Written evidence to be reported to the House
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill
2:16 pm
Phil Woolas: Personally? East Riding of Yorkshire—that is one that I have studied. In my view—I think it would be shared by my predecessors in all Governments—when you make changes in local government finance, there is normally a built-in creep upwards. It is therefore incumbent on Government to make sure that that does not happen. For example, our new burdens policy is a good policy, which rightly recognises that councils may be given extra responsibilities and that it is incumbent on Government to provide the resources to meet them. However, it is a net new burdens policy—savings as well as costs are generated by changes. Precisely because it is a bottom-up process that we are proposing, it is incumbent on councils, and not the Government, to prove the financial case, and we have built that in to the criteria. That is how I see it.