HC Deb 18 December 1996 vol 287 cc1014-20

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Coe.]

7.45 pm
Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva (Brentford and Isleworth)

I am most grateful to have this Adjournment debate, which I presume will be the last debate in 1996. It is wholly apposite that the last debate of the year should be on behalf of my constituents in Brentford, Isleworth, Hounslow and Chiswick, especially the most vulnerable and dependent who are looking to the House for help.

I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to bring to the House's attention the position on the Government's standard spending assessment for the London borough of Hounslow and the way in which the Labour-controlled council in Hounslow is wilfully ignoring the interests of its residents.

I am sorry that neither the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), whose party controls Hounslow council, nor the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who is the Labour party spokesman on local government, is present to participate in the debate. I am extremely sorry that no one from the Labour party is present to listen to a debate on matters relating to the borough of Hounslow and the concerns of the people who live there. I shall take note that no one from the Labour party has bothered to be present, and I shall make it known to all my constituents that Labour Members do not care.

I wrote to the Leader of the Opposition on 6 December about his party's proposals in Hounslow. All I have received 12 days later is a brief acknowledgement that my letter has been passed to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. My constituents will be interested to know that neither of them is here to defend their party's position. Perhaps they are too ashamed, or simply do not care any more about the old, the infirm, the battered or the dispossessed.

In my letter to the right hon. Member for Sedgefield, I addressed him as "Dear Tony"—it is nice to talk about "Dear Tony" letters. I wrote: I am writing with some indignation and outrage that your Labour Council in Hounslow is riding roughshod over the views of local people, including two of your own Labour Councillors, Cllr Vanessa Smith and Cllr Pat Nicholas, to penalise some of the most vulnerable members of my constituency. I refer to the proposed closure by Hounslow Council of the Isleworth Day Care Centre, which enables hundreds of elderly and vulnerable people to receive care and support; and the proposed closure of the Chiswick Family Centre which helps disadvantaged children and their families. Last year, Hounslow Council had a budget of £196 million. The Government's recent SSA announcement has enabled the Council to raise its total spending by another £3,790,000. The cost of keeping the Isleworth Day Care Centre open is £235,000 and that of the Chiswick Family Centre £30,000. This represents just 0.133 per cent. of the Council's total budget and more important less than 7 per cent. of the increase in SSA that has been granted to the Council by the Government for next year. It is outrageous that the Council should attempt to make cheap political points by attacking the most vulnerable, especially after receiving this additional assistance from the Government. It is simply mind-boggling that two of your own Councillors, who want the centres kept OPEN have been suspended from the Labour Party for their efforts. Is this what 'New' Labour stands for? I am glad to see that a member of the Labour party has arrived to listen to what I have to say.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

I was just passing through.

Mr. Deva

I note that the hon. Gentleman has, now "passed through".

The letter continues: Your Labour Council should get its priorities right and keep the Isleworth Day Care Centre and the Chiswick Families Centre OPEN. The two Labour Councillors should be re-instated and the closure plans cancelled forthwith. That was nearly two weeks ago, but, as I said, I have received no reply, which speaks volumes in itself.

Last year, the Government gave Hounslow £98.9 million in revenue support grant; next year, that will be increased to £102.7 million—a rise of £3.8 million. Each year, the Government gives every local authority a standard spending assessment, or SSA, which constitutes their assessment of how much it should cost a local authority to provide a standard level of service. That governs the distribution of revenue support grant to each council. In addition to the revenue support grant, local authorities receive money from the Government through business rates, and they also raise funds through the council tax.

SSAs are built up from various separate elements for various services—education, social services, police, fire, highway maintenance and other services. The different geographical and social characteristics of each area are taken into account, such as the number of children, the number of elderly people and the number who need care. SSAs are a means of calculating Government grant distribution to different local authorities. They constitute neither a limit nor a target for local authorities' actual expenditure, but, all being equal, a higher SSA leads to a higher level of grant from the Government.

It is interesting to note what the Government have been giving Hounslow council. For the past few years, the council has regularly received increases in its SSA. In 1990, the SSA was £124 million; by 1993, it was £165.6 million. That rose to £170.4 million in 1994, £178.7 million in 1995 and £185.6 million last year; and the figure will be a massive £188.9 million in 1997. Next year—after we have allowed for the increase in Government grant and the fact that the council will, as ever, increase its council tax—Hounslow will, for the first time in its history, have a budget of more than £200 million.

I thank the Government for their fair treatment of Hounslow in allocating resources. I think it worth placing on record additional sums given through the single regeneration grant: a further £13 million has been provided for the regeneration of Brentford, which is now well under way, and a grant of another £7.3 million has been announced just this week by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment for the regeneration of Isleworth, in particular its Ivybridge estate. Both those sums are in addition to the normal annual grant from the Government. How ironic it is that, in a week when the Government announce a grant of over £7 million for Isleworth, we must have this debate.

It is worth noting that Hounslow has done better than most local authorities in recent years. Its SSA has increased by 39.6 per cent. since 1991, in comparison with average increases of 36.3 per cent. for outer-London boroughs, and 33.6 per cent. for local government as a whole. The Government have been extremely generous to Hounslow, giving us about 6 per cent. more than they have given other local authorities.

How appalling it is that, in the midst of that extra funding, Hounslow's Labour council proposes to close the Isleworth day care centre and the Chiswick families centre, both of which are much-used and much-needed local facilities. They provide invaluable support for vulnerable elderly people in Isleworth, and for families in Chiswick.

The campaign to keep both centres open has been led by, among others, Mrs. Josephine Langton, a Conservative councillor in Chiswick. However, they face total closure for the sake of a mere £235,000 a year in the case of the Isleworth day care centre, and just £35,000 a year in the case of the Chiswick families centre. Given that Hounslow will have a budget of over £200 million next year, it is utterly callous of its Labour council to attack—inhumanely, cold-bloodedly and ruthlessly—the most vulnerable of my constituents.

That is why I wanted to initiate this debate, and why I wrote to the leader of the Labour party last week asking him to exert pressure on his councillors in Hounslow. I drew attention to the SSA settlement and the huge funds available to the council, and I now wait to discover how the Labour leader will respond to my letter—a letter that asked him to intervene to protect the elderly and vulnerable in my patch.

I place on record my admiration for two Labour councillors, Vanessa Smith and Pat Nicholas, who represent Isleworth's south ward. They want to keep the centres open—as I do—but what has been the reward for their efforts? Suspension from the Labour party.

Suspension from the Labour party for protecting the elderly, the infirm and the vulnerable? Punishment for caring? What sort of Labour party is this? What kind of uncaring monsters appear to be running the Labour party in Hounslow? Despite the SSA settlement, the revenue support grant and the additional Government funds for social services—£190,000 more was provided this year than last year—they are not listening. They are going to shut down those two centres.

More than 80 per cent. of my surgery cases now constitute complaints about the way in which Hounslow council spends its money: about how it cares not for its tenants, cares not for the quality of its housing stock and cares not for the homeless, given that 400 council homes are still unoccupied. We all know that the SSA is divided into a number of components. Within Hounslow's total SSA, the SSA for social services has been increased, as I have said. It is more than enough to keep those two centres open, but only if—it is a big if—Hounslow council decides that it wants to.

That is the nub of the problem. Despite massive public pressure locally, and although some 2,500 people have signed petitions in support of keeping the centres open—despite the extra funding announced by the Government, and despite pressure from their own councillors—those who run Hounslow council still say that they must close the centres. The problem is that Hounslow's Labour council is wasting money hand over fist and is refusing to make sensible savings. Every pound that is saved on administration could be diverted to front-line services.

In calculating the SSA, I am sure that the Minister has taken into account the protection of my most vulnerable constituents. I shall give two examples of how Hounslow council could have saved if it had wanted, these two centres within the SSA. First, the council accepted an in-house bid from its direct labour force for the removal of waste from the borough. That is an essential service, but, by refusing to accept the lowest bid and accepting instead the more expensive in-house higher bid, the council turned down savings of about £400,000 a year—more than enough to divert to the social services budget to keep the centres open. The council chose not to do that.

Even now, the council could take a simple action to keep the centres open. Councillor Paul Lynch, the excellent Conservative leader on Hounslow council, and Councillor Barbara Reed, the Conservative social services spokesman on the council, proposed at a council meeting that the authority's budget be altered to keep the two centres open. They were voted down by a huge Labour majority.

At the request of UNISON, the borough's trade union, Councillor Lynch also asked at the last council meeting for the council to institute a purchasing policy to effect savings. The council totally ignored that suggestion and swept it under the carpet. What a strange turn of events—a Conservative council group leader and a Conservative Member of this House supporting the trades unions and Labour councillors in seeking to maintain essential services for the most vulnerable people in my constituency.

At present, each council department orders its own stationery, office furniture, computers, photocopiers and even paper clips. I have asked how much the council spends on paper clips but no one knows. What a shambles! If the council instituted an overall purchasing policy it is estimated that an annual saving of £35,000 could be made on stationery alone.

That would be enough to keep the Chiswick families centre open, and if the same policy was followed for the council's office furniture, computers and photocopiers, it would be possible to generate savings of £235,000 a year, which would be enough to keep the Isleworth day care centre open. What is more important: office desks and chairs in the civic centre and super-duper photocopiers, or helping frail, infirm elderly people in Isleworth and young children at risk and their families in Chiswick?

Hounslow Labour council has discretion: there is huge leeway. Local councillors could have chosen to exercise that discretion, but they have not done so. If that is so-called new Labour, give us old Labour. Better still, we should let the people know that Hounslow's Labour council is closing two valuable local centres without just reason, to try to make a political point against the Government. It will not wash.

Just one tenth of 1 per cent. of the council's total budget would keep the centres open, and they are provided for within the SSA. They may not be important to the Labour party, but the services they provide are vital to my constituents, as the Government have demonstrated by their generosity in the SSA settlement.

If the council has an ounce of humanity, even at this late hour it will re-examine its priorities, amend its budget proposals, and acknowledge that it can keep the Isleworth and Chiswick centres open. I urge the council to do that, and I urge the Government to make it clear that, if those centres close, it will be due to the callous intransigence of Hounslow's Labour administration. It runs counter to the generous SSA settlement, and is against all common sense and humanity.

8.3 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison)

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva) has raised some important issues relating to the way in which the standard spending assessment applies to the London borough of Hounslow.

I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents, and especially the elderly, the vulnerable and the infirm who depend on the Isleworth day care centre and the Chiswick families centre will take a great interest in what he has said. It is clear from what my hon. Friend said that those centres provide a valuable service to the community, and I am sure that those who benefit from them will have taken a special interest in his speech and in his clear plea on their behalf to Hounslow borough council.

My hon. Friend spoke about SSAs, and I should like to show how the Hounslow SSA fits into the overall system. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment outlined in a statement on 27 November our proposals for local government finance for the coming financial year. Local government accounts for about a quarter of general Government expenditure. It would be absurd to imagine that, within this large total, there is no room for greater efficiency. Therefore, I make no apology for the fact that we have pursued such efficiencies vigorously, but I can also assure the House that we have approached our assessment of what is needed to maintain key services with equal vigour.

We have provided for an increase in total standard spending of 2.5 per cent. on a like-for-like basis. In allocating this total between services, we have given priority to education, social services, the police, and the fire service. We have proposed capping arrangements which ensure that virtually all authorities can spend the whole of any increase in SSA on those services. These proposals represent a sound balance between the need to sustain local government services, the scope for increased efficiency, and the scale of public expenditure which the country can afford.

The mechanism by which the public expenditure proposals are translated into figures for individual authorities is the SSA. Standard spending assessments form the basis for the distribution of the revenue support grant. Standard spending assessments are the Government's assessment of the appropriate amount of revenue expenditure which would allow any authority to provide a standard level of service, consistent with our view of the appropriate amount of revenue expenditure for all authorities.

The calculation of an authority's SSA follows general principles applied equally to all authorities, taking account of each authority's demographic, geographic and social characteristics. Differences in SSAs between authorities with the same service responsibilities are thus due to differences in their underlying characteristics.

My hon. Friend and the residents of Hounslow will be interested to know where Hounslow stands within this system, which is designed to bring about overall fairness in the distribution of revenue support. My hon. Friend gave an interesting account of how Hounslow has fared in recent years. Standard spending assessments were introduced in 1990–91, since when Hounslow's SSA has gone up by 51 per cent. The SSAs for outer-London boroughs have gone up by 42 per cent. on average over the same period. For local authorities overall, SSAs are up by 39 per cent. I know that my hon. Friend will find that of great interest.

For 1997–98, Hounslow borough's provisional SSA has been increased at about the average rate for outer-London boroughs—a 2 per cent. increase compared with 1.9 per cent. for outer london as a whole. In terms of total SSA per head, Hounslow ranked fifth out of the 20 outer-London boroughs. This increase in SSA is more than reflected in the provisional cap limit for the borough, which has risen by 2.1 per cent. Budgets can rise by £3.95 million if the authority feels that that is necessary.

I hope that shows that increasing needs in Hounslow have been recognised by the Government and reflected in the SSA over several years and again for next year's local government finance settlement. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his wise words, which were founded upon his analysis of how Hounslow has fared and his judgment that it has been treated fairly with SSAs.

We have ensured that, among other things, by developing indicators to track spending needs. For instance, Hounslow has a relatively large ethnic minority population—extra costs arising from that are reflected in the measure of additional educational needs. As a London borough, Hounslow faces high employment costs—allowance is made in the area cost adjustment from which the borough benefits.

I drew attention to the priority that the Government were placing on education for next year. My hon. Friend will wish to underline to his authority the fact that Hounslow's education SSA has increased by 4.1 per cent., placing it sixth out of the 20 outer London boroughs on a per pupil basis.

Some concerns have been expressed about funding for personal social services. The year 1997–98 will be tight for social services funding. The average outer London borough faces an SSA reduction of 0.4 per cent. However, even in a difficult year, Hounslow's social services SSA has risen by 0.5 per cent., or £190,000. Hounslow also receives an extra £1.46 million for 1997–98 from the special transitional grant for community care. Such funding is appropriate in the light of my hon. Friend's comments about people with particular needs.

On asylum seekers, on 26 November, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced that local authorities will be reimbursed the reasonable costs that they incur in supporting adult asylum seekers. The exact details of the funding have yet to be finalised, but I assure my hon. Friend that other local services should not suffer. Separate funding arrangements have been made for children seeking asylum.

In the light of the important conclusions that my hon. Friend has drawn, I hope that that factual account of Hounslow's SSA, how it has risen and been dealt with this year, and how it compares with those of other authorities in this and other years, is of interest to him. I agree with him that the settlement for Hounslow is fair. The authority still has considerable discretion within a budget of more than £190 million to allocate resources on what it considers to be its priorities. If Hounslow uses its resources well and pursues efficiencies vigorously, there is no reason why it should not provide good-quality local services without excessive increases in local taxes.

Returning to my hon. Friend's main point about how Hounslow chooses to spend its funds, I believe that its decisions are matters for Hounslow borough council, but I am sure that it and my hon. Friend's constituents and Hounslow residents will have listened with great interest to his powerful plea.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Eight o 'clock.