Hilary Benn
MP for Leeds South · Labour · United Kingdom
“As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Irish Government published on 8 June their legislative outline, entitled “The General Scheme of the Legacy of the Troubles Bill 2026”. That is intended to fulfil the commitment that the Irish Government gave in the joint framework to co-operate to the fullest extent possible with the commission.”
“Northern Ireland is a society, as the hon. Gentleman knows better than most, that has been undergoing profound change since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 28 years ago. As the famous lines go, we have a shared history, but not necessarily a shared memory.”
“The right hon. Gentleman raises a really important point, and I am grateful to him for his question. We all have a responsibility—political leaders have a responsibility to call out what was witnessed for what it is and not mince our words, and as I have already indicated, social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that such m…”
“I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that the common travel area, which is more than a century old, is of great benefit to the citizens of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Many people in Northern Ireland live their lives across that border every single day.”
“I do agree with my hon. Friend. The attack on Mr Ogilvie was truly shocking, and there was no justification whatsoever for the racist thuggery we witnessed on the streets of Belfast in the days following.”
“That was, of course, an awful feature of what we saw. One of the things I learned in my discussions was that those from the far right had taken a list of houses in multiple occupation in Belfast—a list that, in the interests of openness, was properly available on the Belfast city council website; the council has now taken it down—and used…”
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Every one of 6,304 lines we hold for Hilary Benn, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 66 of 127.
“If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I wish to make a little more progress. I will now turn to the Budget. I have some questions to put to the Secretary of State. We know that the Government have a soft spot for people who earn a lot of money, but why is he proposing that his new deposit and mortgage scheme should be made available to anyone earning any amount, including millionaires, so that they can buy a house worth up to £600,000? Why is he changing the rules in that way, given that Firstbuy is currently only for those with family incomes below £60,000, and given that the Treasury document published last Wednesday states that the scheme is meant to help “households struggling to save for the high mortgage deposits required by lenders”? How many struggling top rate taxpayers does he expect to take advantage of the new scheme?”
“The national rate of decisions taken on major applications within 13 weeks has fallen from 62% in 2011 to 57% in 2012, and the same is true of minor applications determined within eight weeks, which are down from 72% to 69%, and the transition period is about to finish. The planning Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, said recently that he wants further relaxation of the planning laws. We would be very interested to hear what he has in mind.”
“With less than a month until he unveils his Budget, the Chancellor criticised Mr Pickles over figures that show that one in three enterprise zones is failing to attract enough businesses. Mr Pickles is then said to have attempted to deflect the blame on to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, by accusing him of failing to convince foreign businesses to invest in the schemes.” It is a very familiar story: Cabinet members are so busy fighting and blaming each other that it is no wonder that they cannot sort out the problems facing the country. The reforms to the national planning policy framework were supposed to streamline the planning system, but it seems that they have left councils less able to decide applications quickly.”
“We are used to hearing Liberal Democrats say one thing to one audience and another thing to another, but I am surprised that the Secretary of State is also doing so. This is a familiar record. The Secretary of State, as the statistics show, is not very good at getting things done. It is not just me who thinks that; the Chancellor does, too. Apparently the Chancellor was in a fiery mood at the Cabinet meeting following the loss of the triple A credit rating and challenged Ministers about the poor rate of growth. The Daily Telegraph reported: “Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, was given a ‘dressing down’ for failings in the Government’s flagship enterprise zone programme, according to sources.”
“Councils need as much money as they can find to help, in part, to build homes. When the Secretary of State was asked about these cuts earlier this year in front of the departmental Select Committee, he said that in his view the cuts were “modest”. In private, however, it seems that his views are rather different. When it was reported last month that the Chancellor was looking for further cuts from certain Departments, including CLG, The Times said that “sources close to Mr Pickles”— [Interruption.] It certainly was not me. The Times said that “sources close to Mr Pickles made clear that he was not accepting the latest reductions, arguing that council services had already been cut to the bone.” It seems, therefore, that the Secretary of State’s private views are rather different from his public views.”
“A quarter of a billion pounds was identified by the Secretary of State to try to persuade councils to collect the bins in the way that he thinks is correct. It was such a failure that only one council took him up on his offer. A quarter of a billion pounds and one council: think how many affordable homes that money could have been used to build! If the Government want to be taken seriously on affordable housing, they have to will the means. That is why we called for the 4G auction proceeds and the bankers’ bonus tax repetition to be used to build 125,000 new affordable homes to get the economy moving. The Secretary of State referred to councils. We know that he is presiding over cuts to the local authority sector that are bigger than in any other part of the public sector and that the cuts are being unfairly applied.”
“That is a very good question that has already been asked. I am very happy to give way to the Secretary of State if he wishes to answer it. Does he wish to answer? No, he does not. We need a lot of new affordable homes because of the decision taken by the Government nearly three years ago to slash the affordable housing budget, when £4 billion was taken away. We are then asked to be grateful to the Secretary of State when we hear in the Budget announcements that an additional £225 million will be made available, although it seems that only £125 million of it will be spent before 2015. That figure is dwarfed by the original £4 billion cut. We are told that this is a time for tough choices.”
“Ministers know that people will do their best to stay in their own home—indeed, the Government’s assessment expects that to happen—because they want to stay with their friends, family and community.”
“All the evidence shows that when people who are on low incomes have money, they tend to spend it. In Leeds, £9.4 million— [ Interruption. ] I know that the planning Minister, who is chuntering from a sedentary position, does not want to hear this, but the people on the lowest incomes in Leeds are going to lose £9.4 million that they do not have because of rent increases and council tax rises. Incredibly, last week the Secretary of State tried to blame local authorities for his policy, when he said that they “seek to persecute and to tax the poor.” —[ Official Report , 18 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 611.] That is extraordinary. The only person who is to blame is the Secretary of State. It is his legislation. He is the reason why bills are landing on people’s doorsteps that many of them will find hard to pay.”
“At the very time when the Chancellor has decided that the most important thing to do is to cut the top rate of tax, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has brought in his new poll tax and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has brought in the bedroom tax. What is so astonishing is that they are both singling out one group of people in our society. Whether they are working, seeking work or unable to work, the people who will be affected are those on the very lowest incomes, because that is why they get council tax benefit and housing benefit. Given that the fundamental problem in the country is a lack of growth in the economy—the Chancellor’s crowning failure—have Ministers paused for a second to consider what impact those two taxes will have on the economy?”
“Last week, the evidence from the universal credit pilot showed rising rent arrears. That is creating a lot of uncertainty, not least for housing associations. A number of them have had credit rating downgrades recently. If lenders think that housing associations will have difficulty collecting rent, it could put up their borrowing costs, which could impact on their balance sheets and their ability to borrow. Ultimately, it will affect their ability to build the homes that the Secretary of State says he wants to see. All of that will create huge challenges for families, councils and housing associations, not least because of the debt that people will get into.”
“I turn, finally, to one of the effects of what the Government are doing, which was not mentioned by the Chancellor in his speech on Wednesday. That is the effect that the decisions taken by the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will have on people on low incomes and their homes. So far in this debate, we have talked about the need to build homes so that people can move into them. I want to turn to the problem of people being forced out of their homes because of the Government’s bedroom tax and the Secretary of State’s poll tax. One consequence of what the Government are doing is likely to be rising rent arrears. That is exactly what councils and housing associations up and down the country are anticipating.”
“The planning Minister, who is being very vocal, said that “vanishingly few” councils would be caught by that provision. However, to judge by the latest figures, as many as 21 local authorities could be stripped of their democratic accountability in taking decisions on housing planning applications if developers choose to go straight to the Planning Inspectorate. How does the planning Minister think that will assist communities to take responsibility for housing provision? All of us have to face up to the need to provide more homes. That is the point that he has been making. However, is it better to let developers decide where houses should be built or to allow communities to take that responsibility for themselves?”
“It would be helpful if we could get clarity about precisely what is being proposed, given that the housing lead of the Local Government Association, Councillor Mike Jones, who is a Conservative, has queried the need for the guidance, and given that this morning’s papers reported that the Government plan to impose an expectation on councils. How exactly is it possible to impose an expectation on councils? [ Interruption. ] I say to the planning Minister that I have a little bit more experience of Government than him—and it shows. Ministers are looking to councils to identify housing need, but I say to them that the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will not assist councils in doing so, because clause 1 threatens to take away the power of local communities to decide whether housing is provided.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for agreeing that the Secretary of State is having problems with the delivery of housing. I have already indicated that we will support any measures that will help. Councils will have to make proper assessments of their housing need. On the Prime Minister’s announcement today on council and social housing and migration, the Secretary of State knows that people cannot just get off a plane and get a council house. He will be familiar, of course, with section 160A of the Housing Act 1996, and he will know that councils already have the power to put in place allocation schemes, because the previous Labour Government issued guidance in 2009 and an increasing number of them are doing so.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the reforms will have a damaging economic impact and be bad for families who cannot afford it, although they will try to stay if they can because they value community, friends, neighbours and a sense of place. Ministers know that even if people downsize, there are not enough smaller properties for them to move into. That is why this is a tax: people cannot avoid it because they cannot move.”
“My hon. Friend is right on the first point, although I am not entirely sure that the occupants are claiming housing benefit. We wait to be informed. People with disabilities will be forced to move and the new home will have to be adapted all over again. Divorced dads who are trying to keep in contact with their children will be told that they have to pay the bedroom tax on the spare bedroom where they stay at the weekend, but as we know, some people will have no choice but to move. The final absurdity—the Chief Secretary should be interested in this—is that if people do move to the right sized property in the private rented sector, because of higher rents the housing benefit bill is likely to be bigger than that paid on the social home from which the family was forced out.”
“The Secretary of State was full of his usual bravado and occasional bluster in what he had to say, but the cold hard reality of the collision of his policies with people’s lives shows that those policies are not well thought out and are incapable of being delivered. Because of that record, we have a promise of growth that has not materialised, a promise of localism that is not what it seems, and a promise of homes that have not been built. This Chancellor, this Secretary of State, and this Budget have nothing to offer the people of Britain.”
“He is not sure how he is going to pay it and he asked me—it is quite something when someone says this to a Member of Parliament, because we had not met before—“Can I tell you that I can no longer keep the heating on in my flat because it costs me £25 a week and I do not have the money to pay it?” The Chancellor, the Secretary of State and other Ministers are fond of telling us that we have to make really tough decisions, but I wonder how difficult it was to decide to give those on highest incomes a tax reduction at the beginning of next month, while imposing a reduction in council tax benefit and the bedroom tax on people. They are taking money from those who are poor—that is what we are talking about—and giving it to those who are rich. That is why they should scrap the cut to council tax benefit and get rid of the bedroom tax.”
“I will conclude now, because many other Members want to speak. I have been generous in giving way but I want to finish on this point. Last Friday a constituent came to see me in my surgery. He is a man in his late 50s who has worked for the past 42 years, until last December when he became unwell. He currently has to live on £71 a week and has just received a council tax bill for £108.25.”
“All round the country, hundreds of thousands of low-income households are starting to receive letters from their councils telling them that they will be hit by the Secretary of State’s new poll tax, so taking money out of their pockets. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many people in his local authority of Brentwood are being affected?”
“The Secretary of State has imposed the tax, but he does not even know what is going on in his own local authority. I will tell him the answer to the question: Brentwood council says that 2,000 households will be affected. Last week on my visit I did indeed meet one of those affected. She was a woman who will be hit by the bedroom tax and by his new poll tax. She cannot afford it. She will probably have to move out of the area with her son, taking her away from friends, family, neighbours and the support that she relies on. She does not think it is fair, and I do not think it is fair. What has he got to say to her?”
“On value for money, will he explain why his colleague, the Secretary of State, decided, despite all these pressures, to take £250 million of public money in an attempt to persuade councils to change the way they collect bins, which resulted in only one council moving from alternating weekly collections back to weekly collections? Does he think that represents value for money when money is so tight? As the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed last year, the total cuts to local government spending will outpace those in the public sector as a whole up to 2014-15. Since then, of course, a further cut of £445 million to local government for the year after next was announced in the autumn statement.”
“If the Secretary of State does not like what I have to say, the LGA’s Conservative leader, the highly respected Sir Merrick Cockell, has called the cuts “unsustainable”, and the Tory leader of Kent county council says that his county cannot cope with further reductions and is “running on empty”. Ministers know that local government is the most efficient part of the public sector, because that is what the Prime Minister said, albeit before the election, but they have decided to award councils for that efficiency by cutting more from them than from any other part of the public sector. A moment ago the Minister referred to “50 ways to save”, which is a combination of some things councils are doing already, some things that are pretty darn obvious and some things that are insulting.”
“I wonder whether he understands the anger and dismay that those comments have caused, or the great disservice he is doing himself by being in denial about what is happening in local government. This is a time of rising pressures. In particular, as the Minister will know, the costs of looked-after children and social care are rising. The demands on local authorities are going up while income is going down significantly. That is why the much-debated “graph of doom” produced by the LGA does not, I think, cry wolf; it is what it says is its best assessment of where local government is heading if things continue as they are.”
“I am sorry and surprised that the Secretary of State decided not to lead this debate. We know that there are many issues on which he is all too willing to express a view, and it would have been good to hear from him about the most important responsibility he has in the job that he holds—the funding of councils that help support the services on which all our communities rely. That would have given us an opportunity to question the Secretary of State on why he told the Select Committee in December that the cuts to local government funding were “modest”, and that the Local Government Association’s fears for the future were “utterly ludicrous”. In effect, he told councils to stop complaining.”
“The hon. Gentleman clearly has not been listening to what I have said since taking up this post. I have said in this Chamber before that, were a Labour Government now in office, of course there would be cuts to local government, but they would not go as far or as fast as the ones the Government are making and they would not, as I will point out, be allocated to local authorities in such a fundamentally unfair way. The truth is that the Secretary of State continues to lose in his battles with the Treasury, assuming, of course, that he tried to fight for local government in the first place. The truth, even if Ministers refuse to admit it, is that local councils are now facing—this is why the word “modest” causes such anger—the largest cuts in their funding in the political lifetime of every single Member sitting in the Chamber.”
“Perhaps the Minister will explain why allowing councillors to save for a pension has, in his words, “a corrosive influence on…independent thought” —[ Official Report , 19 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 105WS.] Let us stop and think about that statement. If being able to save for a pension has a corrosive influence on independent thought, what hope is there for all of us in this House? That is an insult to councillors and it shows a fundamental lack of respect for people who are working really hard to cope in difficult circumstances.”
“They referred to “patronising language” and said that the nature and tone of constant criticisms of councillors’ work by Conservative Ministers is “most worrying”. They also highlighted “ill-informed…criticism and sometimes highly inaccurate personal attacks.” They—remember that these are Tory council leaders—concluded by saying: “We believe it is essential to bring to your attention our concerns regarding some government policy affecting local government, the rhetoric that accompanies it and the effect it is having on our people.” It is no good Ministers asking local government to take on an enormous challenge—which it is doing—if at the same time the people they expect to step up and respond are criticised, patronised and belittled.”
“The LGA goes on to say: “Modelling work from the local government association shows a funding gap of £16.5 billion by 2019-20, if reductions in support continue on current trends.” It is not modest; it is massive, and it is about time that Ministers started to recognise the truth of what they are doing. If denial was not bad enough, the language that Ministers have used about those who are serving in local government has been, frankly, extraordinary and offensive. According to The Daily Telegraph , the Conservative council leaders of Derbyshire, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Kent and East and West Sussex wrote to the Prime Minister last month to complain about the Ministers on the Government Front Bench.”
“The consequences of what is going on are these: first, local government is having to deal with cuts that are unfairly distributed; secondly, residents are having to come face to face with the consequences of those cuts; and, thirdly, the changes to council tax benefit are being made even worse by the effects of the overall cuts to council budgets. I want to address each of those in turn. The Local Government Association says that “funding for local government is projected to fall by 3.9% in 2013-14 and a further 8.5% in 2014-15. This means that the grant to local government will fall by 33% in real terms over the current spending review period.” It is not possible, by any measure, to call that scale of reduction modest.”
“I do indeed stand by the statement my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), when Chancellor of the Exchequer, placed before the House and the country. I remind the hon. Gentleman that when he and his colleagues came into government the economy was growing— [ Interruption. ] It was. There is no good shouting about it. The signal achievement of the Chancellor over the past three years has been to put the British economy flat on its back, which is why we are in such difficulty.”
“Let us take a comparison between Wokingham, which the Minister referred to, and Leeds. The final figures in the Government’s documents show that spending power per dwelling in Leeds will be £1,874 in 2013-14, while in Wokingham it will be £1,815. The following year, it will be £1,800 for Leeds and £1,796 for Wokingham—a difference of just under £5. It is clear that the figures do not take account of relative need, because the percentage of children in out-of-work families in receipt of child tax credit is three times higher in Leeds than it is in Wokingham, the percentage of 18 to 64-year-olds claiming income-based benefits is more than three times higher in Leeds than it is in Wokingham, and the percentage of the population claiming incapacity benefit or disability living allowance is twice as high in Leeds as it is in Wokingham.”
“Council representatives to whom I have spoken talk of errors and double counting in the provisional settlement, which the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis)—perhaps not surprisingly—did not mention and which does not inspire confidence. Will he explain how that came to pass and what steps he is taking to ensure that it does not happen again? When the provisional settlement was announced, the Secretary of State said: “Concerns that the poorest councils or those in the north would suffer disproportionately are well wide of the mark. The spending power for places in the north compares well with those in the south.” —[ Official Report , 19 December 2013; Vol. 555, c. 874.] I am afraid that the figures simply do not support that assertion.”
“I agree completely. What makes it even more inexplicable is that elected mayors will be able to keep their right to save for a pension. That is what the Minister announced. Will his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), explain when he winds up the debate the difference, in time, effort, commitment and dedication to the job, between an elected mayor and the leaders of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds city councils, who also work full time and are dedicated and committed to their jobs? According to the LGA, 19 December was the latest that a provisional local government financial settlement has ever been published. This has caused problems for councils trying to finalise their budgets for the forthcoming year.”
“The Secretary of State came up with the measure of spending power in 2010. Ministers now publish figures on spending power per dwelling but not on spending power per head of population. This is perhaps unsurprising given what the figures show. Taking into account this settlement, in 2014-15 the 10 most deprived local authorities in England will lose six times more spending power per head of population than the 10 least deprived local authorities, compared with 2010-11. No wonder Ministers did not want to present to the House figures based on population. The councils that will suffer the biggest cut in spending power over the two years are Liverpool, Hackney, Newham, Manchester, Knowsley, Blackpool, Tower Hamlets, Middlesbrough, Birmingham and Kingston upon Hull.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point that out. I cannot say that I am surprised, given that the central point I am attempting to make is that the way in which the cuts have been allocated is fundamentally unfair. If the Minister and Secretary of State do not accept that, then what about the Audit Commission? Last November, it produced a report called “Tough times 2012: councils’ financial health in challenging times”, which said: “Councils in the most deprived areas have seen substantially greater reductions in government funding as a share of revenue expenditure than councils in less deprived areas.” It could not be stated more clearly. That probably explains why the Secretary of State is so keen to get rid of the Audit Commission: how inconvenient that such an organisation dares to speak truth unto power.”
“My hon. Friend is right. He anticipates what I am about to say, because how can that list be fair? The Prime Minister says that we are all in this together, though less frequently these days because he gets laughed at when he attempts to do so. However, in this settlement, his local authority, West Oxfordshire, which is one of the least deprived in the country, ranking 316th out of 325 in the indices of multiple deprivation, is getting an increase in spending power of 3.1%, whereas some of the most deprived areas, such as Hastings, which we heard about earlier, and Burnley, which are respectively 19th and 11th out of 325 in the indices of multiple deprivation, are facing the maximum cut in their spending power, on the Government’s own measure, of minus 8.8%. How is that fair?”
“We had a debate on Monday. Different areas have different needs and I acknowledge the particular challenges that local authorities serving rural areas face. The Government’s job is to balance all those things and come up with something that can be seen as fair.”
“She said of the findings from the National Audit Office on local authorities: “I am alarmed to hear that 12% are now at risk of being unable to balance their books in the future, according to local auditors, with potentially disastrous consequences.” It is worth reflecting on those words: more than one in ten councils are now at risk of being unable to balance their books in the future—that is what the NAO says. The Secretary of State may say that the graph of doom is scaremongering on the part of the LGA. Will he also say that this is scaremongering on the part of the NAO? If he does not say that, what is the Government’s answer to the picture unveiled by the NAO?”
“My hon. Friend makes the point about the circumstances his local authorities face extremely forcefully. What does all this mean for the future financial sustainability of local government? The National Audit Office recently published a report that makes it clear that cuts to councils budgets are having a direct impact on front-line services, even though the former housing Minister went before the Select Committee, I think in 2010, and said that there should not need to be any cuts in front-line services. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) was very direct in her response.”
“I welcome the increased allocation for the public health grant, but because it is ring-fenced it does not really change the reduction being imposed on councils for all the other services for which they are responsible. Finally—a lot of other Members want to speak—I turn to council tax benefit. Last year in this debate, I suggested to Government Members that they take a long, hard look at what this would mean for their constituents, including in areas where the proportion of pensioners was higher than average. Now that the change is almost upon us, many people in all our constituencies frankly have no idea what the coalition Government have in store for them.”
“Why did the Minister decide on a two-year period, rather than averaging out over a five-year period as his own consultation suggested? On business rate appeals, although the Government have increased the adjustment of that to £593 million, will the Minister say whether he is confident that that will be sufficient given that the LGA says that appeals in the pipeline could be considerably larger than this, thus exposing local government to an unacceptable level of risk? Why did Ministers change the 2012-13 baseline to include cuts that would not take place until the next financial year? Was it to try to make the reductions in spending power look less than they actually were?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us. I do not know whether the Secretary of State will indicate whether he will accept the kind invitation he has received. There is no answer at the moment, but perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) will find out subsequently. One of the problems councils face is that there is some uncertainty in the system, because of the big change the Government are bringing in as a result of this statement. The truth is that it remains to be seen how local authorities will benefit from business rates localisation, particularly because the Government have given themselves so many ways in which they can take some of that growth in business rates for themselves. The business rate projection for each local authority has been averaged out over two years.”
“According to the council, an estimated 41,000 families will be hit by this tax increase and by the Government’s equally unfair bedroom tax. In some cases, families will be hit twice over. In practical terms, it will mean that £9.4 million will be taken out of the pockets of people on the lowest incomes in Leeds to pay for higher rent and for higher council tax. Councils will be forced, once again, to start chasing people for money that they might not have—in some cases, small amounts of money—in a way that we have not seen since the days of the hated poll tax.”
“They are being singled out by the Chancellor and the Secretary of State because they have one characteristic in common: they do not have a lot of money. I say to the Minister that that is what I call a kick in the teeth. Those same families will be looking at the TV and the papers and discovering that something else is happening in April. Bigger payslips will be dropping on to other doormats—those of people earning more than £150,000 a year, and those earning more than £1 million a year, because the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State have decided that those people really need a tax cut of £100,000 a year. How is that fair? I will tell the House what this will mean in Leeds.”
“What does this mean for families? It is a tax rise on people who work hard—do not forget that some people receiving the benefit are in work—carers, the disabled and single mums, and it is happening because while the Secretary of State has spent a lot of time these past two years touring the country, pointing the finger at councils and saying, “You must freeze council tax”, all along he has been masterminding a council tax bombshell for those who can least afford it. About 2 million people will remember April this year for the bills that will land on their door mats—bills that will tell them either that they have to pay council tax for the first time or that they face an increase. Why will those people, including those in authorities that decide to freeze the council tax, have a bill on their doormat?”
“Especially since councils finalised their council tax support schemes, which they had to do by the end of last month, it has become clear that a large number of councils, including the Secretary of State’s council of Brentwood, are not taking any of the transitional grant. Why is that? The report that went to Brentwood council made it clear that it would have cost it more to do so. It would have received just over £100,000 from the transitional fund, but it would have cost it an extra £300,000 to have taken it. That is not much in the way of help. It is more the economics of the madhouse. We know that councils are trying to do their best to protect the vulnerable, but the 10% cut in funding, which comes on top of the further cuts announced in this settlement, leaves many with no option but to increase council taxes for the poorest.”
“It wrote: “From 2014-15 the funding calculations for council tax support will be lost within the wider formula funding allocations and will be subject to the broader cuts to local government funding. However by including this funding within overall formula funding, it means that this already reduced sum could well be altered again”. It wrote that it would become almost “impossible to identify what a local authority actually receives for its local scheme”. Will the Minister confirm that and explain the reasoning behind his proposed change? We know that last autumn the Government panicked and announced their transition scheme worth £100 million, because they knew there was a car crash heading their way.”
“My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As I was about to say, a number of families will be hit, not just by one thing, but by several of the changes. It is the accumulative impact that will be so striking. In its briefing for today’s debate, the LGA wrote: “Authorities will have to introduce council tax support schemes against the backdrop of a ten per cent cut in funding for this scheme. In practice this means that many councils will have no choice but to pass the cut on to the working age poor.” The technical details are causing concern. London Councils, in its briefing on the settlement, wrote that it was disappointed with the lack of transparency around the funding for council tax in the future.”