Strong Local Voice, Strong Local Champion

I appreciate that the Government have allocated additional funding for social care, but what more will and can they do in the short term not only to address the current crisis in funding and ensure that funding is used creatively and efficiently locally, but to cater for those with lower-level needs through preventive measures and early intervention?

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what representations he has received on increasing the uniform business rate by RPI in 2012-13; and if he will make a statement.

I will not, because I want to make it clear that it is not correct to switch from numbers to percentages and to try to blur the picture. We know that the percentage cuts are large, averaging 3.3% but varying across the country. In fact, in my part of the country the percentages are towards the higher end.

One of the councils in my area, Dorset county council, is particularly concerned about the funding lost through the current formula damping. We can ask ourselves where that money goes, and we find that, probably quite rightly, it goes to more deprived areas. However, I am told that Dorset has lost a greater proportion of its grant entitlement through that formula-the Labour Government's formula, I might add-than any authority in recent years. It will lose more than £7.4 million in 2012-13. There is great concern that the damping mechanism will become locked into the baseline for future years. I want to flag up that point as we move to a new system.

We must accept that the Government amended the funding formula to take greater account of councils' need. Extra funding is available, for example to support adult social care, but I represent an area where the demand for social care is great in relation to resources. All Departments must give a great deal of thought to the funding of social care while we wait for the White Paper and for anything new to kick in, because here and now, councils across the country have enormous problems in ensuring that the most vulnerable people get enough support. That same situation applies throughout the country. There are pressures on that funding.

The new homes bonus is a plus, bringing in extra funding, and on balance, the council tax freeze for this year is a plus. I well remember being on the council under Labour, when the average increase in council tax in England was something like 10.4%, which enormously affected people who were just above the level of qualifying for any benefit. When I reflect back to that time, I recall that I was blamed as a councillor for that increase in council tax, which was because of Government funding. We come back to that point over and over.

In these difficult times, a council tax freeze is very good, but every council in the country is worried because of that one-off payment, as a number of hon. Members have pointed out. How do councils adapt to the situation in subsequent years? It would be wrong not to point out that that is a big concern.

A further concern that I have picked up from my local councils is that they feel they have coped with planning for the cuts that they have had to impose so far, but the uncertainty of next year gives them much less lead-in time for future planning. The Government must take on board the problems that councils face.

Like the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, I believe that ending ring-fencing is a good move. It is quite painful for local councils, but if we believe in localism, it must be the right thing. Moving towards the new system is right. We surely cannot defend the old system. Nobody understood the formula and it failed the test of time.

I hope that Communities and Local Government Ministers monitor the costs that are shunted on to local councils from other Departments. Examples include the 50% cut in community safety grant; the youth justice proposal that local authorities take youth offenders into care; and full recovery for court proceedings under the Children Act 2004. I could go on, but I shall conclude exactly on time.

I intend to be relatively brief, Mr Speaker.

We have to start by being clear that very tough cuts have been imposed on local government. It accounts for 25% of all public expenditure, so councils were always going to have to play a considerable role in fixing the black hole in the nation's finances. It has been hard, given the front-loading of the cuts, but I wish to praise the many councils across the country that have approached innovatively the tasks with which they were faced. I sometimes think that central Government can learn from some local government practices, because councils are closer to the ground and have extra flexibility in how they approach things.

In my area, for example, two councils now share a chief executive, and there has been much more working together among councils, with the county council co-ordinating it. Poole's unitary council is merging certain services with Bournemouth, which makes a lot of sense given that they are both relatively small unitary councils. A lot of action is taking place.

I am slightly frightened of getting absolute numbers and percentages mixed up, which is what has been happening all afternoon, but I point out that East Dorset council's revenue support grant per head is £25.98, so there will not be a £200 cut. There cannot be. We therefore have to consider percentages. One might say that a more deprived area should not have the same percentage cuts as a less deprived one, but there is a difficulty with that. As we know, any organisation has certain basic costs that are the same. We need only look at schools, which need a certain number of staff whether they are big or small. That is an absolute fact.

I thank the hon. Gentleman and congratulate him on securing this very important debate. Will he join me in congratulating the Department for Education for making movements on training packages for staff? I hope that he will agree that we must go much further to ensure that staff are trained to cover the problems caused by drawing pins in walls. Does he further agree that if parents have any inkling that the age of the building is such that it might contain asbestos, when they visit the school they should ask where its asbestos management plan is?

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government when he expects to publish his Department's consultation document on park homes.

I wish to make some brief comments and refer to the impact assessment on the localisation of council tax benefit, which looks at many of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). I note in particular that the impact assessment flags up some local authority responsibilities. The Child Poverty Act 2010 imposes a duty on local authorities to have regard to and address child poverty and, with their partners, to reduce and mitigate the effects of child poverty in their local area. The Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 include a range of duties relating to the welfare needs of disabled

people. The Housing Act 1996 places on local authorities a duty to prevent homelessness, with special regard to vulnerable groups.

Given that local authorities have those duties on them, is there any need to propose the amendments? These issues are important for the very reasons that have been identified-the 10% cut, the different numbers and proportions of pensioners in different authorities and the different balances that mean that some authorities could get more money through the changes to discounts for second homes and empty homes. Some authorities will have great difficulty in protecting vulnerable people. The number could be quite small, but that possibility is there because of the different demographics of different areas.

I understand that local authorities might have to go through an equality needs assessment and I should like to know from the Minister how they should address these issues, which are in the impact assessment on the localisation of council tax benefit. Will there be any question of councils having to go through judicial review? It seems to me that there are going to be protections in the detail of the schemes to be introduced, but also some challenges for local authorities given the difficulties that we are outlining over and over again-the 10% cut, the different proportions of pensioners, and authorities' different abilities to raise money with the new freedoms and flexibilities. With all those differences across areas, could some areas be faced with judicial review if they cannot address the duties placed on them by existing legislation?

The very point I was making is that there are variations throughout the whole country, so there needs to be some sort of stabilisation, contingency, transition-whatever we want to call it-because of the differences throughout the country and the possibility that the measure in the Bill will hit some very vulnerable people very hard. I make a plea to the Minister, even if he cannot give me the answers that I might want to hear today, to go away and look at all those issues, which have been raised on both sides of the House.

Yes, indeed. Such local authorities will need to talk to one another, and it will be difficult to get the right balance between a truly local scheme and work with adjoining authorities-I suppose I am

talking about working across, horizontally and vertically. It is not clear from the Bill how a district council will cope with the issue

The string of amendments under discussion is about funding, and the concern all comes from the 10% cut. There are potential extra revenue streams, however, and they need to be addressed. I appreciate that point, given the modifications to the second homes and empty homes premiums, but it is unlikely that we will get an absolute match between the money that is lost and any money that might be gained, so we need to look at that aspect.

I have given way several times, and I shall proceed in order to retain the flow of my speech. There are concerns, and it is right that we discuss how we address them.

A further concern is how the burden of the proposal is to be shared between the billing authority and any other authority that might be involved, such as a district or county council. I give the example of East Dorset district council, which last year had a revenue support grant of just £29 per head, meaning that it has very little flexibility with which to pick up any extra costs. So this is a matter not only of working with other councils, but of coming up with a clear solution to the issue.

I share the concern about whether the scheme can be introduced within the proposed time frame, which looks tight. The major software companies say that it cannot be done, but we know the timetable we are on: July for the Bill, October for the regulations and then the consultation on schemes. Can it be done? I want Ministers to address those questions and to give more thought to how the issue is going to be handled.

At this stage, we are debating, and I hope all trying to be constructive about, the direction in which we would like the Bill to go, and it is important to be constructive, rather than to look for an immediate political hit.

Returning to the point I was making-

At this point in time, it is easy to put such amendments forward, but one has to identify where the money is going to come from, and I shall touch on that in a moment, because there are two sides to the issue: first, what needs to be addressed, but, secondly, how we finance it. That is quite important.

Returning to the point I was making, I wish to emphasise that we all have constituents who come to us with a breakdown of their weekly expenditure, and we all know how little there is to spare in some of those budgets, so the possibility of losing £6 to £10 of benefit is truly frightening.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

On the first stream, we are focusing on the 10% cut, which leads to all the other problems identified in subsequent streams. I accept that in addition to the 10% cut there are unexpected changes in the number of claimants and that apparently there is no cushion for that situation. Although I do not support the amendments that have been put forward, it is important to flag up the problems, which must not be ignored.

Let us consider the situation for a council faced with setting up a new system. Any savings it will be able to make through localisation of council tax benefit will need to be offset against the administrative costs it will incur. I accept that there must be some savings, because otherwise there would not be the same need for external audit when money is sent to the council to cover payments, but will the Minister state explicitly where the money will come from for the inevitably large cost of setting up individual schemes, particularly in the first year. There is of course the possibility that councils will work together, which would reduce the administrative costs of setting up new schemes, but they would then lose the advantage of localisation, because even an adjoining local authority will have a different demographic make-up. As soon as we focus on the 10% cut, we think about the demographic make-up.

I share some of the concerns that have been raised across the House. Once we ring-fence pensioners-we probably all agree that they should be protected-we effectively put a gearing effect on everyone else. By the time we have picked out families with a disabled member and other vulnerable groups, the reduction in council tax benefit, which might have started as an average of £2 a week, will start escalating on the backs of just a few people to £6, then £10, all depending on the make-up of the local authority area.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress her Department has made in implementing European Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes.

What is the Department's view on local landlord accreditation schemes, and what advice does he give on such schemes to local authorities?

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I wish to make a few brief comments.

It is important that a local government body of councils should have a position on all the decision making, be it on the tariffs, the top-up or the levy or in relation to resetting. I do not know how formal that arrangement needs to be, but it is important to recognise that the information needs to come from a cross-section of local councils. Of course, we already have the Local Government Association, which is in a position to take such an overall viewpoint.

We have had some useful discussions about the length of the set-up period. It is fairly clear that no one here knows what the ideal period would be. I feel instinctively that 10 years is rather too long, but I recognise that we need a period of stability in order to make other measures work and to create incentives. I therefore hope that the Minister will assure us that a great deal of work will be done on this before we get to the regulations. I have a preference for a period of about five years, but I would also like an assurance that the Minister would have the power to reset, having listened to the LGA and other bodies, should something obviously have gone dramatically wrong. We have heard a great deal about uncertainty and, yes, there is bound to be uncertainty involved in a change of this magnitude, but the main thing for me is that we ensure that there is a safety net in place for ourselves, as decision makers.

I thank the Minister for giving way, and this is a genuine question. Is it not true that the baseline funding will have taken on board the council tax base? Was that not reflected in previous formulae? An authority such as mine, for example, would naturally get less formula grant because of its council tax base.

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I think my hon. Friend is hitting on the same issue that I have in mind-the respective time periods. It is important that we have clarity on that and I thought I had, but that was before I listened to the speeches this afternoon. We know that we are starting off firmly-councils know how much they are getting in the first settlement-but we need to know what will happen when the new system really clicks in.

I would like to make just a few comments, because I have listened intently to the discussion and found am quite confused about the time periods that different people are talking about. I would like to ask the Minister what time of year the levy will be announced-that is critical-and also which year will be used. I have found it difficult to see whether we are dealing with historical data or doing it as we go along.

One big change will be that council finance officers are likely to be preparing monthly reports on the revenue from business rates, which will be different from what happened previously. I can see how that will focus the council's mind on what is happening to its business rates, as well encouraging it proactively to talk with its local businesses to check stability and so on. I can see a lot of positives in that, but I need to know what the stocks and flows will be-it is really confusing-what the time periods will be and when the announcements will be made.