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Mr. Watts: My hon. Friend has demonstrated how deprived Barnsley council is. Is he amazed that, despite all the efforts made and contrary to the complaints of Conservative Members, Barnsley still receives far less funding than most local authorities in the south-east? Is it not ironic that Conservative Members complain about funding in their areas when deprived areas such as Barnsley still receive far fewer resources?
Jeff Ennis: I thank my hon. Friend for his point, but I do not want to get embroiled in arguments about the north-south divide. As far as I am concerned, the Labour party has, unlike the Conservative party, always been a one-nation party, so talk about a north-south divide does not add to the debate.
We had to make staff redundant during the Tory years, just as some Conservative councils have to consider doing now. I am not going to say that it is pay-back time. It is not. What is important in the end is the level of services provided for every person in the country. My key point is that those services should be resourced on a fair and equitable basis. That is what the Government are trying to do.
Conservative Members have delighted in the fact—perhaps someone can explain why—that they have more candidates standing in the local elections than the Labour party. I do not understand how that contributes to the debate. In local democratic elections, it is a
pointless exercise to run paper candidates, but that is precisely what the majority of Conservative candidates are. We can see a classic example in my neighbouring ward of Cudworth, an old mining area in Barnsley. The Conservative party candidate standing there comes from Millhouse Green in the leafy suburbs of Derbyshire on the other side of Sheffield—about 30 miles away from the ward. If elected, she would have no affinity with the ward. If someone stands as a candidate in a local government election, they should be willing to represent the people that they have put themselves forward to represent.This important debate appears in the Order Paper as the "Impact of Government policies on community services". The Government are having a positive impact on many community services and I am sure that that will be recognised by the electorate in this Thursday's local government and regional assembly elections.
6.9 pm
Mr. Adrian Flook (Taunton): I was not present for the first couple of hours of the debate because I was taking evidence as a member of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. I will be brief to help my colleagues who also want to speak.
The seat of Taunton, as hon. Members will know, is in the bucolic county of Somerset, whose county council is hard done by in a number of respects. We do not benefit, unlike Hampshire and Wiltshire recently, from the area cost adjustment. We are a high-employment area, but we get penalised as a result, because we do not get any extra grants. At the same time, we are also a very low-wage economy. Somerset is not a wealthy county, nor a very poor one, but we are taxed as if we had the spare cash.
That can best be expressed in terms of education. Somerset local education authority receives the eighth lowest level of funding in the country for secondary pupils, but the number of pupils for which it has to cater grows by more than 3 per cent. each year. Like other hon. Members, I have received complaints from schools that they are being subjected to budget cuts. Even so, Somerset county council has not needed to put up council tax as much as it has. I am afraid to say that it still overspends on administration and procurement.
Somerset is a rural county, and we have our own problems, which cannot be solved by instituting a regional government in the area. That would be no solution whatsoever, for reasons that are obvious in my part of the country. Local councils would lose power, and the regional capital—which would not be Taunton, the present home of the local district and county councils—would prevail. Introducing artificial boundaries for oversized regional assemblies could seem logical only to the eyes of a Whitehall planner. The new plans that the Government seem to be promoting would only create a messy structure for the UK, with county councils left in some areas, and none in others.
We in Somerset have many years' experience of the disadvantages that an artificial construct can bring. It is therefore no surprise that we are disappointed with the Government's proposals to promote regional assemblies. I speak in particular about the way that the Avon and Somerset police force has spent our money. In
the last year, there has been an increase in the precept of 34 per cent. Even so, the West Somerset division, which comprises Taunton, Bridgwater and Minehead, will get only 10 more police officers in addition to the current force of 350 officers. That is a paltry increase. My constituents want an effective system of neighbourhood policing to reclaim our streets for the honest citizen.The problem goes beyond our streets: it extends to rural areas as well. It is unacceptable that the response times to 999 calls in large parts of my constituency can be as high as 45 minutes. It appears that the police can sometimes take up to 90 minutes to turn up when youths are causing a nuisance to local residents. We pay for the policing in Somerset, yet the money seems to be spent in Bristol.
We also have another, rather perverse, problem. In the next few months, Taunton and Bridgwater are likely to receive asylum seekers. I do not have a problem with asylum seekers coming to Taunton, and certainly not to Bridgwater—
Mr. Gareth Thomas (Harrow, West): But . . .
Mr. Flook: The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) says, "But . . ." from his sedentary position behind the Minister, and he is right: a very large "but" exists. We in Somerset are a low-wage, high-employment economy. That is especially true in Taunton. That means that every house and every household is taken up already. There are no—or very few—houses free for rent. The Government are asking the people of Taunton to take extra people into the area, assuming that there are empty properties to rent where none exist. There are more than 1,500 people on the housing lists in Taunton.
Clearsprings Ltd. is the company that won the contract from the National Asylum Support Service. What will it do? It will force up the price of rental properties, to the further detriment of local people who are struggling to get onto the housing market.
That is a very sensitive issue. I have asked the Government repeatedly for more and more accurate information, and I have asked them to be more open. All I can discover is that the asylum seekers could go anywhere into the urban wards of Bridgwater, some seven miles away. I have also asked about which wards in Taunton the asylum seekers could go to, expecting the answer to be the urban wards there. However, I discovered that asylum seekers could be placed in every single rural ward.
Mr. Andrew Love (Edmonton): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Rural areas are unsuitable, and rents are expensive in Taunton. The taxpayer will subsidise asylum seekers and pay more than is necessary to house them. That is a fairly recent development, and one that is highly indicative of the way in which policies right across government adversely affect my constituents and the whole of Somerset. What is worse, we are having to pay through the nose for that shoddy treatment.
6.15 pm
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell): I have three brief points to make.
First, I do not want to rehearse all the arguments about the situation facing our local schools, but redundancies will not be the only practical consequence of the present funding crisis, of which the Minister is well aware. I have had contact with secondary schools in my constituency that are making up to 10 teachers redundant as a result of the funding issues that have arisen this year, but the further consequence will be, as one head teacher graphically put it to me, that he will have to reduce by one the number of lessons each pupil has each week. That means that one fewer subject will be taught. That is the reality of what will happen if our schools are left high and dry, short-staffed and underfunded, as is happening across the country this year.
I do not purport to understand exactly where the money has gone, but the Minister is well aware that it has disappeared into the system. Will he redouble his efforts? Schools such as St. Andrew's, a beacon school in my constituency, will make teachers redundant. In spite of what Labour Members have said, redundancy notices will go out. I urge the Minister to act as quickly as he can. The way of the teaching profession is that notice must be issued a term in advance of the teacher's leaving. Decisions may already have been taken by the time the Government find a solution to the problem. I urge extremely rapid action on the Minister.
Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) discussed the impact on communities just outside London of the disparity in pay between metropolitan London and the surrounding areas. Disparities apply across the public services. In education, there is a classic example in my constituency of the anomaly that arises when London weighting falls off a cliff at the end of London. My view has always been that regional allowances in the south-east should decline gently the further one moves from central London, rather than simply stopping at the London boundary.
Sparrow Farm junior school in my constituency stands in the street that marks the boundary with London, and it is a Surrey school. Teachers there receive £2,800 a year less than their counterparts at a primary school a few hundred yards further into Surrey that happens, although it is deeper in my constituency than its neighbour, to be controlled by the London borough of Sutton. The two schools share a playing field, but teachers at one school are paid nearly £3,000 a year more than teachers at the other. Such distortion exists all around the London boundary. Ministers must address it as they review pay structures in the years ahead.
In addition to teaching, there is an impact on policing. In my constituency, police officers are paid £6,000 a year less than those across the border in London. The result is that the most experienced police officers in my area—those who have the greatest knowledge of local troublemakers and trouble spots—are not full-time officers, but special constables, who are the only ones who stay around for a long period. Most experienced
officers—virtually all of them—have gone across the border to London to earn £6,000 more a year. Those anomalies must stop.
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