§ 12. Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North)If he will publish the underlying data used to compile the proposed index of local deprivation. [128411]
§ The Minister for Local Government and the Regions (Ms Hilary Armstrong)Last December we published for consultation the information relating to local authority district rankings on five different measures of deprivation. As part of the consultation exercise we also offered each authority information on the ward scores and rankings for their area. I am today arranging for the updated ward scores and rankings to be sent to each authority for information. The summary report will be published later this year along with the deprivation scores and rankings of all wards and districts in England. The report will provide details of where to obtain, subject to any confidentiality constraints, the underlying raw data.
§ Ms BuckI am extremely grateful to the Minister for that reply. She will be aware of the concern that exists in some London boroughs about the possible implications for the index. I wonder whether she will allow a period of formal consultation following the publication of the data that she has announced today, to allow authorities to respond on the basis of that new information. Will deprived wards or ward clusters that fall outside the new index of local deprivation priority rank be able to access Government funding streams targeted at certain deprived areas?
§ Ms ArmstrongThe work is a research project which has been carried out for the Department and for the Government by Oxford university. It provides considerable new information. We are now using 33 different factors to give us better information about wards. That information has been shared with authorities over the past six months. The formal consultation finished earlier this year and additional work has been taking place to refine that.
We shall ensure that, before the index is used to allocate money, it takes account of the fact that we are in a changing position, and therefore we would of course institute transitional arrangements if and when we do proceed. This is a very difficult issue. No statistics tell the whole story. None of us trusts statistics wholly. However, we want to ensure that we obtain the best information available, so that local authorities know where deprivation is occurring and where they should target their money in order to tackle that deprivation.
§ Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden)Does the Minister accept that if her local deprivation index takes into account access or lack of access to a local sub-post office, it is set to show increasing deprivation because of the Government's cancellation of £400 million of revenues going to sub-post offices? Can she further confirm that the so-called guarantee against closures of sub-post offices will be completely worthless, because the fine print shows that the Government will still allow them to close if they cannot find anyone willing to run them because they have rendered them unprofitable?
§ Ms ArmstrongI think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave the right hon. Gentleman his answer some questions ago: that under the present Government there has been a concerted effort to improve access to services for people, wherever they live. The index and the work that I mentioned, as well as other work through the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, will enable us better to ensure that people, wherever they live, have access to the services that they need, including post offices. The statement that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry made a couple of weeks ago demonstrates that the Government will follow through that commitment, and that support for rural post offices—and post offices in urban areas that have been struggling—will now be much more secure than it ever was under the regime of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley).