Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:23 pm on 17 May 2004.
Like the Government, we are holding a balance of funding review. All parties are considering the subject. The speech of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was all about the fact that we had to consider such things. There is common ground on both sides of the House. We all think that local authorities need to be able to raise a greater proportion of what they spend, but there are different ways of addressing that—some of them are covered by the balance of funding review but some go beyond it. We are committed to looking into the matter.