§ Mrs. CurrieTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what capping criteria he will adopt; which authorities will be designated by these criteria; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. PortilloMy right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State announced on 31 October 1990 the provisional capping criteria which he intended to adopt. He made clear that authorities should not assume that there would be a de minimis proviso allowing authorities whose budgets were excessive by only a small amount not to be designated. On the information available to us it appears that the following 17 authorities have set budgets which would be excessive, or represent an excessive increase over the previous year, under those criteria
Barnsley, Basildon, Berkshire, Bristol, Doncaster, Greenwich, Ipswich, Lambeth, Lanbaurgh-on-Tees, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Reading, Somerset, Stoke-on-Trent, Warwickshire and Wirral.As I said in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) on 5 March at columns 101–02 it is clearly a matter of concern where authorities have decided to budget at levels which under the intended criteria are excessive or represent an excessive increase: it remains open to such authorities to adopt substitute lower budgets if they so wish.
Our present intention is to apply the criteria which my right hon. Friend announced. This is necessarily provisional. We are now looking at local authorities' budgets and when we have completed our consideration of these budgets and all other appropriate matters my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will take his statutory capping decisions. He intends to do so as soon as practicable.