Local Government Finance (England)

Part of Police Grant Report (England and Wales) – in the House of Commons at 5:33 pm on 10 February 2016.

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Photo of Graham Stuart Graham Stuart Conservative, Beverley and Holderness 5:33, 10 February 2016

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been a champion of the rural interest, along with so many other colleagues, in arguing for a fair settlement. In the rural fair share campaign, which has always been a cross-party campaign, we have been clear that we want something that is fair to all.

The reason I have been so confrontational with Labour colleagues is that I am starting to hear the old untruths coming out, such as the suggestion that there is a difference, as Jim McMahon described it, between some phenomenally wealthy Trafford and some downtrodden Oldham, and that the allocation of money is utterly unfair. Of course the people taking the biggest percentage reductions in the Government grant were predominantly, in the original settlement, rural areas. Mets were getting an average reduction of 19% and rural areas were seeing cuts of 30%-plus in their Government-supported spending. That is the truth: those are the facts in the data table. Yet, to listen to the hon. Gentleman, one would think the opposite was true. He puts forward the entirely false argument that the cuts are somehow unfair. Transitional arrangements are put in place to soften the blow.

We now have the opportunity—I must say that I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—for all of us, on both sides of the House, to move to a settlement that is fair to rural and urban areas alike and to Labour and Conservative areas alike. Never ever again must we have a Government who, for partisan purposes, put in place a skewed and unfair formula in the outrageous, shameless and shameful way that the Labour Government did during their 13 years.

Several hon. Members rose