Absolutely. Those are the pressures facing our communities. We talk about local services as though they are isolated from one another, but they are the life blood of many towns, villages and communities. Library services, welfare support and advice, and housing services are crucial elements of what makes communities tick and brings them together.
I speak not only in my role as shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government but as someone with a fundamental belief in local government’s power to make a difference. I spent 12 mainly happy years, and my wife is nearing her 18th year, as a Tameside councillor. I want to add to the thanks that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale expressed in his speech. We do not thank nearly often enough those, of all political parties and none, who serve as councillors and elected Mayors, or the staff and officers who implement councillors’ decisions. I offer thanks and appreciation to all those who work in our communities as elected members and local authority staff and officers. They are on the frontline of defending public services. Not only that, but they are the last line of defence when it comes to making the tough decisions that the Government have forced on them. I recognise the way many of them value and take pride in their position as councillors.
The National Audit Office’s assessment of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government makes for rather uncomfortable reading. Fundamental to the argument presented by the NAO is the failure of the Ministry to present a long-term strategy for the sector. As a result, even the four-year settlement that we were told was intended to offer some financial stability just kicked the can down the road. Authorities face major funding uncertainties beyond 2019-20.
Even within those four years of supposed certainty, local government has had to deal with rapidly shifting priorities from central Government—often announced at relatively short notice. It is reported by the NAO that the majority of case study authorities with social care responsibilities that it spoke to said that central Government funding outside the settlement had changed a number of times. An example was the new homes bonus being repurposed to fund adult social care.
We are told that
“The Department’s view is that these changes reflect considered responses to new pressures and risks”.
Anyone who has been following the issue would know that those pressures and risks have been growing since the beginning of the decade. As will ring true for many of my hon. Friends who have spoken today, over the decade from 2010 to 2020 Tameside will have lost close to £200 million in funding. Stockport will have lost well over £100 million. We can, as I have said, never fill those gaps with council tax alone. Although Stockport has a slightly better and more advantageous council tax base than the Tameside part of my constituency, this year it will have to find a further £18 million of savings—or cuts, as I like to call them—which is leading to consultation of residents about some drastic changes to the delivery of social care.
Tameside has said that demand for its services is at unprecedented levels. That is because of the wider impact of austerity on the public purse. If we operate in silos, there should be no surprise when cost-shunting presents itself as a problem on the town hall doorstep. Whether it is the closure of Sure Start centres, early intervention and family support, or the reduction in the number of domestic violence officers who used to be employed by the police, resulting in children being presented as safeguarding cases to the local authority, everything moves one way—from one part of the public sector to another. It may be councils pushing on to the NHS or police pushing on to councils, but it is a merry-go-round of self-defeating prophecy. We must stop that, and fund services properly.
Elsewhere in the report, we were told that the Government are working towards implementing the fair funding review. However, the implications of that are not yet clear. I must be honest with the Minister: anything that comes from a Minister’s mouth and that includes the words “fair”, “funding” and “local government settlement” sends shivers down my spine. We sure know what that means: that the Tamesides, Stockports, Liverpools, Durhams, Leighs, Wigans and Hulls—I could rattle through all the areas—will almost certainly end up with less money. As sure as night follows day, that is what happens when the Tory Government instigate funding changes to local government. Yet we have real social need, and are not able to raise money directly. What we see is the culmination of a crisis facing local government across England. What certainty can the Minister give our councils that they will get a fair funding settlement reflecting the areas’ needs and their inability to make up funding gaps through other sources? So far that has been badly lacking.
I want to end by discussing today’s crisis. Tory Northamptonshire is the first council effectively to declare bankruptcy, but it will almost certainly not be the last. The NAO reckons that in the next few years, unless the funding settlement improves considerably, one in 10 councils with social care responsibilities will have exhausted their reserves and, almost certainly, be in a similar predicament.
How did Northamptonshire, which by any standard is a wealthy part of the country, with a good council tax base, end up with an overspend at this year end of about £21 million, and reserves depleted to about £17 million? I will tell the House how it happened: it took the advice of the former Secretary of State,
Sir Eric Pickles, who said that rather than complaining about cuts councils should spend their reserves. Once reserves are spent the money is gone; once the assets are sold, the asset base is gone. Once the money is gone, councils have to make cuts and take difficult decisions.