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Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Raynsford: I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. Time is very short and I want to deal specifically with Buckinghamshire, which I know is a matter of concern.
We hope that the other changes proposed as part of the review of local government finance will mean that the reserve power has to be used rarely, if at all. Local government knows that this is a matter of trust: if it fails to deliver prudent budgets, or if efficiency and economy fall short of the standards that people expect, we will use our reserve powers.
Until the new legislation comes into effect, we will use existing powers as a reserve power to limit excessive council tax increases. We have not announced capping principles in advance, but we will still be prepared to use the powers to limit excessive budgets once set, to protect local taxpayers. We will decide whether we need to use our capping powers and what criteria will apply once authorities have set their budgets.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) urged me to announce the criteria in advance. That is not a sensible approach. It would apply a mechanistic formula in which there would be a perverse incentive for authorities to increase budgets to the limit. That is not a sensible way forward. We have made it clear that we will use the reserve power only when we believe that authorities have not acted responsibly.
We expect authorities to approach their budgeting within a responsible framework and to do so in the spirit that the hon. Member for Buckingham mentioned. He insisted that authorities should be free to decide the appropriate level. We expect them to do so with proper concern for prudence and responsibility.
We are providing significant real increases in funding from Government grants and the business rate, and the provisional settlement sets out how those resources will be distributed. Local authorities should carefully consider their needs in the light of that settlement when drawing up spending plans. We are not a tax-and-spend Government, and we expect authorities to act responsibly as well.
The standard spending assessment for Buckinghamshire will increase by 4.5 per cent. The hon. Member for Buckingham would have to look back as far as 1993-94 to find a bigger increase. Indeed, the average increase for Buckinghamshire between 1993-94 and now has been barely 2 per cent. a year. Buckinghamshire's increase this year is well above the rate of inflation, which shows our commitment to improving local services. An education increase of 5.4 per cent. shows our commitment to education in particular.
The hon. Member for Buckingham mentioned the difficulties faced by Buckinghamshire's social services. The county has received an extra £1.5 million in its personal social services SSA. In its representation on the provisional local government finance settlement, the council expressed its disappointment that the Government had not rolled forward the special transitional grant into next year's SSA. The hon. Gentleman raised that matter in his speech. However, to adjust in that way would make no sense in the light of the comprehensive spending review, which started from a zero base, looking at expenditure needs in the round. The only fair comparison involves looking at the total resources provided for social services. In Buckinghamshire's case, the amount of grant from the Department of Health in 1999-2000 is increasing compared with the figure in 1998-99. When added to the SSA, it provides a 2.8 per cent. increase, which is above the expected rate of inflation and far more than the total SSA allocation to Buckinghamshire in any of the past four years.
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