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Mr. Raynsford indicated dissent.
Mr. Luff: There is no point in the Minister shaking his head. It is true. Both the police and the fire authorities are monstrously funded. What world is the Minister living in? [Interruption.] The real world, he says. I invite him to come and see the Hereford and Worcester fire authority for himself, and not to rely on the representations that he receives. He has reduced the amount of money that we have to save, so it is clear that he realised he had made a mistake. He went halfway to meet it but he could not go all the way. Again, saving face is the order of the day for the Government. Had he listened properly to those representations from the fire authority, he would have abandoned that ridiculous idea.
The fire authority is required to cut about £1 million from its budget of £25 million. This is its first year as a precepting authority. It is worth recalling that the problem of the underfunding of the fire service in Herefordshire and Worcestershire has gone on for years—and I say this to be bipartisan—under Governments of both political persuasions. The response of Hereford and Worcester, which once formed a combined council but are now separate councils, has consistently been to spend above the standard spending assessment, year in, year out. When I was a young boy in this place in 1992 and 1993, representations were made to the then Conservative Government urging them to provide better funding for the fire authority, but it has not happened.
Mr. Wiggin: My hon. Friend will be aware not only that my constituents will be rebilled for their council tax and police and fire authorities, but that a specific problem arises with regard to the Worcester fire authority. Although it is in an urban area, it is responsible for huge areas of countryside, so its cost base is very different. It is an extremely cost-effective authority and it did not need the order.
Mr. Luff: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He might have added that there is a Labour chairman. If people are looking for a scapegoat, why pick on Nottingham? Why not just settle for Hereford and Worcester fire brigade and kill two birds with one stone?
Let me refer to the detail of the cuts necessary in the Hereford and Worcester combined fire authority. Support budgets are down £372,000, the vehicle budget is down £164,000, there is a delay in an important new headquarters project, saving £81,000 and other minor capital projects are down £10,000. With regard to the integrated risk management plan, to which I understand
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the Government attach great importance, there will be a saving of £475,000. The modernisation project, a declared objective of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that it regularly boasts about, has been abandoned with a saving of £151,000, and the various service delivery reductions amount to £245,000.
To meet the cost of rebilling, £1.498 million must be saved. There will be no action on modernisation, deferral of the 2004–05 capital budget and no action on dealing with the comprehensive performance assessment recommendations. The authority now predicts a high probability of failure to meet performance standards. There will be no action on best-value programmes—another pet enthusiasm of the Government—and an increased failure to meet statutory requirements. There will also be a weaker support mechanism across the whole patch, including finance, member support, procurement and personnel and no replacement vehicles or equipment at all this year. There will be no action on equalities work—another Government issue—including necessary improvements to buildings, which I assume means that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 will be ignored, or on building replacement and improvement programmes. There will also be a withdrawal from various local partnerships, a significant reduction in safety education programmes and no action on fire safety initiatives,. The list goes on and on.
All those things will save the average band D council tax payer 7p a week, or £3.73 for the year. That is what all this turmoil will save. It is literally—this is a word that we often abuse—incredible. Like Victor Meldrew, I really do not believe it. It is not as if the fire authority's spending or council tax levels are out of line with shire county averages. The authority is in line with or just above or below all of them. There is nothing outrageous about the council tax requirements imposed by the Hereford and Worcester combined fire authority. A very important point is that its level of grant per citizen is the second lowest in the country; it is beaten only by Wiltshire. It is incredible that so many good and important things should be put at risk.
The Minister may well say, if he gets the chance to do so in this very short debate, that I welcomed the announcement when he originally made it. I did so for the following reason, which he knows is on the record: I thought that the detailed representations that he would receive from a small number of authorities would force him to recognise that the root problem was the monstrous underfunding that the police and fire authorities receive. I hoped that they would force a realisation of that fact.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): That is naive.
Mr. Luff: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, although I prefer the words "trusting" and "rational". Indeed, I prefer all kinds of other words, but perhaps I was naive after all. There has been a partial and grudging acceptance of part of the fire authority's case, but there is still the lunacy of £500,000 in re-billing costs. It is literally incredible.
I urge the Minister, even at this late hour, not to proceed. He does not have to proceed to a vote on this foolish order. He can say that he has listened to the
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arguments, including the excellent speeches of his hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) and for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), and that he will not proceed with the order. That option still exists.
I rushed out of the Chamber a few minutes ago because a thought came to my mind about a word that is defined thus in the "The Concise Oxford Dictionary":
"amusingly eccentric . . . crazy or reckless. n. an eccentric person."
The word is, of course, "madcap", and it is a word that we apply to the Minister for Local and Regional Government.
7.55 pm
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD): I have the good fortune to represent one of the main holiday and hospitality destinations in the United Kingdom. As tourism is the area's main industry, its local authority, whether as a district council or as a unitary authority, as it is now, has always been presented with big problems.
The problem with local government in this country is that local councils are over-dependent on central Government for their income. The ratio in my area is 70:30, while the national average is 75:25. If an authority is that dependent on a paymaster, it is limited in how much it can do in its area. The calculation by the Local Government Association is that, to meet a 1 per cent. increase in costs locally, council tax has to be increased by 4 per cent.
That gearing lies at the heart of the difficulties that all local authorities have in setting their budgets, but the authorities that we are discussing tonight have had particular difficulties this year. That is the basic unfairness about the order. It is this year on which the authorities are being judged, and not their performance over a number of years or over a given set of time in relation to the actual council taxes that they have set or to the increases. Of course, no account is necessarily taken of the amount of Government funding that they receive in any year, which itself can be different year on year, depending on the changes that central Government make to the formula.
The problem of representing a fabulous constituency that so many people wish to visit and to live and work in, if they can find a job, is that we have to spend money to maintain that which attracts people. What we spend money on—illuminations, parks, gardens and toilets—is not statutory. For a unitary authority that depends on central Government for 70 per cent. of its expenditure, all the rules, regulations and targets that come down from above mean that very little is left for the non-statutory services, so they are the first things to be cut.
Another problem with which many authorities have to cope, especially seaside resort authorities, is a transient population. Such populations tend to bring with them a number of social problems. We have a high level of educational statements—the authority of Torbay has more statemented children under the age of 10 than the entire city of Bristol. That is a cost that the local authority has to meet. We have rising numbers of kids in care. For a small unitary authority, the bill for one child, which can be almost £100,000 a year for 24-
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hour care, can completely skew the social services budget. Torbay has a large number of people who have moved in from inner-city areas and an abnormal number of children in full-time care. We also have an ageing population. When those people present themselves to the social services, councillors cannot say, "We cannot offer you anything as we are making cuts." They have to pay that bill.
Therein lies Torbay's problem. Some £1 million has been overspent in social services. There are also the costs of all the Government programmes that have been imposed, including audit costs and comprehensive performance assessment costs of some £2.5 million. In Torbay's case, the actual grant formula is £26 per head less than in the average unitary authority, which accounts for another £1.1 million. Torbay starts £4.6 million down, and the Government say, "You must spend another £100,000 on rebilling."
There is no justice in the order for any of the authorities. Tonight, hon. Members on both sides of the House have made good cases for every area, but the Government have made the case for neither the justice nor the logic of the order.
8 pm
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