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11 Apr 2003 : Column 577—continued
Mr. Wiggin: Spending has increased by at least 20 per cent., so how many extra operations and surgical procedures have taken place and how much more activity has the extra spending on the health service provided? Is it about 1.6 per cent?
Mr. Swayne: I am not an expert on these matters, but the measure of which I am aware is that hospital admissions have fallen by 0.5 per cent. Some might say that that is good, because it means people are getting healthier, but given the length of waiting lists that is a thoroughly implausible argument. The hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) should be careful before demonstrating his assent to such a ridiculous proposition. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend is right—there has been a fall of about 1.6 per cent. in completed consultant episodes. That is probably the best measure of activity.
Albert Owen: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it takes many years to train a doctor, a nurse or a consultant, and that after many years of under-investment in the health services, that process takes time to trickle through? In my area, waiting lists are falling because more doctors and nurses are now coming through the system.
Mr. Swayne: Because of the long lead time to which the hon. Gentleman draws attention, those doctors and nurses all began their training under the Conservative Administration. What has happened under this Government—the investment of which he speaks—is that the number of beds in the health service has fallen by 14,000 while the administrative estate has increased by something in the region of 28,000 jobs. That is where the money has gone. What has happened to the greatest bonanza for public expenditure in a generation—the product of 10 years of economic growth? Where has it gone? Anyone who wants to know should buy The Guardian and look through the jobs pages, where they will see page after page of advertisements by primary care trusts all over the country for jobs in gender management, equal opportunities and so forth, not one of which will be of any benefit to patient care. That is where the bonanza has gone—that is the waste that we want cut.
I turn finally to the tax increase that is most on the minds of constituents, and on which I have acquired an enormous correspondence. Many people write to me to complain about the increase in their council tax, because that is one tax that they perceive to be thoroughly unfair. I am somewhat reluctant to write back to say
that my own council tax has leapt by £300, because they would justifiably point out to me that I am in a position to pay it, as indeed I am. The letters that I get are overwhelmingly from pensioners with no other source of income, who are faced with increased bills. There is no doubt in my mind as to why this has happened. Indeed, the Minister for Local Government and the Regions clearly spelled it out at questions to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last Wednesday, when, in responding to a question about capping from my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), he rested his papers on the Dispatch Box, stepped back, and said, "This is about Conservative councils costing you more." The look of satisfaction on his face gave the game away, because for generations it has been a truism that Conservative councils cost less.
Mr. Swayne: Indeed, they still do. Capping was the Government's attempt to rig the system for public funding of local government in order to wrest that trophy from the Conservative party. They wanted to skew local government funding for the nation to capture that prize, which has always grated on Labour Members. So the southern counties, particularly the shire counties, are to be blighted by having this enormous tax levied on them. My county, Hampshire, is losing £45 million this year. That cannot be made up by cuts—in answer to the hon. Member for Telford and his fixation with a Conservative agenda of cuts. If Conservatives in Hampshire were interested in cutting, we would not have passed on such an exorbitant increase of some 16 per cent. to our council taxpayers: we would have made the cuts, which the hon. Gentleman would relish. However, Hampshire county council—which is excellent, and, as the Audit Commission has pointed out, well managed and controlled—uses council taxes to provide services for the vulnerable and the elderly, and to provide education for the young. We do that very well and there is no scope for cuts. That is why an enormous burden is now falling on the people of Hampshire—especially on the preponderance of old people who live there, who are the least able to pay. Let the blame for that lie precisely where it should—with the Treasury Bench.
2 pm
Mr. Eric Pickles (Brentwood and Ongar): It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne). He spoke with great passion about the twisting nature and the fiddled figures of the new settlement. I am sure that I can start on a point on which there will be consensus. When the history of this Parliament is written, there will be a substantial section on my hon. Friend's magnificent display of knowledge. When offered a multiple choice question by my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin), he came up with the correct answer—that there has been a pitiful increase in operations—without a single cough from the public gallery.
During the past couple of days, a set of themes has emerged for this Budget. The Budget has more pilots than British Airways, more repeats than UK Gold, and more optimism than Saddam's communications Minister. It is amazing how quickly confidence in the
Chancellor has dissipated. He has gone from iron Chancellor to paper tiger in a matter of moments. Reality bites. Over the past few days, we have heard about the effects of the Chancellor's stealth taxes on individuals, about the increase in national insurance, and about the massive and unprecedented increases in council tax. There have been 60 tax increases by this Government since 1997—an extra £26 billion. From April, a typical couple on average full-time earnings will be £568 a year worse off because of this Labour Government and because of tax hikes and Gordon Brown's triple tax whammy—income tax allowances have been frozen, national insurance has risen, and the national insurance threshold has been frozen.We have heard a number of distinguished contributions in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir Michael Spicer) gave a distinguished speech on the Chancellor's methodology and his inability to make a proper forecast. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) built on that. My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) talked about the Chancellor gambling on growth, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Virginia Bottomley) talked with considerable knowledge about the plight of pensioners, about pension funds and about poverty in rural areas. One of the nastiest things in the new methodology is that the rural poor are not counted in the figures. If one is a poor person in a county area, one is forgotten by this Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) showed his considerable skills as a diligent constituency Member by being able to get an extra 12 police officers for his constituency. He also demonstrated that, as this Government try to creep up to the levels of policing that they inherited, they have found that the Conservative party has moved the goalposts with the promise of an extra 40,000 officers.
Various hon. Members on the Labour Benches disputed with each other about the benefits of British entry into the euro. At times, it seemed that they were trying to defend cuts in their own constituencies. A special mention must be given to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), and it is wonderful to see him back in his place. In a matter of hours, he managed to contradict his party's spokesman on the benefits of the new system. We have become accustomed to hearing the Liberals contradict themselves street by street, but we tend to expect consistency within the Chamber.
Local authorities account for a quarter of public expenditure, so it is hardly surprising that they should be used in the Government's main and favourite money-raising method: stealth. Council tax is a stealth tax. Since 1997, the amount raised through council tax has increased by £8 billion. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster said, that is equivalent to a 3 per cent. increase in the basic rate of income tax.
Councils face problems because of the burdens placed on them by the Government. Local authorities in Great Britain are the most regulated in the world; they are more centralised than anything this side of the Ural mountains. The Government have introduced best value, comprehensive performance assessments and a whole raft of statutory plans. There has been an increase in ring-fencing. Every year brings increased
responsibilities for local authorities without adequate funding from central Government. For example, the 1 per cent. increase in national insurance will cost local authorities an additional £280 million—roughly equivalent to an 8 per cent. rise in formula grant.Today and yesterday, we have heard much criticism of the burdens placed on business by the Government. Those burdens are oppressive, stifling, overwhelming and unnecessary, but they are as nothing compared with the burdens on local authorities. Best value is probably the worst titled Government initiative of all time. It has become a bureaucratic, complex and costly system, which has a significant impact on councils in terms of budgetary resources and allocation of staff time. I shall give the House some examples.
Suffolk Coastal district council added £100,000 to its budget to implement best value, as well as employing an additional officer, at a cost of £15,000, to work full-time on the scheme. None of that money was used for front-line services. Bracknell Forest borough council allocated £120,000 for additional best-value audit work—the equivalent of £3 for every household in the borough. Again, that was money diverted from front-line services.
The local government information unit estimated that, overall, comprehensive performance assessment costs local authorities £1 billion. None of that money contributes to better services; it neither increases local accountability, improves the reputation of local government, helps people to engage with their local council or encourages more people to stand as councillors. The cost of the CPA would fund 52,206 new teachers or 63,678 places for elderly people in residential homes.
To put it another way: merely to fund the Government's form-filling, local government has to purchase the equivalent of two Jaguar cars every 22 minutes. It can truly be said that for local government the cost of two Jags is a cost too far.
There has been a huge increase in the number of statutory plans that the Government require local authorities to produce. Such plans consume officer time and have serious cost implications. Currently, there are 66 required plans. They range from mineral plans, improving information technology, local teenage pregnancy strategies, whole systems capability plans, pipeline safety plans, annual library plans, local cultural strategies and food enforcement plans. The Government want to control everything, yet they can manage nothing. They immerse themselves in the minutiae of each plan but fail to see the bigger picture. They fail to realise that they cannot second-guess local conditions from Whitehall. The Government do not have the capability or expertise to absorb or disseminate these plans.
Let me give one example. I recently talked to officers in a county council who had to provide two statutory plans. An enormous process was required to put them together, involving a lot of officer time, and they were sent off. Two months later, they realised that by mistake they had put the frontispiece on the wrong document. They waited, months passed, nobody rang, nobody said there was a mistake and nobody asked what was going on. Even now, nobody knows about it, as I have
checked. The Government are collecting statutory plans that they do not read, that they do nothing with and that just gather dust on the official shelves.My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) talked about the promise of last year and the reality of this year. He talked about the effects of national insurance contributions, pensions and pay increases in education. The Local Government Association has estimated that schools will have to find an extra £635 million to fund teachers' pensions, an extra £115 million to fund the 1 per cent. increase in national insurance contributions, and an extra £445 million for teacher pay increases ordered by the Government. That is a total of £1.195 billion. The Government claim to have increased local authority funding for schools by £1.4 billion, but more than half a billion of that is a result of simple double accounting, to which we have become accustomed: £513 million is a simple transfer from the standards fund in the school budget, meaning that in reality schools are left with a shortfall. With this Government, it always pays to read the small print.
What does that mean on the ground? Let us look at the constituency of the Secretary of State for Educations and Skills. As one first school head teacher, who does not want to be named, as she has not yet broken the news of possible redundancies to her staff, and has not slept since she has seen the figures—I think that she is breaking the news today—said:
- "The situation really is not good . . . there just isn't enough money there. We're going to have to cut classroom support hours by half and this will definitely mean redundancies . . . I don't want to lose any of them. They do a fantastic job. We're also going to have to withdraw our subsidy for special needs so pupils with individual support will get the bare minimum hours."
- "The issue is that we were not adequately funded by government. There was not enough extra cash to compensate for the increases in costs for superannuation, pensions, insurance and the loss of the standards funds."
During the Conservative years, we enjoyed growth and prosperity, but now we have an economy that is browned-off and stumbling. There have been comments that, because of events in the Gulf, the Budget has not received the amount of coverage that we would see normally. It is certainly my view—I suspect it may be that of right hon. and hon. Friends—that the Budget got exactly the amount of coverage it deserved. This was the mouse that did not roar. It should be seen as what it truly is; the penultimate hurrah of a discredited Chancellor.
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