Local Government Finance

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:30 pm on 27 November 1996.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of John Gummer John Gummer Secretary of State for Environment 3:30, 27 November 1996

The fact is that the money is there. Resources include fees and charges for car parking and such like. There are all sorts of other resources. Many local authorities get considerable money from the interest payments on their capital receipts, which gives them the opportunity to keep council taxes down. When the Labour party says that authorities should spend as much of that money as they like, I hope that it realises that the public will want to know why their council taxes would thereby go up.

The hon. Gentleman said that we set levels. We do not; local authorities decide at what level they should spend. I am merely giving them additional elbow room to spend up to 3.6 per cent. more on education. That is because we make education a priority.

On housing spending, we are considerably extending the opportunities for large-scale voluntary transfers and introducing a system that will enable authorities that do not like traditional LSVTs to use housing companies. I hope that we shall find significant sums by tapping those resources.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned capping levels. Of course there are capping levels; if there were not, many Labour local authorities would push up the council tax again and again and again. Labour is committed to abolishing capping.

Labour also used the old canard of Westminster. I repeat this simple fact: when Labour was in power, Westminster did proportionately better than other authorities.