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Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh): My hon. Friend mentioned accessibility to public services. In terms of promoting community spirit, does he agree that our post offices play a vital role in doing that in all our constituencies? There have been a number of post office closures in my constituency in recent years and last week I received notification of two more. Does he agree that this programme has gone on for quite a while and that the Post Office should think very carefully before recommending even more post offices for closure?
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is an Adjournment debate on local government. We are going wide of the subject.
Mr. Hammond: Of course, Mr. Speaker, the debate is about the quality of life in local communities and I wrestled with its scope for some time.
Mr. Speaker: Order. My apologies.
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) is right, and I am pleased that the Minister gave due recognition to the importance of community. I say to her that that refers not only to local communities, but to national communities and people having a sense of belonging and of place. My hon. Friend ably put his finger on an example of how Government policy has allowed the heart to be ripped out of many suburban and rural communities with the loss of the local post office, which is such an important part of the structure of those communities.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Does my hon. Friend agree that one phenomenon that is corrosive of precisely that sense of belonging that he rightly identifies as important is graffiti? Although the incidence of graffiti in local communities is not recorded separately from other crime statistics, but rather is incorporated within the category of criminal damage, does he agree that an attack on that phenomenon is crucial to the recovery of the self-respect on which the success of local communities will depend?
Mr. Hammond: I can readily agree with my hon. Friend, and we have already heard contributions identifying the fact that an attack on low-level crime and disorder is crucial to the quality of life of many of our constituents—people in local communities. Indeed, that is disproportionately so. If he will allow me, this is one of the issues that I will come to in due course.
The Minister mentioned income at the end of her remarks. I would have thought that income is pretty near the top of the list of things that determine people's quality of life. Of course people need an adequate after-tax income to enjoy a decent quality of life, but this Government, under a Prime Minister who pledged that we would face no tax increases at all, have increased taxes 60 times so that we pay 50 per cent. more tax than in 1997.
Across the country, people in communities face swingeing increases in council tax, which is a form of national taxation because of how the grant system
works, as local authorities struggle to deal with central Government's redetermination of priorities. That leaves them with no choice but to raise council taxes or cut local services.
Matthew Green: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman's intervention is entirely predictable.
Matthew Green: Does the hon. Gentleman think that the council tax is a fair tax on pensioners? If not, does he think that there should be a measure based on ability to pay?
Mr. Hammond: I think that the Liberals' proposal, as currently formulated for a local income tax, would be a disaster for local communities that led to higher tax bills for ordinary, hard-working families across the country—another blow to the quality of life in our local communities.
Mr. Andrew Turner: Does my hon. Friend agree that in low-income areas such as the Isle of Wight a higher rate of local income tax would be required to raise the same amount of money as, for example, in his own constituency? In that respect, the Liberal Democrat proposals would severely damage my working constituents.
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend raises an interesting point and puts his finger on one of the weaknesses of the Liberal Democrat proposals. There would not be a local income tax in any genuine sense because there would have to be a redistribution mechanism, which would break the crucial link between local ability to pay and the tax raised locally.
We all appreciate that the flip side of taxation is public service spending. We all want to enjoy high-quality public services, so have we seen improvements in those public services, which make up another component of people's quality of life, as our taxes have soared by 50 per cent. since 1997? The answer, of course, is that we have not.
The problem is that the switch of resources to public services was not preceded, as the Government originally promised, by an improvement in delivery productivity. So we see a business on the scale of the national health service accounting for 8 per cent. of United Kingdom gross domestic product. It achieved a 21 per cent. increase in funding over two years, but delivered just a 2 per cent. increase in output growth. That represents a negative growth in productivity that would result in bankruptcy in the private sector. It contributes to the halving of the productivity growth rate in the economy overall that has taken place since this Government took over from the last Conservative Administration. That is not a dry point: productivity growth fuels the increases in personal consumption, public services and public investment that underpin so much of our quality of life.
The truth is that the Government have had a lucky run—initially, with considerable prudence, building on the legacy of their predecessor and more recently, with
alarming profligacy, proceeding blindly down the alley on which they have embarked. They have brought the economy to tipping point. The Chancellor is playing a game of brinkmanship with the prosperity and quality of life of millions of people as he gambles on the appearance of a new driver for the economy before his inevitable puncturing of the balloon of private and public borrowing that is the only thing keeping the economy afloat.The Government have not spent the money they have raised from hardworking families—eroding their disposable incomes and their ability to exercise choice—on improving our public services. They have squandered it on bureaucratic, underdelivering services that they have neither the political will nor the courage to reform. Where else in the world could we find a health service which, while enjoying a 20 per cent. increase in funding, can deliver only marginal improvements in health care? A million people are still waiting for NHS treatment. Last year alone, 300,000 people without health care insurance had to dig into their savings and pay for their own medical treatment, while 70,000 patients had their operations cancelled within 24 hours of the time when they were due despite a Government drive to reduce the number of such cases. All those things have had a serious impact on the quality of life in local communities.
Then there are the inequalities in health care that persist despite the Government's constant reassertion of their determination to wipe them out. Three years into a crusade against cancer, two thirds of the number of women with breast cancer who could benefit from the drug Herceptin are not receiving it. That figure masks a huge range of prescription levels—for instance, the discrepancy between levels in the west midlands and the south-east. Those inequalities—the postcode lotteries that persist despite the Government's rhetoric—undermine the quality of life throughout the country.
The Government railed against managers in the NHS before coming to power, but there are now 45 per cent. more managers than there were in 1997. There are more managers than beds. As for education—funded by central Government, but delivered by local authorities under the close and watchful eye of Whitehall—one in three 11-year-olds leaves school unable to read, write or count properly, and this year more than 33,000 16-year-olds left without a single GCSE at any grade. Discipline in schools is collapsing: somewhere in England or Wales, there is an attack on a school teacher every seven minutes during the school day. There is also a rising tide of truancy. All those things contribute to the sense of insecurity, and undermine the quality of life in local communities.
The Government's response is to increase the torrent of central guidance for schools, rather than freeing headmasters and teachers to create the environment that parents want for their local communities—be it a more disciplined or a less disciplined environment. The Government insist on central directives and on inflating school costs through headline deals which they then spectacularly fail to fund, leaving local authorities and schools to wrestle with overstretched budgets rather than focusing on the delivery of quality education and an appropriate environment to the children whom they serve.
Meanwhile, more and more parents—including, apparently, Labour MPs—give up on the state altogether. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to do just what others have been forced to do in relation to NHS waiting lists, and raid their savings to buy privately something for which they have already paid through taxation. That is an affront to their right as citizens to enjoy good quality public services wherever they live.
What of the environment in which we live—our transport infrastructure, and our towns and cities? Perhaps this has more to do with what the Minister talked about. None of us would deny that a roof over one's head is a pretty fundamental requirement for a decent quality of life, and to many millions of people in Britain owning that roof represents a huge step up. We are talking about a roof over people's heads, and a chance to get on to the housing ownership ladder. Labour has failed on both counts.
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