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Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): indicated dissent.
Mr. White: My hon. Friend is the exception.
The Liberal Democrats did not compare like with like, but quoted meaningless statistics for different councils. For example, they took no account of the fact that some councils deliver nursery services and others do not.
It is important to recognise that the Government have introduced stability in the system. For many years, in the Local Government Association and previously in the Association of District Councils, I argued strongly that one problem with the system was that we did not know what was happening from one year to the next. The settlement provides stability for three years. Councils know what will happen. They can plan for three years because the formula has been set and they have stability. The comprehensive spending review has put billions of pounds into public services. Education services will get massively increased sums. That can be seen coming through into schools now.
I accept that this year's settlement does not rectify the legacy of 18 years of under-investment and a lack of decent settlements. One good settlement will not solve all the problems of local government, but ignoring the fact that there has been a good settlement, as the Liberal Democrats have, misses the point.
The Liberal Democrats are like Oliver, always asking for more, but they are not prepared to put in place the modernisations that are required to improve services. The Government have rightly said that the extra money is for improvements to services. The White Paper on modernisation of local government, the extra money, the best value pilots throughout the country and other schemes will stand local government in good stead. As a supporter of local government, I think that it is important to recognise what is good. One reason why I do not support the Liberal Democrat motion is that it does not recognise what is going on in local government.
My local authority has been going through a series of modernisations. The most recent was a referendum. I shall not go into details, but, if it had been left to the Liberal Democrats on the council, we would not have had a referendum and we would probably have had a 15 per cent. council tax rise.
The hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) talked about fiddling. I suppose that the Tories know all about fiddling. He said that money was going to Labour councils, and then complained that Brent, a Labour council, was not getting it. He cannot have it both ways.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) talked about the changes to the area cost adjustment over the next three years. It is important that those changes should start early. Negotiations and discussions with the Local Government Association should take place as early as possible to ensure the best chance of securing a consensus. If we get a consensus, there will be an opportunity to move forward. The worst thing for local government would be to waste the three years of stability and have a row at the end of it. We should use the opportunity that the Government have given with the three-year plan to get the right benefits for local government.
I was interested in the ability of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) to rewrite history. He seemed to blame this Government for the nationalisation of business rates, for the switch from council tax to VAT and for centralisation. To cap it all, he said that, even if there were a shift back to council tax, that would be wrong as well. Yet again, the Liberal Democrats are trying to have it both ways, condemning centralisation and condemning giving local authorities a greater say over larger amounts of money. I am a great supporter of the view that we should increase the amount that local government can decide, including returning business rates to local control. The Liberal Democrats fail to realise that it is not as simple as just wishing it to happen--their normal policy. It does not work that way.
How many Liberal Democrats have talked to their local business community to get them onside in a campaign for the return of business rates to local authorities? Merely saying it will not achieve it--nor will it tackle the difficult issues involved in the redistribution of business rates.
Mr. Ronnie Fearn (Southport):
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the Local Government Association is pressing for business rates to alter because, in seaside resorts, it is an unfair tax which needs to be changed? The British Resorts Association has said that the tax is not progressive, but vies against the homelessness and the elderly people in seaside resorts. The LGA feels that that is wrong.
Mr. White:
I am a strong supporter of the return of business rates to local authorities. However, Liberal Democrats must recognise that it is not as simple as that--they must get businesses to go along with that policy. It is important that we achieve a consensus. Many businesses want the business rate returned to local authorities, not least because there are large numbers of economic partnerships up and down the country where businesses and local authorities work closely together. It would be an incentive to have the business rate set locally, where it could result in changes in parking and other policies in which businesses, the voluntary sector and local authorities have a vested interest.
Jackie Ballard:
The hon. Gentleman is arguing that the Government need to get businesses onside before changing the business rate. Does he agree, therefore, that the Government should get local authorities onside before introducing council tax benefit subsidy limitation, as all 189 responses to the consultation were opposed to that? Is there one law for business and another for local councils?
Mr. White:
The hon. Lady will know that that matter has been discussed in previous debates. Liberal
In my local authority, we have received the best ever settlement of 6.4 per cent. To counter the hon. Member for West Chelmsford, I should like to say that my authority is in the south-east of England and we received our best ever settlement.
The Government are right to put the case for modernisation. One of the problems with the motion is that the Liberal Democrats do not accept the massive changes that have been made by the Government. I find the opportunism of this debate rather depressing, but I should not be surprised by that. The Liberal Democrats say one thing to one person and another thing to someone else.
When my local unitary authority was created, the Liberal Democrats from the county were used to working with Labour, whereas the Liberal Democrats from the district were used to attacking Labour. The Liberal Democrat group meetings could not agree on whether to attack or support Labour--and they ended up doing both.
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove):
This has been an interesting debate. One of the key points of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman)--who is no longer here--was that the Government have introduced stability. I was reminded of the political phrase "in the long run, we are all dead". When we are screwed down in the coffins, we have stability--and that is exactly what the Government have introduced for local government this year.
Before this year, Liverpool had the highest council tax in the country. Even after its freezing, under Liberal Democratic control--for the first time--it will still be the highest in the country. The hon. Member for Riverside did not make it clear whether she thought that the council tax should go even higher in Liverpool, or whether she had another solution--perhaps a more generous grant from the Government, which is, after all, the thrust of what is said today. There has been a tendency in the debate for Members to try to have their cake and eat it.
Stockport metropolitan borough council has had a 5.2 per cent. increase in its council tax, which is modest in comparison with the national statistics. However, it is faced also with cutting services by £4 million. It is a paradox that, in the year when the Government claim to have been so generous with their funding--with a three-year, long-term bonanza of money showering on us from the Treasury--Stockport is unable to set council tax at the rate that the Government predict unless there are massive and fundamental cuts to services.
Even in an attempt to reach the Government's guideline figure, the council is faced with cuts of £4 million. I am a serving member of Stockport borough council and, therefore, familiar with the financial problems there.
Ms Armstrong:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the actual budget increase for Stockport is 4.7 per cent.--which is not a cut of £4 million? The £4 million is what Stockport would have liked to spend.
Mr. Stunell:
We could have an interesting rerun of the budget debate in Stockport, where Labour Members claimed that we should be increasing spending to a greater extent to protect education. There are so many funny figures and phoney funds that Ministers often confuse themselves about the situation that they are imposing on councils.
Historically, Stockport has, year after year, spent significantly more on education than the SSA allocated by the Government for education. In other words, we have been spending more on our schools, pupils, books and education services than the Government have felt we should. This year, we have had the paradox of the £20 billion injected into education, which has resulted in an above-average percentage increase in our education SSA. However, that increase has not even brought the current SSA figure up to the level of spending on education last year. In our case, the £20 billion is illusory; it is a phoney increase, which nearly catches up with the spending that the council was already making.
To make the situation more difficult to comprehend for the council, the Government have made strong play of the need to passport all the extra money into education. We have been asked to demonstrate that we have transferred all the extra money into our education service. The paradox is that we have had the money allocated, almost bringing the notional figure up to the actual figure, but we have had to raise the actual figure to demonstrate passporting, so the gap between what the Government say we should be spending and what the council is actually spending has been increased, not reduced.
The overall allocation to the council is insufficient to meet the needs created by inflation and by factors such as the increased number of pupils and elderly persons. We have indeed put extra money into education, but just by cutting £2.8 million in social services. The Government ask us to spend more on supporting and developing children's potential, but force us to make cuts in children's services.
There are such astonishing discrepancies between adjacent authorities with similar needs that it is hard to take seriously what Ministers say. For instance, the education SSA for Stockport is £260 a pupil, but for the adjacent authority of Manchester it is more than £600. For certain neighbouring schools serving the two boroughs, the discrepancy is more than £1,000 a pupil. That is difficult to justify or to understand.
Unfortunately, there is also now a prospect of Stockport social services contributing to the problem of bed blocking in local hospitals as well, which an excellent partnership between the health authority and social services has up to now prevented.
The problem is not solely a matter for individual councils. In the metropolitan areas, various residual bodies and authorities have the power to levy a precept on
the metropolitan councils. The Greater Manchester waste disposal levy, which covers 10 metropolitan authorities, has caused a great deal of grief in Stockport this year. The unfairness of the system was so fully recognised that the Government announced the intention of changing it this year, and the draft budgets in Stockport were drawn up in that expectation.
It might be thought that the most obvious way of imposing a levy for the disposal of waste would be in relation to the volume or tonnage of material removed, and we hope that the levy will eventually move to that basis. Alternatively, one might levy a certain amount per head. In reality, the levy in Greater Manchester is imposed in relation to council tax values, which are completely irrelevant. There is a major disincentive to any of the borough councils to pursue a vigorous recycling policy.
Stockport's recycling rate is just a little above the national average of about 8 per cent., and we find it irksome that other--Labour--local authorities in Greater Manchester that have managed rates of only about 2 per cent., or a quarter of the national average, are getting away with it because the levy has not been adjusted.
We discovered in December, after the draft budgets had been drawn up and were being discussed by committees, that the levy would not, after all, be changed for the next financial year. An additional burden of £1.5 million was imposed on Stockport by the simple failure of central Government to implement a decision that they had already notified to the authorities concerned. There are therefore detailed, practical reasons why I am sceptical about what Ministers say.
The Greater Manchester police authority can also raise a precept on the boroughs, and properly so. Last autumn, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police announced that, on his forecast of what he would receive from the Government and the budget that he thought he could set, there would have to be a cut of £15 million for the coming year. He said that, were that cut to be implemented, 400 jobs would be lost in the police service.
Things have not turned out to be quite as dire as those first predictions suggested. The cut was £12 million, not £15 million. The chief constable has written a detailed brief confirming that the result will be 123 fewer police officers serving at the end of the coming financial year than at present, despite a levy on the boroughs of about 12 per cent. Councillors may be criticised for failing to take the right decisions or to be brave--Labour Members have a tendency to criticise Liberal Democrats in those terms--but they could do nothing about that. The police committee in Greater Manchester consists of nine Labour-controlled authorities, plus Liberal Democrat Stockport.
That cut comes on top of a drop of 34 police officers since the general election, so there will be 150 fewer police officers available in Greater Manchester next April than when Labour came to power in May 1997. I regard that as absolutely unacceptable. The basis of financing the police is clearly wrong. Conservative Members should not be cheered up by that news, because almost exactly the same number of police officers were lost between the 1992 and 1997 general elections. Greater Manchester will have lost 300 serving officers since 1992, under both Tories and Labour.
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