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Jim Knight: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying about Eastbourne, especially the proportion of his constituents who are aged over 85. I trust that he issued a press release to welcome the extra £100 that over-85s received from the Budget.
Mr. Waterson: That is a bit rich coming from a Government Member, because the Chancellor has given with one hand and the Deputy Prime Minister has promptly taken away with another. There is real distress among many of my elderly constituents, who have contacted me since they realised the extent to which their council tax was increasing. Some are not quite eligible for council tax benefit, some are unaware of what they can claim, some will not claim out of a sense of pride—we have all encountered that in our constituency work—and others are simply daunted by the forms that they must fill in.
However, there is a comparator: next-door Tory-run Wealden district council, which saw the problems comings. It has had to contend with similar problems of withdrawn Government grants, but through diligent
and prudent housekeeping it has managed to keep its increase down to 5 per cent. Contrast that with the 38 per cent. increase in Liberal Democrat-run Eastbourne borough council.
Mr. Hendry: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, although disappointed that he seems to be delivering most of my speech for me. Does he agree that the small council tax increase in Wealden has not been achieved by delivering poor services? Much of the work in the authority has been recognised and has received awards, especially the scheme that recycles 48 per cent. of household waste and is the most effective recycling scheme in the county.
Mr. Waterson: I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour says. The introduction of a recycling scheme was one of the excuses that the Liberals in Eastbourne put forward for the large increase, although it came very late in the day and the detail of the scheme is nothing like as admirable as that of the scheme that Tory-run Wealden has operated for a long time.
Mr. Edward Davey: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Liberal Democrats took over Eastbourne council last year?
Mr. Waterson: I think that I said that during the early part of my speech. It is a tribute to the Liberals' ineptitude that they have taken such a short time to reduce the council's finances to their current state. They inherited a perfectly sound budget from the Conservative administration and had a year in which to see what was coming. Unlike members of Wealden district council next door, they failed to cut their coat according to the cloth available. That is the charge that I continue to make against them. We are left with a situation in which vulnerable and elderly people have to fund very large increases for no improvement in services and, in some cases, for reduced services.
I leave the Minister with this final thought. There has been much sabre-rattling recently in the newspapers about capping. Do hon. Members remember the leaks that revealed how the Deputy Prime Minister was so furious with non-Labour councils increasing council tax that he was seriously considering capping them? We have heard little about that in recent days. Will the Minister confirm whether any of the councils will be capped?
Mr. Tyler: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Waterson: No, I must conclude.
The powers still exist to cap councils, but perhaps even the Deputy Prime Minister does not have the brass neck to do that because he had much to do with creating the problems in the first place.
3.55 pm
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson). He may not be aware of this, but at one time I would have
been a constituent of his when I lived in the Seaside area of his constituency. I look forward to reminiscing with him and sharing my recollections of the region.I shall be a little parochial. No one has mentioned this, but the motion refers to Britain, of which Wales is still a constituent part.
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes): Long may it stay that way.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Many Labour Members certainly want it to stay that way. I suspect that some Opposition Members—who are, no doubt, out campaigning hard today—do not share that sentiment and would like to cut along Offa's dyke and send us away.
Anyone perusing the Opposition motion could be excused for being a little confused. As we wade through the morass of mixed matters masquerading as a coherent motion, it is easy to sink into the gloopy mess and wonder what on earth it is all about. However, I managed to decipher the confusion of issues and recognised a shorthand version of the motion. Underneath the 170 words lies a simple plea from the Conservatives: "Please vote for us in the elections on Thursday." Conservative Members cannot actually say that—it would be too crude, too unparliamentary—but the subtext is clear. "We beg you to vote for us and everything will be so much better." But that ignores the historical reality of the years of Conservative mismanagement and misrule.
What is the real picture? The Conservatives would have the public believe that local government gets less under Labour, but the facts reveal a totally different conclusion. Local authority grants have increased by 25 per cent. in real terms since 1997. If we rewind to the four years running up to 1997, real-terms funding of local government fell by 7 per cent. Those are the simple bald facts; 1997 was a watershed, but what was so significant about it to cause such a turnaround in the financial fortunes of local government? Of course it is when Labour came to power, after 18 years of Tory attacks on local government, and started to set things right.
It is easy to forget such important events and what went on before, but if we forget the past, we live to regret the future. Do we really want 20 per cent. cuts across the board in Government spending, as whispered by the Leader of the Opposition? That is often disputed by the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues, who claim that he said no such thing, but I recall his Christmas and new year message in The Daily Telegraph on 31 December in which he stated:
- "They are looking at the target of 20 per cent. savings across the board in government spending."
The longhand version of the motion refers to:
- "the collapse of community services in Britain and the adverse effect on social inclusion, neighbourhood renewal, regional prosperity, and the quality of community life".
In the motion, the Conservatives present themselves as the defenders of our communities. While I am not quite moved to laugh, I can see the joke. The English writer and humorist A.P. Herbert once remarked:
- "There is no reason why a joke should not be appreciated more than once. Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a conductor refused to play Beethoven's 5th Symphony on the grounds that his audience might have heard it before".
I shall list some of the ways in which Labour is rebuilding communities and community services. Objective 1 funding in Wales is something that the nationalists and Conservatives both said we would not, or could not, deliver. Well, we have done so. To date, £441 million has been spent, creating and safeguarding up to 6,000 jobs in Wales. By 2006, £1.2 billion of additional money will have come into Wales. I shall flesh that out, as big figures do not make a lot of sense to people on the ground; they do, however, when they result in people getting employment and real jobs.
In Maesteg, the biggest town in my constituency, director Gary Evans of G.E. Carpenter employs 14 full-time workers and 20 subcontracted carpenters. An opportunity has arisen to purchase and lease a new unit to expand the business and take on more people. To raise the extra funding, Mr. Evans needed a business plan, which was put together by Business in Focus, the local enterprise agency, with the support of a business planning grant from the economic development unit in the council, which levered in objective 1 money. That example is repeated time and time again across my constituency and the whole of south Wales. We were told that we would never deliver objective 1 funding because we did not have the political will. Well, we did. We had the ability to persuade the European Union to give money to the areas where it was most needed.
I ask the House to excuse my mention of another example that plays on my Italian family connections. Ferrari's coffee roasters is a company that invested in putting roasting production lines into its own premises so that it could supply the best coffee around to Italian cafés throughout Wales. I will recommend to the Select Committee on Catering that we have that coffee here.
The Communities First projects are another area in which Labour is pragmatically rebuilding the cohesion of our communities and getting to the heart of the most deprived communities, including some in my constituency. For example, £360,000 has been allocated for community development work in Bettws, Caerau, Llangeinor, Lewistown and Pantyrawel, which is
literally down the road from where I live. For the first time in a generation, communities that had the stuffing knocked out of them are now starting to build from the bottom up, and local people are taking responsibility for turning round their communities; the only way in which that can be done properly. Again, Labour money from the National Assembly for Wales and the Government settlement, far above the Barnett formula, has enabled communities to do that.Turning to community safety and policing, we have heard much criticism today about police numbers, and contradictory figures have been given. The simple fact is that in the South Wales police area—whatever criticisms may have been made—there are nearly 300 more police officers on the ground.
Indeed, I ask the Minister to accept a correction to the Home Office figures, which wrongly purported to show that, in the past 12 months, for the first time since 1997, the number of police officers in Wales had gone down. I know that the South Wales police chief constable has been in touch with the Government to correct those figures. I have the accurate figures, which show that, in the year to March, the number had gone up from 3,161 to 3,243. In every year since 1997, there have been more police officers in the South Wales area. They struggle to train the new recruits. When I go out with them on a Friday night to see how they are doing, the problem is the number of new recruits trained through the Aberkennfig training station and coming on board with the veterans. That is the challenge, not a lack of police.
Having sat on the Committee that considered the Police Reform Act 2002, I was disappointed to find that the South Wales police had not applied to be one of the first authorities to take on community support or community safety officers. Advanced as my community safety partnership is in Bridgend county borough council, the South Wales police had not seen fit to apply. However, it is applying this time round. I was glad to hear the reassurances from the Front Bench yesterday that most of those who missed out on the first tranche of funding, which was 100 per cent. funding for CSOs, will benefit from the new tranche of funding. I look forward to seeing those officers on the streets of my communities; thickening the blue line, as the chief constable of South Wales, Anthony Burden, has described it. He does not see the scheme as detrimental to the police force, but as something that will strengthen our community safety.
There has been much talk of sub-post offices today. Ogmore comprises three former mining valleys, and people from outside are surprised to find that we are increasingly a rural or semi-rural community. Out of 63 post offices in my constituency, 60 are rural post offices. I am particularly pleased by the Government's determination that, until 2006, there will no avoidable closures of rural post offices. I can give my constituents that certainty.
I share concerns about the modernisation of the Post Office and about turning post offices around, but that job should have been started a long time ago. The present Government are the first to tackle the question of the future of our post office network and how we develop a thriving network of post offices. The job should have been done 10, 15 or 20 years ago. We are now tackling it. In addition, there is a £2 million fund for community post office initiatives to drive forward that modernisation agenda, and £210 million for the urban
reinvention programme. Furthermore, there are to be no closures in deprived communities. That contrasts starkly with the black picture conveyed by the Opposition motion and by Opposition Members today.Community social and economic regeneration has been mentioned by Government Members. I echo the sentiment that one of the biggest factors in regenerating our communities is getting people into jobs and putting bread into their mouths. There has been a 75 per cent. reduction in youth unemployment in my constituency since 1997. That bears no resemblance to the remarks of Opposition Members. There has been a 74 per cent. reduction in long-term entrenched unemployment. Where is that reflected in the Opposition's motion?
I will make an admission to the House. Despite all the achievements that I have listed—I could go on and on—we have not got it all right. If we had, we could pack our bags and head home now. We will not do that. For the first time during my speech, I see some smiles of satisfaction from those on the Opposition Benches. We have not totally eradicated poverty, but we have gone a long way towards doing so with our reforms. Through child tax credits and working tax credits, we are targeting the money to those who most need it.
We have not completed housing renewal in every constituency across the land, but in Bridgend, for example, more than 80 per cent. voted in favour of stock transfer; putting the ownership and management of local housing into the hands of local people so that they can take it forward for their children and grandchildren. We are already seeing the benefits. That never happened previously, as local authorities never had the money. It is this Government who are putting in place the mechanisms and structure to enable local authorities to move forward on housing.
We have not transformed every single school into a shining new edifice, but for the first time in many generations, the Labour-led Welsh Assembly has made the funding available and is working hand in hand with local councils to take our children out of Victorian piles and put them into modern, friendly and encouraging new schools, such as the brand new primary school in Ogmore vale, which has been welcomed by parents, teachers, governors and, most importantly, the pupils themselves.
Other examples include the soon-to-be built comprehensive school in Maesteg and the refurbishment of the existing English language comprehensive to allow a new Welsh medium comprehensive to be established for the first time ever in the Llynfi valley. A Labour authority is working with a Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government and using funding passed down by the Chancellor to make things better for people where it matters; in communities. That bears no relation whatever to the motion.
We have not yet given every community the confidence to contribute fully to the regeneration of its own patch but, for the first time in a generation, we have the tools and funding to do so. Instead of turning our backs on our communities and saying that the job was too difficult, Labour Members always had confidence in them. We come from and live in these communities. We
talk with the people and we have always had faith that, given the opportunity, we had the ability, energy and drive to turn communities around.There has been a hard lesson to unlearn; for 18 years, Opposition Members were complicit in grinding down the confidence of people in those very communities. It is not fanciful to say that there has been a blossoming of community activity and activism in the past few years. People up and down the Llynfi, Garw and Ogmore valleys are taking control of their futures again. With a little help from their Labour friends, they are striving to regenerate the communities, and succeeding.
That is not without peril. Success in getting funding for many of those new projects is easier to find than success in respect of core funding. I raise that issue with the Minister as I have done with my counterparts in the Welsh Assembly Government. In some areas, especially Communities First areas, it takes time to develop a sense of ownership and empowerment—that horrible word—among tenants, residents and volunteers and tangible results are less quick to appear. However, the process is working.
We have not completely solved transport problems, particularly in more remote areas where bus services or adjacent local authority transport fails to reach the parts that private transport reaches, or at least fails to do so at the times when people need to get to work. None the less, what a difference a few years make. Free local bus transport is now available to the elderly throughout Wales. We hear of people who leap on to a bus to Bridgend, take the next bus from Bridgend to Neath, travel from Neath to Aberystwyth and so on, and spend the summer traversing the whole of Wales. All credit to such people if they want to spend their time doing that.
In addition, the Welsh Assembly is consulting on extending such access to rail transport. I make a special plea for the Maesteg branch line, another case in point in considering the denuding of local services that we are accused of causing. The Maesteg branch line was kept open by the Labour local authority. Despite the negative and depressing tone of the motion, one thing for which the Welsh Assembly is constantly praised is its willingness to listen to the people whom it represents with regard to housing, transport, community safety and all aspects of local services.
I began by saying that the motion could be rewritten in shorthand as a plea from the Opposition, saying, "Please support us and forget what we did before; we are all much better now." However, it would be more convincing if it also said, "Please forgive us for our excesses, for what we visited on you over 18 years and for the legacy of those years, which will take so much time to repair." The motion does not say that; it does not say sorry because that is the hardest word to say. Sorry is the only word that the people of Wales want to hear from the Conservatives. [Hon. Members: "Or goodbye."] They have already virtually said goodbye in Wales. Were it not for proportional representation, that would be another story. If it would make it easier for them, they can say it in Welsh; "mae'n ddrwg gen i." That is what people want to hear.
If the newly rebranded party of the vulnerable and of community cohesion wants people to believe in it and in the substance of the motion, the denial has to stop. The first part of any treatment on the road to recovery is to
admit that one has a problem; then one can move on. The motion shows a failure to recognise the problem. Conservative Members are in denial. No one can help them or save them unless they recognise that, in any debate on community services, social exclusion, neighbourhood renewal, regional prosperity or quality of life, they must first admit their historic failures. They will feel all the better for it. I suggest this to the Conservative Front-Bench team; say sorry and move on. The people of Wales are listening for your response.
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