§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Maude.]
11.32 pm§ Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury)We are approaching the local elections which are to take place on the 8 May. A crucial issue will be the standards, quality and the level of service provided for the people of the boroughs and districts of England and Wales. The need to preserve and protect those services and to prevent any further erosion of those services will be a major issue at the elections.
However, many local electors may fail to recognise that the blame for much of the deterioration of the services that they currently receive must lie at the door of central Government. Central Government have a crucial role to play in determining what local people in districts and boroughs receive. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) will wish to contribute to this all-too-short debate if he should catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I should like to concentrate my remarks on two specific areas of policy. Before I do that, I shall examine the Government's general policy towards local authority services and finance. Through the rate support grant system and now through the operation of the Rates Act 1984 and the rate capping which is a consequence of it, the Government have a major role to play in determining the services that people receive.
Initially the Government attempted to squeeze local authorities by the operation of penalties and controls and by the withdrawal of rate support grant. In my borough of Islington, rate support grant was cut from £30 million in 1980 to £6 million in 1984–85. That was the extent of the squeeze on rate support grant Government money which should have come as of right to the hard pressed inner city area of Islington.
Rate capping has led to a modest but welcome increase in rate support grant. As a natural consequence of the operation of rate capping and the grossly inadequate levels of provision of services which the Government have forced on the borough of Islington, the borough has been able to provide a decent level of service to the people only by making strenuous efforts to preserve services, to eradicate waste and to use every possible financial manoeuvre. Those decisions should be taken by the people of Islington through the ballot box, not by central Government sitting in Whitehall determining arbitrary and inadequate funding through the rate support grant settlement and the rate cap limits which are placed on the borough which I have the honour to serve as Member of Parliament.
Education in my area is provided by the Inner London education authority. It is the only authority in the country that does not receive any rate support grant from the Government. The people of inner London have, for the past two years, paid with their taxes to support the education services of all other education authorities, but not their own. The provision of education in inner London has had to be financed entirely through the rates and from ratepayers' pockets. In addition, ILEA is rate-capped and is struggling to provide a decent education service.
The Government say that ILEA spends too much and that it costs too much to provide education in inner 984 London. The Government do not apply the same argument to the Metropolitan police, which costs twice as much per policeman and per head of population as the next most expensive urban police authority in the country. The Government recognise, rightly, that London has special policing needs and that it is more expensive to police London. However, they do not take the logic of their argument as they should and determine, as they should, that the education, housing and social services needs of London are also special and are likely to be more expensive and in need of more resources than many other parts of Britain.
Our children's education is an investment for the future. Unfortunately, because of the Government's attitude towards the Inner London education authority, the parents of inner London are being sold short.
In 1980, the housing investment programme allocation for Islington was, at present-day prices, £69 million. In the current financial year, it is only £29 million, and that figure includes approximately £4 million, supposedly to take account of the transferred stock from the GLC which, until this year, was the responsibility of the GLC for maintenance and improvement programmes. The allocation for housing provision available to the local authority—the amount that it is allowed to spend by central Government—has been cut to one third of what it was six years ago. That is no way to treat the thousands of families in Islington who depend on ther local council for a decent home at a price that they can afford. Of course, those who have £100,000 to spend can probably buy a small family house in some parts of Islington, but those who do not have that sort of money cannot buy properties. They must turn to the local authority for somewhere to live.
Thousands of families in my constituency are desperate to move into good quality rented accommodation. By reason of so little building, repair and rehabilitation work, which stems from the enormous cut in housing allocations imposed by this Government on the local authority, many of them are forced to live in overcrowded, damp and inadequate accommodation.
That is the Government's answer to the homeless and the badly housed, and to those in my constituency who are simply in need of a good home. That is no proper answer to the needs for services for many thousands of my constituents. The blame for the absence of the services which they need must lie fairly and squarely at the Government's door, and I hope that on the 8 May the people of Islington will realise that fact.
§ Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) for allowing me part of the time of his debate. He has outlined the problem that people in Islington face concerning housing, education, and the way that our local authority has been treated in general by central Government.
I would like the Government to understand the strength of feeling about the needs of the people in Islington at present. Above the town hall there is a large red sign which indicates the number of registered unemployed. That figure is around 18 per cent. of the registered work force. It varies across the borough, but it is a scandalously high figure. If one takes those who are not registered, or those 985 young people on youth training schemes not able to register, the real figures of unemployment goes well over 25 per cent. across the whole borough.
The Government have often told us that one of the reasons why unemployment is high in the inner city areas is to do with high rates. Historically, unemployment in Islington has been above the London and south-east average for at least the last 15 years, if not longer.
The movement of industry out of Islington has been consistent with the movement of industry out of inner city areas throughout the country. It is not special to our area. There is no indication that the loss of industrial jobs, as firms have moved out, lured away by tax holidays and enterprise zones to other places, is any different in our borough from any other London borough.
What is different is that our borough council, together with the Greater London Enterprise Board and the GLC, before it was so tragically abolished, have done a great deal to try to promote employment activity in the borough, and promote the building of small units and workshops and co-operative development agencies. We have an active cooperative development agency.
What is different is that our borough is rate-capped, and because of that we have lost out over the past four years on a great deal of Government money, some of which could have been used to promote employment within the borough.
When one surveys the problems that the people in both our constituencies face, and looks at the levels of unemployment and skills that have been offered at the jobcentres throughout the borough, one sees both the tragedy and the solution. We see the tragedy of houses that need repair and rehabilitation, of hospitals that need to be built up, of health facilities that need to be expanded. We see building workers walking past those places on the dole, their lives wasting away for want of public investment to solve both problems. In microcosm, many inter-city problems have been found in the borough that we represent.
I want to mention the conditions of life for many of the elderly and poor people within the borough. Islington has a considerable number of elderly people. This is consistent with the inner city problem, particularly in London, where the younger and middle-aged people have often moved away from central London, either to the suburbs or into the new town areas, encouraged by Government policy over the years, leaving behind them elderly people. Those elderly people are often lonely. They are often poor. Many of them rely entirely on the state pension or supplementary benefit. I would imagine that the number who actually have pensions and are in private pension schemes is much less than any other part of the country. It is the condition of life of those people to which I want to refer. They rely heavily on the council social services department, day centres for the elderly and to some extent on old people's homes. The council has a splendid social services department which has worked incredibly hard in an innovative way to assist elderly people, but again it is hamstrung by lack of finance for the developments that it wants to make.
Alongside that problem is the way that the caring services in the borough have been treated. Because we have had a falling population until recently, under the resources allocation working party formula for the Health 986 Service, Government funding of health services in Islington will decline steeply for the rest of the decade. By the end of the decade there will have been a cut of 15 per cent. in real terms in Health Service spending. That is not because the population of Islington is unusually healthy or because there is not a demand for the health services, but simply because of the bureaucratic interpretation of the RAWP formula, which insists on taking money away from an inner urban area. My hon. Friend and I both experience the problems of queues at hospitals. Centralisation of hospital facilities has taken place because of the closure of some hospitals such as the Liverpool road hospital. The royal northern hospital is declining fast because of the way its funding has been treated by the district health authority and the regional health authority. There is also centralisation at Whittington hospital.
Social services and health services also face the problem of the closure of the Friern Barnet hospital for psychiatrics and the transfer of those people into the community. I do not think any of us are opposed to community care, but we are concerned that community care seems to mean abdication by the Health Service, by the Government and by local authorities of the duty to care for those people. While there should be community care, at the end of the day the Government should be prepared to pay the bill.
The Select Committee reported last summer on the problem of the psychiatrically ill and the need for proper support for community care for them. I hope that in her reply the Minister will respond to the problems faced by the Health Service and the social services department of the council. I repeat a request that my hon. Friend and I made to the last Health Minister but one—they seem to change quite often—for a joint-funded post to study the effects of cost-cutting in the Health Service and the increased cost that that puts on the local social services department. I hope the Minister will take up that matter.
Often the local authority social services department has to pick up the pieces when there have been cuts in the National Health Service, with patients being released from hospital more quickly because of pressure of management techniques in the Health Service and the local authority social services department.
There are also problems concerning such things as occupational therapy. Both the Health Service and the local authority have shortages of occupational therapists because there is a national shortage and because there are insufficient training facilities. That might be a little problem of a small amount of money for the Government, but at the other end of the scale it means that often people have to wait six months to a year, or even longer, for simple occupational therapy treatment in their own homes. That is scandalous because it reduces the mobility of the people.
The issues of health and social services are important to the people of Islington. Over the past few years the local authority, through the rate capping legislation and the abolition of the GLC, has lost much funding. Because of that, and because of central Government control of expenditure, the local authority has lost its democratic rights. In the case of the Health Service we have very few democratic rights in the control of our own health authority. There is no political reflection of the make-up of the borough in the make-up of Islington health 987 authority. That may be beyond the scope of this debate, but it is a problem of which the Government should be aware.
Poverty and unemployment in the borough go hand in hand with the very large increase in the number of claimants at all the social security offices—at Tavistock square, at Arcola street and at the Archway tower itself. That also goes hand in hand with the cut in real terms in the number of staff available to deal with the claimants, the increase in waiting lists of people who merely want to see benefit officers and the problems of people being unable to claim or to see a benefit officer. The social security legislation offers us no hope in that direction. Indeed, it moves matters in the other direction.
The problems that we suffer in Islington are typical of the problems in inner city areas. There are enclaves of poverty in both our constituencies as bad as or worse than one could see anywhere in the country, and the only solution is the investment of large amounts of public sector finance to increase employment and increase hope. There is something quite scandalous about youngsters on the Holloway road or around the Angel or anywhere in the borough leaving school and having no hope of a job, apart from participation in a series of YTS projects for a short period. They wander the streets all day passing shops stacked high with video equipment. They pass by a consumer society that they are not allowed to join and in the streets cars pass them heading into central London.
There is a degree of poverty and despair about which many young people and, indeed, many old people in our borough feel deeply and strongly. I know that when they are given the opportunity to vote in the local elections they will reiterate their faith in the policies that our local authority has pushed to try to get resources into the borough. The answer to our problems lies with the Government and they must make the decisions. We look to the Government to recognise the problems we face and to finance our borough accordingly.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Angela Rumbold)Having listened to the hon. Members for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) I have to say how sorry I feel for their ratepayers. The one point I share with both hon. Gentlemen is that the ratepayers of Islington will take the opportunity to vote on 8 May. We have heard a great deal about deprivation in Islington. There is great deal of anxiety about the way in which Islington progresses. That has more to do with the extravagant Socialist policies that have been carried out by the local council to the detriment of the basic services and employment than with the policies of the Government.
Islington, unlike many areas with high unemployment outside London, has the very advantage that the hon. Member for Islington, North described—its foot in the door of the City. It has also a considerable architectural and historical heritage to build on. The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury made a most eloquent speech. There is a clear, distinct and fundamental difference between his perception of the way in which central and local government should interconnect and the services that local government should provide, and how far the ratepayers should be expected to pay for them.
The hon. Gentleman knows very well that the Government's role is to look at local government 988 expenditure in the context of the whole of public expenditure. It is right that central Government should set the tone and the general remit for the amount of central Government funding to local government. The amount of money going to local government should be entirely at the disposal of the local authorities and its allocation should be at their discretion.
The amount of money that central government give to local government has been reduced specifically because the Government feel that local authorities should be accountable to their ratepayers. If there is large expenditure, the ratepayers have to pick up a heavier bill. The hon. Gentleman complained bitterly about Islington being rate-capped, but he conveniently forgets that Islington council rejects the policies of the Government. That is well known. Our policy is to protect ratepayers from the depredations of irresponsible and extremist local administrations. Islington councillors reject the policy of the Government to encourage restraint in local adminstration.
It is a great pity that the hon. Gentleman takes that attitude, because even previous Labour administrations recognised that central Government have a role in seeking some restraint in local govenment expenditure. Therefore, we are not into a new game. Ten years on, the Government are still trying to restrain local government spending and to help authorities that wish to run their affairs in a sensible way.
While the Government are more than willing to assist local authorities to maintain services—particularly in Islington—at a reasonable level, they are confronted with the stated objective of Islington council, which wishes to continue to promote growth and development of local services apparently without end and totally oblivous to the cost that it is building up for the local community.
The hon. Member talked about education, and said that ILEA has no Government grant. That is entirely a matter for ILEA. If it chose to limit its expenditure, it would be entitled—just as every other local authority is—to get the Government block grant. But ILEA is the one education authority in the country that is not subjected, as all the others are, to the disciplines of having to bid within the general dispersal of services. Therefore, it is almost free-ranging in its ability to spend money without having to consider the needs and requirements of other areas of service that all other education authorities must consider simply because the local authorities in which they operate exercise those disciplines.
Fortunately, London parents will have the opportunity on 8 May to go to the ballot box and vote in a new authority. I hope that they will look not only at the amount of money that the present ILEA chooses to spend but at the quality of education delivered by the schools. If ever an authority demonstrated that throwing money at a problem does not necessarily get value for that money, ILEA is that authority.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to housing, and I listened carefully to what he said because I know that he has a great interest and considerable expertise in this subject. Of course I am aware of the council's housing needs and its problems in dealing with homelessness, unfit property and high levels of deprivation. These and all the other factors contained in the council's annual housing investment programme submission are taken into account. But recent HIP allocations have fully honoured—indeed, bettered—the undertakings given to the council 989 about the resources that it could expect within the overall resources available. We feel that Islington's needs have been adequately provided for.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced on 20 November last that the total available nationally for HIP allocations for 1986–87 was £1,465 million, and of this £1,412.5 million has been initially allocated. London's share was £470 million, and that has been allocated on the basis of housing need identified by the boroughs in their housing strategy statements and their bids for capital resources.
London's share of the initial capital allocation is 30 per cent. in full recognition of its need. In addition, boroughs will be able to reinvest part of the receipts that they generate through sales of council homes to tenants and through sales of vacant housing land. As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, Islington's housing investment programme allocation for 1986–87 is £29.355 million. This is some 86 per cent. of the allocation for 1984–85, when it was advised to plan on the basis of receiving 70 per cent. The council will therefore be able to augment this allocation with the prescribed proportion of available capital receipts, as the hon. Gentleman knows only too well. I therefore believe that Islington's housing needs have been looked at with some care.
990 The hon. Member for Islington, North referred to the state of employment within the area and the state of the Health Service. It is true that efforts have been made through a number of schemes—not least, the open programme scheme and the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment—to launch initiatives in Islington, not only to assist with the training of young people but also to assist and encourage business men to come into the area.
It is sad that some of those initiatives, particularly in the urban programme, are stifled somewhat by the borough's attitude to limiting the urban programme to supporting co-operatives. If the council could see fit to do otherwise, there would be a greater opportunity to provide jobs for youngsters and elderly people in the area.
I also know of the worry about the policy of developing local community care facilities following the closure of Friern hospital. I understand that the matter has now been referred to the regional health authority. As it may go to my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Security for decision, it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Twelve o' clock.