which had chosen new capital expenditure during the previous decade. The previous Government treated everyone as if they had chosen to repay debt, whether they had or not. I am proposing to put that right wrong. [Laughter.] Just for the record, I am proposing to put that wrong right. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I propose that we should reflect in the standard spending assessment each authority's actual debt as at 1990, if that improves its position.
Finally, I have given priority to tackling the great unfairness whereby visitors and commuters were assumed to have the same economic and social characteristics as the residents of the authorities that they were visiting. That was an anomaly exposed time after time in the House. The previous Government's formula treated people staying in the Ritz in London as if they were as deprived as the average local resident. That was unfair and wrong.
Even the research on that, commissioned by the central London authorities themselves, which were the greatest beneficiaries, did not recommend keeping the existing approach. From next year, we shall get rid of that glaring injustice. We shall take account of visitors and commuters; but only fair account.
I shall mention only one of the many other proposals for changes which were pressed on me, but which I have not taken up. It concerns the area cost adjustment. That is the means by which higher employment costs, particularly in London and the south-east, are recognised in standard spending assessments. I do not believe that the evidence is sufficiently clear enough to warrant a change this year. However, I am commissioning research to see whether there is a sound basis upon which to consider changes for this time next year.
The changes that I have outlined, with some smaller technical changes, are a big step towards making the grant system fairer, as we promised at the election.
Those changes will have a large impact on council tax levels in some authorities if the authorities do not adjust their spending accordingly. I accept that authorities and their council tax payers may need a period in which to adjust to those changes. I propose to phase in changes in the way in which standard spending assessments are calculated.
I propose that damping--or phasing in, as I prefer--of the larger corrections that we have introduced should be limited to the equivalent of half the SSA reduction. That strikes a reasonable balance between the need for time to adjust and the need to get more fairness into the system. There will again be separate phasing-in schemes for police and non-police authorities.
I also propose to repeat this year's scheme to phase in council tax increases that are directly due to reorganisation. The scheme would damp such council tax increases that are above a threshold of £52 a year at band D, for authorities that are subject to reorganisation from April 1998. It would also provide continued damping for the authorities reorganised in earlier years, where they exceed a threshold of £104 a year at band D.
Let me now refer to council taxes. We are examining in the local government finance review ways in which the fairness of the council tax might be improved. I do not propose to make any changes ahead of the results of that review.
I expect that, for the foreseeable future, the council tax will remain the prime means by which local residents contribute to the cost of local services. Each year, the Government identify a notional tax level for each valuation band. That is known as the council tax for standard spending.
We do that to calculate a distribution of grants that would enable all authorities to provide a standard level of service for a similar council tax level for a similarly valued property, whatever the differences in needs and resources. My proposals set that figure at £635 for a band D property. That reflects the previous Government's plans to increase council tax by 7 per cent.
The increase was built into the previous Administration's spending plans. That is not a prediction of the average level of council tax, nor of the band D bills for individual authorities. The actual council taxes in the individual authorities will vary considerably, depending on their spending decisions, their financing decisions, their collection performance and their efficiency. No Secretary of State could predict those factors with a high degree of accuracy for individual authorities.
The pressure on the council tax is inherent in the public expenditure totals set by the previous Government. We have sought to relieve pressures by a number of means, in particular by fully funding the £835 million extra for education. That extra funding for schools is worth £50 a year for the typical taxpayer. However, I have made it clear that local authorities must give full weight to the burden on their taxpayers when they come to set their budgets.
We remain committed to the ending of crude and universal capping, but in the light of our public expenditure plans, as both the Chancellor and I made clear to the Local Government Association conference in July,
capping will remain in place for 1998-99. We have provided extra money for schools. We cannot risk that being undermined by unplanned increases in spending.
I am today announcing my provisional capping principles for 1998-99. I am also issuing proposals for the calculation of notional amounts for authorities whose boundaries or functions will change from 1 April 1998. Those include reorganised authorities and local education authorities affected by the abolition of the nursery voucher scheme. The notional amount is the base level from which I shall measure the increase in budget in determining whether that increase is excessive.
My provisional capping principles make allowance for expenditure on community care, which is being met in 1997-98 by the special transitional grant, and for changing funding arrangements for the National Criminal Intelligence Service. The adjustments are necessary to make a fair year-on-year comparison of budgets.
Subject to the allowances that I have already mentioned and to other technical adjustments affecting individual authorities, my proposals for capping are as follows. As in previous years, authorities whose base budgets are more than 12.5 per cent. above their standard spending assessment will not be permitted any increase over their 1997-98 base budget, nor will any other authority be allowed an increase that would take it beyond 12.5 per cent. above its SSA.
I propose to allow each class of authority to increase its base budget more than in recent years. That will be helped by changes to the so-called passporting about which I shall tell the House. Let me explain the term passporting, as it had to be explained to me. There is a lot of science in the language of local authority finance, and I shall have a bit more to say about that later.
In the past, the Government recognised increased spending needs for a particular service, but prevented councils from spending that money, through the capping system. That was a ridiculous situation, and passporting is designed to deal with it. When an authority's standard spending assessment increases, that will follow through into its capping limit so that the money can really be spent.
The permitted increases that I propose for classes of authority are as follows. For inner London boroughs, the City of London and shire districts, I propose that the year-on-year increase should be limited to 1.5 per cent; for outer London boroughs, metropolitan districts, county councils, unitary authorities, and the Isles of Scilly, to 3 per cent.; for police authorities outside London, to 3.2 per cent.; and for the London and metropolitan fire and civil defence authorities, to 4.5 per cent.
For all classes of authority other than police, the year-on-year permitted increases are substantially greater than they were last year, particularly reflecting the extra provision that we have made for schools. Shire districts have been treated especially harshly in recent years, so I am permitting them an increase in 1998-99 that will be three times greater than in previous years.
That is not all. I can further announce today that, for all authorities, other than police authorities, budgeting up to 12.5 per cent. above their standard spending assessment, I intend to passport the increases for all service blocks within the spending assessments. That will extend the benefits of passporting to shire districts for the
first time. It will also be the first time that increases in highway maintenance, other services and capital financing blocks have been passported.
Those are important changes in the capping regime. They give greater discretion to local authorities; but I expect local authorities to look carefully at their permitted increases, including passporting, and to make a careful judgment about whether they need to make those increases in budget and whether their council tax payers can afford them.
Many authorities have budgeted below their capping limit in the past. I have given local authorities extra room within which to exercise their discretion, and I expect them to do exactly that. Those principles are necessarily provisional: I cannot take my firm decision on capping until authorities have set their budgets for 1998-99. When I come to take those decisions, I shall of course take into account all relevant considerations.
My Department is today writing with the details of the settlement to every local authority in England. That package includes a consultation paper setting out how we propose to distribute central Government support among authorities, including my proposals on standard spending assessments and damping. It sets out my provisional capping criteria, and includes my proposals for notional amounts. Copies have been placed in the Vote Office and the Library.
The package is large, and some elements are very complex and precise. That is possibly unavoidable for a system that distributes huge sums of money among 400 local authorities, all with different needs and resources. The basis of those calculations has been set out in detail, to assure the House and local authorities that each authority is being treated in exactly the same way.
We are reviewing how we might simplify the process in the long term, while retaining that reassurance. I know that if we can make the whole exercise simpler, it will be much appreciated by Members of the House, local authorities, the general public and especially me.
For the immediate future, I plan to provide the House, before the revenue support grant report is debated in the new year, with a plain English guide to these aspects of local authority finance. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I told you we were radical.
The proposals that I have outlined today represent a substantial improvement on the settlement that local government could have expected, following the Budget of the previous Administration a year ago. There is £835 million extra provision for education. Standard spending assessments will be made fairer. Local authorities will have more scope to exercise their discretion on budgets. This is a better and fairer settlement than in previous years.
Too often in the past two decades, central Government in Whitehall seemed to be waging a war on local government in town halls. When Labour was elected on 1 May, we declared that it was time to bury the hatchet. Whatever the considerable difficulties we found--financial, social or environmental--we shall face them together, with local government, regardless of the party in charge of any specific town hall.
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