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6 Feb 2003 : Column 529—continued
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
- That, at the sitting on Wednesday 12th February, opposition business may be proceeded with, notwithstanding paragraph (2)(c)(i) of Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of Public Business), for three hours or until Four o'clock, whichever is later, and proceedings shall then lapse if not previously concluded.—[Mr. Woolas.]
CRIMINAL JUSTICE BILL (PROGRAMME) (NO. 2)
- That in accordance with the Resolution of the Standing Committee of 4th February 2003, the programme order of 4th December 2002 in relation to the Criminal Justice Bill shall be amended by the substitution in paragraph (2) (time for conclusion of proceedings in Standing Committee) for the words '27th February' of the words '4th March'.—[Mr. Woolas.]
Rate Support Grant (Manchester)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Woolas.]
6.12 pm
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale, East): Yesterday evening, I happily supported the local government grant settlement for the coming year. As the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) said last night, and as he will doubtless remind us tonight, overall funding has increased by 25 per cent. in real terms since 1997, and the new formula for distribution is now more fairly based on need.
However, this evening, I wish to draw my hon. Friend's attention to an issue that seriously undermines the credibility and fairness of the settlement in Manchester—the wholly inaccurate estimates of population provided to his Department by the Office for National Statistics. That error will have serious implications for the delivery of public services in the city, not just in the coming year, but for at least the next decade. Last September, the ONS published the 2001 census results. The figures for Manchester showed a fall in population from 439,000, counted in the 1991 to census, to about 393,000—a reduction of 46,000 people, more than 10 per cent. of the population. No one in the city of Manchester believes that those figures are true. Any casual observer visiting the city during last summer's successful Commonwealth games would have noticed the extensive business and housing developments that have taken place in recent years. Those more familiar with the city centre will know that in the past 10 years an additional 10,000 people have decided to make their home there. Manchester is a city that is clearly growing, not shrinking. The conclusions reached by Len Cook and his enumerators bear no relationship to any discernible trend in the city.
Naturally, the city's councillors and Members of Parliament wanted to examine the information on which the new census totals are based—an exercise that ought to have been straightforward, but which has turned out to be rather more challenging and complicated than any of us might have expected. Lack of resources, the Data Protection Act 1998, and the difficulty of reconciling data sources have all been given as reasons for delay. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who met Manchester MPs to discuss these issues and helped us speed up the flow of information, at least from "stop" to "slow".
As the information began to trickle in from the ONS, it soon became clear that whichever data source we looked at, the census results are deeply flawed. I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is not responsible for the census or for the way in which it was carried out, but his Department must live with the totals that it produced, so I hope that he will forgive me if I give him some examples of the discrepancies that we found. The council has shown, for example, that about 10,000 properties in the city, for which the council receives council tax, were neither identified nor canvassed by census enumerators. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Stringer)
explained in an earlier debate, Mancunians are honest and generous, but they do not pay council tax on behalf of imaginary people.In Manchester we discovered that there are more people in receipt of pensions, more children in receipt of child benefit and more children attending schools than were counted in the census. The census also identified fewer live babies under the age of one than were born in the city during the relevant period. Clearly, Caesar Augustus 2,000 years ago had a more efficient system of enumeration. In 2001 the city's electoral register showed a total of 310,000. Given all the problems associated with registration, with which hon. Members are familiar, particularly in our major cities, most people would probably regard that as being on the low side, but not as low as the census estimate for the number of people aged 17 and above, which is 305,000—some 5,000 fewer people than appear on the electoral register.
The explanations offered by the Office for National Statistics range from complacency to sheer fantasy. The ONS has argued that it is the overestimation in the previous census that is to blame. When discrepancies are discovered, they are passed over if similar discrepancies have occurred in other places. In other words, because the ONS got it wrong in other places as well as Manchester, that should be regarded as corroboration of its results.
Most unconvincing of all is the speculation by the ONS that prior to the 2001 census, there had been an underestimate of the number of young men who emigrate from this country each year. Without substantiating its figures or cross-checking with alternative data sources, such as the international passenger survey, the ONS claims that young men have been leaving at the rate of 50,000 a year. I have not particularly noticed a reduction in the number of young men on our streets, but even if the figure is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd) pointed out in our debate in Westminster Hall, they presumably do not all come from Manchester.
Whatever view one might eventually take of the efficiency of the ONS, it is clear that full public scrutiny of the census has hardly even started. In relation to Manchester, the ONS has agreed to the suggestion by the city council that Manchester Geomatics based at Manchester university should be asked to help in the property-matching exercise, but that will still take months to complete. Likewise, even though many of the alternative administrative data sources have been made available, the council is still waiting for explanations and clarifications about how the data were applied. At least one source of data, the postcode sample, has still not been made available.
I listened carefully yesterday and I heard my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary say that the ONS is confident about the information that it has presented. I and other hon. Members would be interested to know whether Ministers in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister share that confidence. The letter sent on Tuesday this week by the statistical officer at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is not very encouraging. She confirmed that, for the purpose of grant distribution
in 2003–04, the population data for Manchester would be based on the 2001 census. She went on to justify that course of action by pointing out:
- "all results for each local authority were the subject of intensive quality assurance which included a comparison with aggregate administrative data such as patient registers, child benefit, school census and pensions data".
In Westminster Hall on 15 January, in a debate that was very ably led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), the Financial Secretary asked us not to hold her responsible for the way in which the census results are used by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. I sincerely hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will not try to use that same argument in reverse by claiming that he cannot be held answerable for the accuracy of the census. If his officials are defending the accuracy of the census, I hope that he will tell us what steps Ministers in his Department have taken to satisfy themselves that the figures are robust.
As Tuesday's letter and yesterday's debate made clear, any concerns that may exist have not prevented Ministers from using the results as key inputs to the 2003–04 revenue support grant settlement. In the case of Manchester, using the 2001 census results will mean that there is a loss in revenue support grant of £8.2 million next year. If those figures are not changed, they will apply for at least a decade, leading to the loss of even larger amounts in future. Frankly, that is a loss that the city cannot afford.
Manchester has been very successful in recent years in securing private investment and promoting job creation. Manchester airport in my constituency now handles 19 million passengers a year. We have world-class universities, concert halls and football stadiums. All those things are restoring Manchester to its rightful position as one of the foremost regional centres in the country. Yet we still face enormous challenges. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's own index of deprivation indicates that Benchill in my constituency is the most deprived of all 8,414 wards in England. In terms of income and employment deprivation, Manchester is the third most deprived of the 354 districts in England. We do not whinge about that—Mancunians do not parade their poverty—but we expect a fair deal, and we do not think that the 2001 census gives us one.
In addition, Manchester is not only a city, but a regional centre. We are proud of that role and very happy to play it, but it comes with a price tag. The council rightly invests heavily in facilities such as the central library and other cultural, sporting and visitor infrastructure. Cleaning the city centre streets and providing a modern system of public transportation help to promote the economic prosperity of Manchester and the wider region, but they cost money. The loss of grant arising from the under-counting of Manchester's resident population will inevitably place even more pressure on the mainstream service spending that is vital in meeting the needs of local communities.
I have four questions to which I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will respond. First, will he outline what consideration was given to the
representations made in a letter that the chief executive of the city council sent to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on 14 January? The letter set out in detail the council's concerns, together with a request that, until the agreed joint review of the data that is being undertaken by the ONS and the council is completed, Manchester's revenue support grant for 2003–04 should be based on the 2000 mid-year estimates, rather than the census. My hon. Friend has a well-deserved reputation for courtesy and promptness, but the fact that he replied on 20 January, only four working days later, confirming the Government's intention to press ahead with the census results, may leave some to reflect that the fullest consideration was not given to the views expressed by the council. An explanation of the consideration that was given would be most helpful.Secondly, it would be helpful to know the steps that Ministers in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister took to satisfy themselves that the census results were accurate. It is incredible that a Department would give £51 billion without being satisfied that the data that governed its distribution were robust. It would be interesting to know why the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister felt it necessary to use the census data so soon after their publication and before external scrutiny had been possible. If Ministers had taken longer to implement the new data, it would have allowed time for resolving disputes. It would also have made it possible to incorporate more refined data, for example, about ethnicity, which have not been included for the forthcoming year.
Thirdly, I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will go a little further than he went in yesterday's debate about the action that the Department intends to take if the work of the Office for National Statistics and the city council leads to changes in the census results. Last night, he said that Ministers would
- "have to look carefully at their . . . impact."—[Official Report, 5 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 401.]
Fourthly, can I tempt my hon. Friend, even at such a late stage, to offer Manchester a short-term solution to the shortfall in grant, which arose from the 2001 census, at least until the data-matching between the ONS and the council is completed? For 2003–04, would my hon. Friend consider making an additional allocation to the city, for example, of £8 million from the neighbourhood renewal fund? The overall grant settlement would not be affected, and the city would not be denied vital resources.
The census is not an academic exercise. It becomes the means whereby resources are distributed and vital services are funded. Common sense and detailed analysis tell us that Manchester's population has not fallen by 10 per cent. in the past decade. The city and its people should not be penalised for errors in the way in which they were counted.
6.27 pm
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