§ Amendments made: No. 52, in line 3. after "borrowing', insert 'and lending'
§ No. 53, in line 16, after 'amendments' insert 'of or'.—[Mr. Graham Page.]
1787§ Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.]
§ 10.27 p.m.
§ Mr. Graham PageI beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I express at once my gratitude to both sides of the House and the Committee for the constructive debates that we have had. I think that we have achieved some reasonable amendments to the Bill and that we can send it to another place as something very worthy of its consideration and, I hope, rapid passage through the other place.
The Bill carries out some substantial reforms. It does so, first, in the calculation and distribution of the rate support grant by giving powers to the Secretary of State to be more flexible in the formula for the distribution and calculation. The powers given by the Bill will enable the Government to ensure much more certainly and specifically than has ever before been possible the share out of the grant according to the needs of the local authorities.
The Bill introduces the new transport supplementary grant, the new national parks grant and the grant to the Countryside Commission. There have been arguments that we ought to have abandoned rates, that we ought to have found other revenue for local authorities, but, given the rate system, I believe that by means of the Bill we shall make it work fairly in the coming year, and that had we not had the Bill, had we relied upon the powers in the 1966 Act, there could not have been a fair distribution of the rate support grant this year, nor could we have treated individual ratepayers fairly.
In Part II we have instituted the most substantial rate rebate scheme ever. This is not just an amendment of an existing rate rebate scheme but something massively new by means of which 3 million more people will be entitled to rate rebate up to substantial income limits. That means that about 4 million people ought to be receiving rate rebates.
That same part of the Bill increases the statutory deductions and makes reforms in the rating system as the system applies to 1788 improvements, plant and machinery, public utilities, disabled persons and so on.
We then introduced flexibility into the ordinary rating of empty property, the rating of empty property as we have known it already under statute, which was too rigid. The Bill makes it more flexible. In the course of the Report stage the House has introduced a surcharge for the keeping of commercial premises deliberately unoccupied. That is, again, a very new proposition, but one which will be a very serious deterrent to the lack of use of commercial properties.
In addition to the financial reforms brought about by the Bill, there is the very important Part III dealing with the local government ombudsman. This will undoubtedly be of very great interest to the public. I am sure every hon. Member will agree that nine-tenths of the constituents who come to see him when he holds a surgery or clinic, whatever one calls it, come about matters of local government, complaining about the administration perhaps of the local authorities. It will be of interest to the public that there will be an independent commissioner to look into that sort of complaint.
Finally, in Part IV we have tried to remove some of the outdated and outmoded controls exercised by central Government over local government and continued the process which we started in the Local Government Act 1972 to relax central Government controls on local government and to give local authorities a greater discretion.
Again I express my gratitude to all those who have taken part in the debates on the Bill and to all those who have advocated amendments to the Bill which were not drafted by parliamentary counsel. I know that it is always difficult when one has ideas of how to improve a Bill to put them into language which will be acceptable ; but through amendments of that sort appearing on the Order Paper we have been able to debate and discuss them and to introduce improvements to the Bill.
I commend the Bill to the House.
§ 10.33 p.m.
§ Mr. OakesIt would be churlish of me if I did not at the outset add a personal note to say how much the 1789 Opposition appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman the Minister has done, not only on this Bill but on many others. The right hon. Gentleman does not give way easily. He is prepared to consider an amendment from whatever part of the House or Committee it comes and to consider it on its merits. On many occasions he has been man enough to say that the other side or those who moved amendments were right and that his original advice was wrong. Time and again during the passage of this Bill he has in that way accommodated the House. I often wonder whether the Leader of the House realises how much easier his job is made by a reasonable and responsible Minister who cares for local government in the way that the right hon. Gentleman cares. I pay that tribute to him.
The timetabling of the Bill has been rather surprising. It must appear so to the right hon. Gentleman too. Local government has been desperately awaiting, and still desperately awaits, the final outcome of the Bill. New local authorities will be in existence on 1st April 1974, a matter of weeks from now. The Government brought the Bill before the House two years late. First, it ought to have accompanied the Local Government Act 1972. It was then promised for the following year, but it did not come. It came this Session.
With the Bill coming as late as it did, in November, because of the concern and anxiety felt by treasurers of local authorities throughout the country, in Committee we were perhaps—the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me, I hope—much more lenient with the Bill and with the Government than we might otherwise have been. I think the Minister will agree that we ensured that the Bill had a speedier passage than many Bills of equal complexity and size. We did so to assist the Government to accommodate local government
We gave the Government the Bill as early as 12th November because we understood that local government was desperate to have the Bill and so that it should go through all its stages here before Christmas so that it could go through the other place early in January. To our astonishment, it did not come up for its final stages in this House during the last weeks of December. It 1790 did not even come up at the beginning of this year. The result is that it goes to another place for Second Reading on 31st January. Its Committee stage in another place will be on about 10th February. It must inevitably be towards the end of February before it reaches its final stages in another place. There may well be amendments coming back to this place.
We may well be into March before the operative Act dealing with local government functions becomes the law of the land, yet the new authorities will be in existence on 1st April. I commend entirely the spirit, good nature and concern which the Minister has expressed, but on behalf of local government we can only deplore the attitude of the Leader of the House and, through him, the Government generally on the way in which they have dealt with this vitally important Bill for the future of local government.
The right hon. Gentleman says that we have made many improvements to the Bill. I agree. We have done so because it will be a Bill that local government will abide by for a number of years. It is a major Bill. I cannot but regret that in many respects it is such a tame measure. The right hon. Gentleman says, with understandable pride, that many millions of pounds will be put forward by the Government to assist individual domestic ratepayers and that that sum will increase year by year whichever Government are in office. We cannot help but wonder whether the system is right when we must pay so much money to uphold a system which is so defective that it needs such a large amount of money to avoid individual ratepayers facing a burden which they could not possibly bear.
Many Government supporters must feel that we have merely tinkered with the system and that we have not basically amended it. The Opposition have tried to put forward amendments, particularly in the form of new clauses, that might have given local authorities greater powers to bring money from their own resources such as land and trading. Those amendments were defeated. I hope that the other place will not look at such aspects of local government from a party political point of view because of the desperate need of local government to 1791 have sources of finance other than Government grant and rates. The need is imperative.
Let us face facts. We have not basically tackled that need. Of course there have been improvements. A dramatic improvement occurred in Committee. I pay tribute to Conservative Members who moved amendments in Committee which would have provided unlimited penal clauses for the obscenity of leaving commercial developments empty. The Government introduced a new clause of which I was critical yesterday. I think that the House and the other place will be critical of both its wording and effect because it will not do the job that we hoped it would do.
During the course of the Bill the Government's mind was changed dramatically either by the course of events outside the House or by the pressure of some Conservative Members and Labour Members who decided that something must be done to remedy the evil of commercial developments being left empty.
Many things still need to be done about the rating system. We are giving a Third Reading to an important Bill. We have improved and amended the original Government proposals, with the assistance of the right hon. Gentleman and other Ministers.
Although the provisions relating to the ombudsman should have been in a separate Bill, nevertheless the Opposition welcome these provisions. We all know of the many grievances which are raised with hon. Members at their surgeries and which do not require to be taken up with Government Departments but are cases where citizens feel aggrieved at what the local authority has or has not done. The ombudsman will help such people.
I hope that the commisisoner's terms of reference will be such as to enable more use to be made of him than seems to have been made of the Parliamentary Commissioner. Here I do not criticise the Parliamentary Commissioner. I criticise the terms of reference. Many hon. Members tend to send cases to him which must be rejected because of his terms of reference. I hope that many more cases will be able to be dealt with by the local government commissioner, which will give the aggrieved citizen some sense of his 1792 grievance being assuaged or of the local authority paying the penalty publicly and to the individual concerned for the wrong done him.
The other place, too, has a vital rôle to play on the Bill in considering amendments, particularly amendments like those propounded by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) relating to planning. We in this House, because of great pressure of time, did not have time to consider those amendments as adequately as we would have liked.
We shall not oppose the Third Reading. I hope that the other place is speedy in its deliberations, not to assist the Government but to assist local government which so desperately needs a firm conclusion as to where the money is to come from. It needs this conclusion in a matter of days rather than of months.
§ 10.43 p.m.
§ Mr. Evelyn KingA debate on Third Reading is usually an occasion for honeyed words and brevity. I shall try to follow the tradition in both respects.
I did not have the honour and pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee. I am grateful to those who did. I shall confine my remarks to that part of the Bill in which I am most interested, namely Part III. I am bound to be at least a little interested, because I tried to introduce a Private Member's Bill along these lines.
Part III will make the biggest appeal to the public at large. Whatever we may think of local authorities—in Dorset we have local authorities which are as efficient as any—there is no denying the fact, as every hon. Member knows, that the majority of complaints made to hon. Members relate to local authorities. It is entirely reasonable that there should be proper machinery for investigation of any form of maladministration.
It is upon the question of maladministration that I want to offer the only criticism that I shall offer. It might be supposed that any form of maladministration which is alleged should be investigated and that there should be no restriction. That would seem to be the logic. The obvious exception to that, and it is one that the Bill makes, is that that shall not be done where that is already a similar duty laid upon another 1793 body—a tribunal or a court. But that presupposes that that other body is itself efficient.
§
Clause 25(6) says:
A Local Commissioner shall not conduct an investigation under this Part of this Act in respect of any of the following matters, that is to say …
§ The type of case I have in mind is the planning appeal: the local commissioner will have no right to interfere in that type of matter.
§ That is reasonable if the Minister does what he should. But we should note that the hearing of an appeal under the aegis of the Department now takes on average about 62 weeks. It is reasonable to assume that some six months has passed before one gets to the point of appealing, so a person who wishes to appeal against a planning decision will not on average get his answer for about two years. There comes a point when justice delayed is justice denied, and we are near to reaching that point.
§ May I take the common case of a person who buys a house in London for, say, £30,000—not an exaggerated sum in London. If he is kept waiting two years with that amount of money at risk because he cannot agree with the planning authorities about how the house should be converted or altered, for the whole of that time he is paying in interest about £100 a week. I am talking not about the big developer but about the ordinary individual buying himself a house. This is a penal state of affairs. It can be and is a cruel thing. It has the added drawback of keeping houses in London empty for months on end. The number of houses empty in London not for the familiar reasons but because their owners are awaiting planning decisions must be very large.
§ There is injustice here. If the local commissioner is not to convict anyone of maladministration in this matter, even though justice is delayed two years, a double obligation falls upon my right hon. Friends to see that the job cast upon them is being efficiently done. No one who knows the facts can deny that at the moment it is not being efficiently done. I know that we now have the 1794 Dobry Report and I hope that action will be taken upon it.
§ This is not a major subject of the Bill but it is part of the subject of the Bill, because the local commissioner will not be able to express any view on planning matters. So much the greater, therefore, is the Minister's duty.
§ 10.48 p.m.
§ Mr. Elystan Morgan (Cardigan)I will try to observe the self-denying ordinance that is traditional on Third Readings, especially at this late hour. On Second Reading on 12th November I sought to draw the attention of the House to what I regarded as basic weaknesses and deficiencies in the Bill. I certainly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) that it has been improved in Committee, but those improvements dealt with specific matters which did not affect the main theme of my criticism.
I regret to tell the House that the fears I expressed on that occasion are still unallayed. Indeed, they have deepened as a consequence of what has happened over the last few weeks.
The aim of the Bill is wrong and evil in so far as it seeks to siphon resources away from rural areas which are greatly in need of central Government assistance to the towns and cities. I agree that the demands of the urban areas are great but these should not be met at the expense of the countryside. Wales will suffer considerably because of this proposal and it is no secret that seven out of the eight new county councils in Wales bemoan the fact that the Government have opted for the formula which will eventually be prescribed by them as the basis for rate support grant.
In these circumstances we are astounded that we shall not be privileged with the presence on this most important occasion of the Secretary of State for Wales or his junior Minister. I understand that he has absented himself throughout the whole of this debate. I am not surprised that no Welsh Tory Members are present either. They have as little interest in Wales as Wales has in the Tory Party. The damage that the provision to which I have referred will do to Wales is incalculable. On Second Reading it was estimated that the net loss to the new Welsh authorities by 1795 way of rate support grant would be of the order of £10 million, but that may be a serious underestimate. We may now have to think in terms of a sum in excess of £15 million.
The consequence of such a shortfall for Wales is all too clear. Either there will be a substantial lowering of standards of basic local government services, which in many cases are already at a low level, or there will be a wholly intolerable raising of the general rate. In such a situation the provisions for a contribution towards the domestic rate element can only stave off the evil hour. This will only ameliorate the situation in the short term, cushion the worst effect of the blow for a limited period and do nothing for non-domestic property. In a constituency like mine, with the lowest level of industrial development in the country, the difficulty of attracting industry is already a frustration. Such a situation will be made infinitely worse because of the Bill.
This case has been put to the Secretary of State for Wales, the trustee of the Principality in the Cabinet, by my right hon. and hon. Friends on numerous occasions. This is not the first time that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has failed miserably to protect the interests of our land and nation in Government but this is his greatest failure and we can well understand why he does not have the face to attend the debate tonight.
It is one thing to bring about the ruination of Welsh local government—I do not think I am exaggerating my case—but it is even worse to refuse to let the Welsh people be given the basic facts of the miserable situation. Over the nine weeks that have elapsed since Second Reading we have demanded of the Secretary of State the basic fundamental facts about the situation. We have been denied them by his Trappist silence. I now ask the Minister to tell us, first, by how many millions of pounds the total of rate support grant in respect of the services for which local government will be responsible will show a shortfall from the figure for the current year.
Is it not a fact that seven out of eight of the new Welsh county councils will be far worse off in consequence of these provisions? Can the Minister tell us what the average rise in rates will have 1796 to be merely to maintain the same level of services? Will he confirm that in the Dyfed County Council area the rise in rates must be of the order of 35 per cent. or upwards and that in the case of Powys it will be of the order of 80 per cent. or upwards? The Welsh people are being ruined by this provision. They are entitled to know the details of their fate.
§ 10.57 p.m.
§ Mr. Sydney Chapman (Birmingham, Handsworth)I hope that the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan) will forgive me if I do not follow up his criticisms, made from his Welsh seat. I should say, and I hope it will be taken sincerely, that the Minister of State, Welsh Office was present during the Committee proceedings and I think I am right in saying that, although the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Roderick) made important contributions to our proceedings, there was no official Welsh spokesman on the Opposition Front Bench. I think the hon. Gentleman was a little unfair in his strictures.
§ Mr. Elystan MorganMay I correct the hon. Member on one point? I was serving on another Committee which met at the same time. It has been the contention of my hon. Friends all along that there should have been two separate Bills, one for England and one for Wales.
§ Mr. ChapmanI accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I was meaning no discourtesy to him and was not suggesting that he should have been on the Opposition Front Bench. In view of the importance he attaches to the Bill as it affects the Principality, I would have thought that there might have been an official Welsh spokesman for the Opposition. No personal reflection was intended.
I respond warmly to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) and say that there is at least one Government back bencher who utterly agrees with the personal remarks he made about my right hon. Friend the Minister. He has been most helpful to us at all stages, particularly in supplying us with briefs in Committee.
I cannot accept that the rating system, certainly in so far as it affects the domestic element, is anything other than 1797 illogical, unfair and out of date. It is illogical because people do not necessarily pay according to the services they use, it is unfair because people do not pay directly according to their means and it is out of date because in any case 60 per cent. of the total of local authority revenue comes from the central Exchequer.
While the point made by my right hon. Friend about the rate rebate system being extended to help a further 3 million people is to be welcomed, it also underlines the increasing absurdity of the present system. As a person who has criticised the rating system, may I say that it is important for those within the Chamber and outside, who condemn the present system with all its anomalies and deficiencies, to endeavour in the coming months to put forward a viable alternative. I have tried to do so, but since the Bill is being passed and will shortly be on the statute book our minds should be concentrated on finding a practical, if radical, alternative, to the present system.
Recognising that the present system will be with us, I welcome the measures in the Bill, particularly its more sophisticated method of assessing the rate support grant for different local authorities. I particularly welcome the extra help which the new measures will give, especially to the large conurbations.
I welcome the modest changes which have been made in the rating system, especially with Clause 20, about valuation lists not being affected, although my right hon. Friend will note that I put down amendments to further strengthen and amend it.
I also welcome the point to which the hon. Member for Widnes referred in new Clause 14 to deal with the rating of unoccupied offices and other commercial premises. I, of course, welcome the setting up of the commissions for local administration to deal with an albeit limited category of complaints concerning alleged maladministration.
The fact remains that 9 million wage earners who in the normal course of events can and should afford to contribute directly to domestic rates and revenue therefrom do not do so. That is an utter condemnation of the present system. This has caused bitterness widely among millions of people who feel, rightly or 1798 wrongly, that they are being asked to pay amounts which other people, far better off, do not have to pay directly themselves.
Until we can remove that bitterness, which can come about only with a radically new system of raising finance, while I give the Bill my support, as a temporary measure, I shall not refrain from urging more radical measures from the present and future administrations.
§ 11.3 p.m.
§ Mr. David Austick (Ripon)I would follow the hon. Member for Birmingham Handsworth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) in his suggestion of radical changes in the way we raise money for local government.
Although I did not have the privilege of serving on the Committee, I respect those who served on it for the task they have performed. They started with rather a poor Bill, as I said on Second Reading, and they have perhaps improved it a little. It was not an easy task to improve such a poor Bill.
I am grateful to the Minister for having listened to my comments on Second Reading and for his having personally agreed in Committee to take out what I suggested was a most offensive clause.
This is a very tame Bill. In some ways it is only a shell. In Part I there are 40 occasions when a direction is left to the Minister. This is a strange situation for people in local government who will have to operate the Bill, which has taken such a long time to be brought even to this point, and hon. Members must sympathise greatly with local government officers who are to receive it at some future time and attempt to put it into operation. If they fail, it will be our fault. The Government have taken too long over the Bill and have not considered the working of local government and the time available to it to put the provisions into operation.
An onerous responsibility is put upon the local rating authorities, particularly in the penal system of levying rates on empty properties. To leave the decision to the local authority officers is unfair.
Many of the amendments that were put down on Report would not have been tabled if we had had a different system of raising finance. If the system of raising money on the value of the site 1799 rather than the value of the building had been introduced, we need not have spent so long considering the Bill.
I want to emphasise the problems of the sparsely populated areas. We heard an eloquent speech from a Welsh Member, the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan), but there are also sparsely populated areas in parts of England. We shall suffer particularly in the rural areas of the North of England and Wales. I was disappointed that yesterday the Minister mentioned in one of his replies only the amounts of additional revenue which were to be given to the metropolitan counties. I should like him to tell us what sums will be taken away from the non-metropolitan counties. It is no good putting just one side of the story. The right hon. Gentleman should put the other side so that we know where we stand.
We on the Liberal bench hope that the Bill has a swift passage through the other place and that certain amendments will be made there which this House has been unable to accept. We hope to have an opportunity to improve the Bill still further.
§ 11.8 p.m.
§ Mr. Arthur Jones (Northants, South)The hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. Austick) has voiced the misgivings that, almost without exception, we share about the reorganisation of local government finance. The Royal Commission on the reorganisation of local government got off on the wrong foot, because its terms of reference did not require it to look into the reform of local government finance. Perhaps it was unavoidable that that reform could not take place coincidental with the reform of local government, because no responsibility to look at the financial effects of local government reorganisation was placed upon the Royal Commission.
The House has also faced the reorganisation of the National Health Service and the whole of the water cycle. It has been a deluge—for want of a better word—for the Government, and not entirely of their own making. The Government were conditioned by what went before, particularly by the Royal Commission and the duties imposed upon it. The House was faced with making the best 1800 of the difficult circumstances created by the reform of local government, which inescapably was a root-and-branch reform.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Development. From what he said in the House and in Committee I feel sure that he would have preferred to see some significant alterations in local government finance. I know that he has addressed himself most effectively to bringing about the best possible settlement in the difficult circumstances which the Government faced. I pay tribute also to the Department, which had no comparables on which to base the guidance it gave to the Government.
There has been a tremendous reform in administration, there are new authorities and the staff changes have been an added problem. There is the clear requirement, with which I agree, to shift resources to the cities, where depopulation has occurred. On the other hand, it is necessary to protect domestic ratepayers in less heavily populated areas. I see the necessity for the Secretary of State to retain a considerable degree of latitude in respect of the domestic element of the rate support grant.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) who has led his team so effectively both in the House and in Committee. The members of that Committee, whose proceedings were so effective, reasonable and constructive, will join me in paying tribute to him.
Although I have voiced some criticism of the Bill, I am sure we have presented to the House an effective and fairly-drawn Bill which will perhaps see us through the transitional stage until we address ourselves to the reform of local government finance, which will be no mean job.
§ 11.12 p.m.
§ Mr. BlenkinsopI join in welcoming the greater part of the Bill and in the congratulations and thanks which have been expressed to the Minister for his understanding control of the proceedings in Committee and in the House. He has been receptive to many arguments that have been put forward, and valuable changes have been made in the Bill.
I particularly welcome the provisions the Bill makes for new administrative facilities for national parks. We all hope 1801 that this will result in a much greater independence of action in the national parks and in other parts of the countryside.
The Bill as a whole has to be seen in a worrying setting. It is unfortunate that we shall be unable to debate the rate support grant order until the Bill has passed through another place, as the Bill and the order are inextricably linked. The new local authorities which come into office on 1st April have to face many difficult problems. Information about the levels of rate support grant has been given only recently, and local authorities are confused about the way in which the cuts announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will affect them.
There can never have been a more difficult time for local authorities than the present. They have not had time to settle down with their new staffs, and indeed there must be shortfalls in their staff. Therefore, I can well understand the attitude of bodies like the Association of Municipal Corporations, which through its chairman has vigorously expressed its resentment at the comments made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who appeared to say that the local authorities had allowed their rates to go up and, in the present situation, were acting irresponsibly. Despite corresponence between the association's chairman and the Chancellor, there has been no attempt by the Chancellor to meet the association to resolve the matter, or indeed to apologise for his statement. It is certainly not an irresponsible matter if local authorities, faced with the problems of large urban areas and impending cuts in expenditure, have to increase their rates.
Special efforts are being made to try to protect individual ratepayers, but an unhappy situation faces all local authorities at present. Therefore, although I give a general welcome to the Bill, I must say that it is being enacted at a worrying time for local authorities. We can only sympathise deeply with those authorities in trying to meet their responsibilities.
§ 11.17 p.m.
§ Mr. Gwynoro Jones (Carmarthen)1, too, shall try to be brief, but I believe that it is important to draw the Minister's attention to some of the points which 1802 have been emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardigan (Mr. Elystan Morgan) and others.
The Bill is another manifestation of the end of an era in this country. Many things have been happening in the last few months which have had the result of our having to face a different situation.
The hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) has referred to the Bill's provisions as transitional arrangements. That is the best description that can be made of them, because in so many ways they avoid the real issues that face local authorities in the present era. I shall not pursue those matters, but I think it can be said that confusion is the dominant theme in local administration at present.
Local authorities in beginning to take up their new responsibilities are looking for far earlier guidance from the Government than they are receiving. I repeat that this is undoubtedly a difficult period for local government and certainly for local administrators. In that light I should like to follow the point made and emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardigan about the rate support grant.
The Minister in his opening remarks said that the rate support grant system was fair. I recognise and appreciate the problems of urban areas and major cities. I realise that the criticism last year was that not sufficient resources were given to those areas. The stresses and strains have been brought home more in the 1970s possibly than in earlier times. But at the same time I must stress that rural areas have problems which are just as intense and which impinge on ordinary people.
The condemnation of the rate support grant is not that it gives money to the urban areas and major cities but that it apparently seems to give them money at the expense of the rural areas. If there had to be additional assistance for urban areas it should be by way of additional subvention from the Exchequer.
I urge the Minister to tell us the new rate support grant figure for the Principality. We had difficulty yesterday in getting a direct answer, even though the Secretary of State for Wales was present. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member 1803 for Cardigan that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should be here now, but I point out that when he is here he never answers issues of this kind affecting Wales. Therefore, he might just as well not sit alongside the Minister.
What is the new rate support grant total for the Principality? Our guess is that it is about £195 million, a decrease of approximately £10 million. This is a high figure coming on top of the public expenditure cuts and the impact that they will have in rural areas.
The new authority of Dyfed, which comes into effect in April when three counties will be amalgamating, anticipates a loss of about £3 million. That is a major blow to an area that is already suffering from the problems of reorganisation. Coming on top of that is the new rate support grant system which will affect that authority considerably. As I say, Dyfed estimates the loss to be about £3 million.
I should like to mention two other points. The Minister may be surprised to learn that one is in fact a compliment. I think that most people will welcome the transport supplementation. It will possibly give some hope to certain areas. Some rural areas have major transport problems of various kinds, and the transport supplementation could be of great help to them. If it is a letter of intent, so to speak, that is one thing, but the Minister's commitment can be shown only by how he responds to schemes proposed by local authorities.
If the transport supplementation is to mean anything, it must be shown in terms of cash. Words mean nothing. Cash means everything. This particular part of the Act, as it will be, will be tested by how much money the Government will give to the new authorities in their assessments of the transport needs of the areas.
Finally I come to the local government ombudsman who is to look into administration problems in local government areas. This is a move in the right direction, limited though it might be. I should like to deal with the Minister's argument when he was attempting to justify the assertion that rent scrutiny boards, being judicial bodies, should not be subjected to the powers of the local government ombudsman.
1804 Those boards also have an administrative function, and that is to determine rents at an early stage. In Carmarthenshire the rent scrutiny board is months behind in its determination of fair rents.
Perhaps I may instance a real problem in terms of administration where the ombudsman must step in at some time in the future. Let us say that at the end of 1972 there was an assessment of a particular family which was living in a council house and it had an apartment. The apartment arrangement may have terminated in early 1973, but the tenant is still paying rent as if the lodger or relative was still living there. I have cases in my constituency of people paying a rent on the basis of having with them a lodger or a relative who has long since died.
The rent scrutiny boards have created an administrative problem in South Wales through the delay that is taking place, and unless the people to whom I have referred are dealt with during the next few weeks they will be paying this money until next October. In terms of local government administration, the ombudsman must one day be able to consider the administration of these rent scrutiny boards.
I come back to my original point about the effect of these provisions on the rural areas. I want the Minister to tell us his estimate of the effect on the Principality of the rate support grant provisions that were announced yesterday.
§ 11.27 p.m.
§ Mr. Robert C. Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West)I rise to join my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes; in the tribute he paid to the Minister and his team. I was a tail-end Charlie on the Bill, and I did not have the pleasure of serving on the Committee which considered it, but I have had the pleasure of serving with the right hon. Gentleman on many other Committees and I know the thoroughness with which he carries out his job.
I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the appointment of the local government ombudsman because, like other hon. Members, I know what a sickening feeling it is when one has to say to a constituent "I can make representations, but I can only accept the reply that I receive", knowing that in many cases the 1805 reply will be disappointing and there is nothing that one can do about it.
I agree 100 per cent. with what was said by the hon. Members for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) and Birmingham, Handsworth (Mr. Sydney Chapman) about the need to review the rating system. It is a pity that that was not done in the Bill. One has to remember all the external pressures on the House in all these issues. Indeed, it was external pressure on the House that gave us the hotch-potch of local government reorganisation in the first place. As a dedicated "one-tier-in-the-conurbations" man, I believe it is a pity that we have our present system.
I wonder whether we shall ever tackle the question of the rating system without a decision of the House as a House in its entirety that there should be a Royal Commission, with the House itself agreeing its composition and, having agreed that, deciding that it will accept its recommendations. I wonder whether we shall ever get a new rating system without that type of approach.
§ 11.30 p.m.
§ Mr. Graham PageI express gratitude for the generous words that have been said in this debate. I can add very little to what I said in moving the Third Reading, because most of the comments made are related to matters outside the contents of the Bill and I have always been trained on Third Reading to talk about nothing else than that which is in the Bill.
§ Mr. PageExcept when in opposition. In particular, the question of the distribution of the rate support grant is not in the Bill ; it will be announced within the next few days. I may be exaggerating slightly, but certainly it will be announced in a week or two. The two hon. Members from Wales will then know the figures and know that their flights of fancy have been quite fictitious.
I remind them that the formula which has emerged as a result of the powers in the Bill meets very much the case of the Welsh counties. There is a substantial sparsity factor in the needs element. The reserve element line—the rateable value 1806 below which a county is entitled to a reserve element—is substantially beneficial to counties such as the Welsh counties. The variable domestic element will be of great benefit and, taking the rate support grant as a whole, never has there been such a large percentage contributed by the taxpayer as 60.5 per cent.
§ Mr. Elystan MorganThe Minister of State will not be allowed to bolt into the same warren as that into which the Secretary of State has escaped on so many occasions with regard to this provision. I respect the Minister of State as a man of great integrity. He knows the figures. He knows that there will be a loss of millions of pounds for Wales.
Will the Minister now not escape behind any technicality but spell out to the Welsh people the emasculation that will take place in regard to local government powers in Wales? Will he tell us exactly how many millions will be lost and where the loss will fall? It would be worthy of the Minister of State were he to do that at this moment.
§ Mr. PageThere is no emasculation. If I were to start telling any part of the country what will apply to it and what distribution it will be getting out of the rate support grant, I should have to recite 400 sets of figures in respect of every authority. These are not fully calculated as yet. [Hon. Members: "Nonsense."] The Welsh counties have calculated some figures—which have been given across the Floor of the House tonight—which are thoroughly fictitious. They have no information on which to calculate those figures.
I shall not state any figures tonight——
§ Mr. MorganWhy not?
§ Mr. MorganThe Minister is bolting away from it.
§ Mr. PageIf the hon. Gentleman had any better formula to put forward for the distribution to meet the needs of those areas which are suffering because they have particular problems, he would do so. We have tried to meet these problems with the formula, by the three things to which I have referred—the sparsity factor in the needs element ; the raising of 1807 the level below which the resources element is granted ; and the variable domestic element. Once one applies that formula, one has to adjust elsewhere. I have said how it will be adjusted elsewhere by those three elements.
§ Mr. Elystan MorganThis is a very important matter. I am sure that even at this late hour it is right that it should be cleared up. Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that by the new formula, resources which otherwise—under the old formula—would have gone to rural areas are diverted to urban areas? Can he give a calculation for the whole of England and Wales in respect of the amount that will be diverted from the needs of rural areas to assist urban areas?
§ Mr. PageThe needs of rural areas have been met by the formula and by the distribution of £488 million, I think the figure is, on variable domestic relief. Those who might otherwise be losing on the resources element as compared with what they received in the previous year will be compensated in that way. This is the way we have endeavoured to work out the formula. However, as I say again, these figures are not in the Bill. They will be announced as soon as possible. I know how necessary it is for local authorities to have these figures as soon as possible, and that is why we have tried to give the information on matters which would normally go into orders which have to be made only when the Bill has received Royal Assent. We have, therefore, tried to put the whole information before the local authorities and before the House as quickly as possible.
As for the remaining comments on the Bill, I take the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Evelyn King) on planning but I think we have extended the jurisdiction of the ombudsman as far as we can cope with it to start with. I do not look upon this jurisdiction as rigid. Let us see how it works. Let us see whether we have put too much or too little work on the new ombudsman. We have spoken of him in the singular, but there will be a number of ombudsmen. They will have a far greater job to do than that of the Parliamentary Commissioner. They have to cover a far wider sphere of issues and 1808 disputes. I am grateful for the kindly acceptance of that part of the Bill because I regard it as of considerable importance.
I shall not spend a long time in winding up the debate or trying to answer all the points which have been made. We did not generate very much heat generally in our arguments on the Bill. I do not know whether hon. Members have noticed, but I have noticed that in the last hour or two the temperature in the House has fallen by about 10 degrees. I am frozen, and I want to finish this debate.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.