Local Government Finance (Hansard, 18 December 1996)

§ 8. Mr. McAllion
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what recent representations he has received concerning the 1997–98 financial settlement for Scottish local government. [8139]

§ Mr. Kynoch
Representations were received from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and a number of individual councils and other bodies prior to the announcement of the 1997–98 local government finance settlement.

§ Mr. McAllion
Does the Minister accept that within that settlement there is a savage 30 per cent. cut in spending on council housing in Scotland at a time when one in four of Scotland's children lives in housing which suffers from dampness, condensation and mould? When there are 7,000 excess deaths in Scotland every year, why are the Government cutting the spending that would keep people's homes warm and dry? Do the Government not understand that cuts in the housing programme increase ill health and thus add to the burdens on an already overstretched national health service?

§ Mr. Kynoch
The hon. Gentleman is great at knocking our proposals for local government in the coming year, but he does not say from where he would take the extra funding if he had the opportunity to decide. Last year he was good enough to tell us that he would take it from the health service. This year he was tempted into saying that he would take it from law and order. We regard health and law and order as priorities, and we believe that local government must get its house in order and start making itself efficient. The settlement that we have given it this year is more than reasonable.

§ Mr. Richards
Does my hon. Friend have any information about the views of the Scottish business community on the financial settlement for local government next year, especially in the light of the Labour party's proposals for devolution and the disclosures of the level of uncollected taxes and the fact that some 54 per cent. of Scottish gross domestic product may be taken up in public expenditure when the target for the UK as a whole is 40 per cent.?

§ Mr. Kynoch
Business must regard local government with amazement when Glasgow cries out that it is short of funds but spends some £400,000 on painting the Clyde red to celebrate the centenary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. What has that to do with providing services to the people of Glasgow? As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the £200 million or so of uncollected tax could mean that band D council tax payers would receive a cheque. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) may be interested to know 940 that, if the £25 million uncollected tax in Dundee were applied to band D council tax, it would reduce it by 68 per cent.

§ Mr. David Marshall
Does the Minister have any clue about the seriousness of the situation facing the people of Glasgow as a result of cuts in the budgets of Scottish Homes, the Greater Glasgow health board and Glasgow Development Agency, and the almost total lack of inward investment projects attracted by Locate in Scotland, which has been singularly unsuccessful in doing anything on behalf of the city? As Glasgow is Scotland's metropolitan area, when will the Minister drop his anti-Glasgow bias and do something to benefit the people of Glasgow, instead of carping all the time?

§ Mr. Kynoch
I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman does not recognise that I was present at the announcement of an inward investment for Glasgow only the other day—a call centre for Polaroid. Several call centres, with several hundred jobs, have gone to Glasgow. The hon. Gentleman complains about Glasgow development agency's budget, but it has not yet been told its budget for next year. Perhaps he should get his facts right.

§ Mr. Stewart
Is my hon. Friend aware that local authority expenditure in Glasgow is 57 per cent. higher per head of population than in neighbouring East Renfrewshire? That is unsurprising, as Glasgow does not know how many social workers it has. Is it not time that the Scottish Office moved resources away from high-spending cities to needy outlying areas which would spend the money far more effectively?

§ Mr. Kynoch
Having been the Minister responsible for local government in Scotland very successfully for many years, my hon. Friend knows how the allocation of funds to local authorities works, using a formula based on discussions between the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Office. To give Glasgow a little more time to adjust to the formula allocation, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last year gave it an extra £15 million. Councillor Gould, when he came to see the Secretary of State, said that he would use that time wisely. The fact that the social work budget has been exceeded six months into the new year by £3.4 million does not say much for the financial controls. I hope that at the end of the year Glasgow will have done what it agreed to do almost 12 months ago.

§ Mrs. Ray Michie
It will no doubt be music to the Minister's ears to hear that Argyll and Bute council is embarked on cost cutting and so-called efficiency savings with proposals to axe staff and close three rural schools, one of which is on an island. Why will he not accept that Argyll and Bute, with so many islands to service—which, as he knows, is a costly business—should qualify for the special islands needs allowance?

§ Mr. Kynoch
The hon. Lady has raised the matter with me before, and Argyll and Bute council raised it when I visited in the summer. I am well aware of the council's concerns and needs, which must be reflected in the grant-aided expenditure formula that is applied to it. That is not a matter for me or for the Secretary of State, but 941 for the joint COSLA and Scottish Office distribution committee. I know that the hon. Lady's council has been putting its point to the distribution committee, and I urge it, if it believes that it has a case, to continue to do so.

§ Mr. George Robertson
Will the Minister admit that the crisis created by the local Government settlement this year, which has at its roots the costs left behind by the gerrymandering of local government by the Conservative Government, will impact upon real services for real people, including schools in the Stirling constituency, which will be badly hit next year as a consequence? Is it not true that that settlement will also impact upon environmental health departments in councils all over Scotland, and therefore hinder their ability to deal with the type of food poisoning outbreaks that we have seen in the past month?
When will Ministers accept responsibility and answer questions about what they did or did not do at the beginning of the E. coli crisis? What have they got to hide? Why are they afraid to answer the questions that have been repeatedly asked about it? They must stop passing the blame to local authorities and carry the can.

§ Mr. Kynoch
That is the hon. Member who believes that he is capable of being Secretary of State for Scotland. I am disappointed that he does not recognise the responsibilities outlined in the Food Safety Act 1990: it is local authorities' concern, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made perfectly clear. I hoped that the hon. Gentleman would praise the work of his Labour council and the council executive for what they have done during the difficult crisis.
On local government funding, the hon. Member constantly says that we do not give enough to local Government, but constantly refuses to say where he would take from in order to give local government more. If he is serious about being part of a potential Government of the country it is about time he told the House and the country where he would sacrifice spending in order to give it to local government, which is more than well funded in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom.