Local Government Finance

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Attorney-General – in the House of Commons at 5:40 pm on 10 February 2015.

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Photo of Jon Ashworth Jon Ashworth Shadow Minister (Cabinet Office) 5:40, 10 February 2015

In his contribution a few moments ago, my hon. Friend spoke eloquently about the need for Britain to have a pay rise and poked fun at the Prime Minister’s late conversion to the need to deal with the fact that wages have been squeezed considerably under this Government. Indeed, by the end of this Parliament people will be worse off than they were at the start of the Parliament, which is unusual by historical standards.

I want to concentrate on Leicester where, like other cities, we are seeing increasing demands on our children’s services. Luckily, our local authority has managed to keep our Sure Start centres open, but some services have had to be cut. We are seeing growing demand on adult social care, like other cities, yet we are trying to cope with deep cuts. We are a city with a proud, vibrant voluntary sector. Perhaps it could be argued that the big society was invented in Leicester, yet all voluntary sector organisations are seeing their grants cut and they are struggling to provide the level of services to the community that they have been able to provide for the past few years. The Government’s rhetoric on the big society rather sticks in the throat when we see what is happening on the ground.

As to how the Government present the figures, my right hon. Friend John Healey and my hon. Friend the Member for

Sheffield South East did extremely well in exposing the fact that when the Government talk about spending power calculations, they are trying to disguise the cuts facing councils. John Pugh, who is not in his place, made a brutal contribution referring to that as sophistry. The Government tell us that, on their spending power calculations, Leicester sees a 5.4% reduction. However, as many have pointed out, these figures are distorted by including the totality of the better care fund, a significant proportion of which is not available for local authorities to spend.

With that element removed, the year-on-year reduction in spending power for Leicester is 9.4%, so what we need is not sophistry, in the words of the hon. Member for Southport, but a fairer funding settlement for cities such as Leicester. We need a funding settlement that truly recognises the deprivation in cities such as Leicester. In Leicester—which, by the way, did what the Government want; we have a directly elected mayor—what the city mayor and the local authority need is a funding settlement that allows them to budget for the longer term. We need the devolution of genuine powers to our cities, because a city such as Leicester, with its vibrant, dynamic population, can take full advantage of those powers and make a real difference.