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7 Jan 2003 : Column 116—continued
9.16 pm
Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead): It is a privilege to be the last to speak in this excellent and wide-ranging debate, which shows that we need a Local Government Bill. My reaction to the Bill is that although it contains some welcome improvements to the administration of local government, it is essentially an opportunity missed. As the Bill relates to my constituency, I wish to reiterate some of the points made much earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett), who also represents a Hertfordshire new town. She handled the matter with great good humour and reflection, but I am more inclined to foam at the mouth and go ballistic, although I shall try to avoid that on this occasion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) talked about how the Government have displayed what he termed rather gently, as an ex-Minister, an insensitive analysis of local problems. I would put it more strongly: local government has been the Government's Achilles heel. We want delivery of a huge range of policies. We have shown great imagination and determination, and we have been willing to brook policies that might be unpopular in the short term for the greater benefit of our population and our country in the longer term. Those policies, of course, need delivery. The agents of delivery, for policy after policy, must be local government. The misery endured by communities when they are terrorised by young thugs requires the implementation of antisocial behaviour orders through a co-operative arrangement between the police and the local authority. The abandoned car that drags a neighbourhood down to the point that the elderly are frightened to walk the streets must be removed by the local authority.
In my constituency, an extraordinarily large demand exists for social services, not least because Hertfordshire grew up as the place where people in London dumped their mentally defective relatives. Hertfordshire had a huge number of mental hospitals, but, in the aftermath of the misnamed care in the community policy, those individuals were pushed out, many of them bereft of any kind of help. Hertfordshire has a huge problem with its social services budget even now. The number of people with mental health difficulties in the county is very high, and the local authority has to support their needs.
We all encounter road safety issues. The other day I asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport about the problem faced by one of my constituents who does not have a car—I did not give the details—and who used local transport to visit a relative in a residential home. It took three buses two hours and 40 minutes to travel seven miles. Leafy Hertfordshire may be all right in some respects and it may share some of the qualities that Guildford has and that were described earlier—but people's needs are the same everywhere in the country and local authorities have an extraordinary responsibility to deliver the policies that will help. When I consider a Bill that says that it will remove millions of pounds from my community, my heart sinks.
Hemel Hempstead is very used to being deprived of resources by central Government. It was set up as a new town in 1947, and I talked to an 87-year-old lady the other day who remembered coming there from the east end of London. She confessed that she kept coal in the bath and that she was not the only one to do so.
Dr. Iddon: They still do in Wigan.
Mr. McWalter: My hon. Friend suggests that they still do that in Wigan. That is an interesting aside.
People moved to an extraordinary place and had never seen such houses and fields before. When the town was established, central Government came along as Santa Claus but did they say, XHere is a resource. Now look after it and manage it."? Did they heck. They said that they would set up a quango—the Commission for the New Towns—and would make damn sure that all the gifts that they had given the town would be looked after very carefully. It is a bit like Santa Claus bringing us presents and making sure that we play with them in exactly the right way. If one of the presents begins to have a higher value than it did originally, he wrenches it back. The Commission for the New Towns ensured that the land that it had enriched by developing it would repatriate funds by the million to the Treasury. That still goes on, but now under the name of English Partnerships. Recent welcome changes by the Government have made English Partnerships a bit less like the Commission for the New Towns and a bit more like a body that is trying to work with the community to create a better life for people.
For nearly 60 years, funds have been pulled away from our community at every hand's turn. What does that mean? Go to Hemel Hempstead library in leafy Hertfordshire; like most of the other public buildings in the town, it has a flat roof, and we heard about them earlier. The best thing that could be done to the local college would be to raze it to the ground and flatten it. However, that has already been done to the only facility other than the pubs that provided young people with somewhere to go in Hemel Hempstead town centre in the evening. The place where the local theatre and dance clubs used to meet has been razed to the ground. It was built totally ineptly in 1960 and cost #500,000 a year to run. The local authority said that it could not afford it and so knocked it to the floor a couple of months ago.
The local authority fears the Bill and what it means for its finances. It is right to do so. Clause 90 talks about negative subsidy. Most Members have not had to do much about that issue, but if they go to the Library and ask for the negative subsidy handbook they will find in it many of my speeches. That is probably not a recommendation, but I have had to become involved with the issue of negative subsidy. Clause 90 in its old form would have meant #10 million a year being taken away from my local authority, which has a standard spending assessment of #12 million. I had to negotiate with the then Minister for local government so that the Government would give it #500,000 a year each year. I am now told that no local authority will lose out, but we will.
Not much has been said about needs, although we used to talk about them all the time in local authority lingo. The rate support grant used to be based on needs
and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West mentioned them in his welcome contribution. If the people in my constituency were living in clover and their needs were being addressed, the Government's request to take #3.5 million from us this year in negative subsidy would be acceptable. I would say, XTake it. Put it to use for the people who put the coal in the tub in Wigan", although I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner) accepts that there are any.
Mr. Neil Turner: We will take the #3.5 million.
Mr. McWalter: I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend, but I cannot say that. The public sector buildings form the core of my constituency, but we should be ashamed to ask people to use them for their cultural and leisure activities. In fact, there are hardly any facilities. The library would not grace a town of 10,000 people let alone 80,000. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage emphasised, the infrastructure is rotting at the core. We have asbestos-ridden buildings that need an enormous amount of attention. I do not want money to disappear until I am assured that those who have plans to use it effectively to address needs will be given the opportunity to do so. Clause 90 will have an important effect on my constituency. I hope that I am put on the Committee to argue my case at greater length and to defeat the clause, although I suspect that in light of my comments that will not happen.
All hon. Members mentioned clause 11 and capital receipts. I commend what my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage said. Many of the assets in new towns which accumulated through capital receipts were deemed to be housing receipts when they were in fact just land. The problem arose because they were denominated housing land in the initial formulation of the new town. However, we cannot use housing receipts for non-housing. The biggest need in my constituency and many others is housing. By the way, we have nowhere to put homeless people. They are either put in a church overnight at Christmas or they go to St. Albans.
Affordable housing is a problem. The hon. Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) asked where the bus driver lives. If there is nowhere for him to live, the bus service is lousy because there are not enough drivers to run a service that allows the people who need buses to get around by them. That is a basic element of life. The nurse shortage in London is 6 per cent. and patients suffer badly as a result. In leafy Hertfordshire, it is 8.2 per cent. According to the explanatory notes, my local authority is one of the richer authorities and will be required to redistribute its funds. Under the definition, Dacorum borough council in my area is the richest authority in the country. Its standard spending assessment is #12.4 million and last year it spent more than #20 million. It is debt free, so it is rich. However, it does not use that money to keep the rates low—they are fully consistent with those of other boroughs. It uses the money to make up the deficiencies that Hertfordshire county council is unable to meet. When I wanted my mental health team to get #10,000, I went to Dacorum borough council. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West spoke of a vision of how local authorities could be—my local authority has been like that, but it is
being stripped away, piece by piece. It can no longer make up for the deficiencies of Hertfordshire county council.This is a welcome Bill, which contains many good provisions, but we need to empower local authorities and move away from the arrogant belief that things need to be run from the centre because local authorities cannot do it. It is time to ditch that attitude once and for all.
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