Peter Lamb
MP for Crawley · Labour · United Kingdom
“In these situations, as a direct result of the Treasury not having revisited those rates over the last 12 years, airlines and other organisations are able to justify under-compensating their staff by pointing to what is essentially Government guidance.”
“I take that fully on board. I am delighted that the hon. Member is here for this debate. There are cities in Europe where the situation is even more pronounced than in Amsterdam. In Budapest, the total residual rate set in 2013 and unchanged since 2014 has been eaten away by a compound inflation rate of 67% in Hungary.”
“Those were first published on the Government’s website in 2013, with unique rates produced for almost every one of the world’s major cities, setting out the average cost of drinks, breakfast, lunch and dinner, a night in a hotel room and even the journey from hotel to office.”
“While simply increasing the 2013 rates in line with inflation would be welcome, I hope the Treasury takes the opportunity to undertake a full review of how subsistence rates can be systematically improved.”
“The issue has a real and detrimental impact on the working lives of cabin crew. A constituent of mine working for an airline operating out of Gatwick airport was blunt about this, telling me that the fact that the rates are so far behind reality means that they have been forced to “miss meals” while abroad for work.”
“Despite the time and effort put into producing those bespoke rates, they have been upgraded significantly only once in the past 13 years—in October 2014, a year after they were first produced—and that only included a fraction of the cities listed.”
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“The fact that those rates have been ignored for so long means that cabin crew and pilots—including constituents of mine and those in adjacent areas—are losing out on subsistence payments of more than €25.”
“Ahead of this debate, using the total residual rates produced in 2013, and nation-specific consumer price index inflation figures from the World Bank Group, we have calculated today’s expected subsistence rates for European destinations. Amsterdam’s total residual rate in 2013 was set at €71; a year later it was raised to €72, where it remains today. According to World Bank Group data, prices in the Netherlands in the 12 years since have risen by an average of 2.6% a year. That compounds to a 36% increase over that period. Had the 2013 rates for Amsterdam increased in line with inflation, workers who had spent more than 24 hours in the city would now receive more than €96.”
“Despite the time and effort put into producing those bespoke rates, they have been upgraded significantly only once in the past 13 years—in October 2014, a year after they were first produced—and that only included a fraction of the cities listed. Despite assurances that the Government keep under review all taxes, including overseas subsistence rates, if we check their website, we see that rates payable to an employee who has travelled to Zagreb for work are listed in Croatian kuna, even though Croatia joined the euro on 1 January 2023. The subsistence rates for at least 15 European capitals, including Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Dublin, have never received an update. Due to more than a decade of inflation, those benchmark values have been eroded in real terms.”
“Those were first published on the Government’s website in 2013, with unique rates produced for almost every one of the world’s major cities, setting out the average cost of drinks, breakfast, lunch and dinner, a night in a hotel room and even the journey from hotel to office. Each city had also been given broader non-specific subsistence reimbursement rates. Demarcated across specific time boundaries, that is a rate for when employees spent more than five hours in a given city, with another for when they spent more than 10 or 24 hours there. The detailed task of producing those rates over a decade ago is evidenced by the fact that HMRC went to the effort of making unique assessments city by city, and that the increase in reimbursement between five, 10 and 24 hours is not only non-linear but unique to each city.”
“Time spent away from home in foreign cities, without access to kitchens or other domestic utilities, can be overwhelmingly expensive, particularly for junior members of the cabin crew, whose salaries, according to the National Careers Service, begin at around £19,000. It is right, therefore, that employers pay tax-deductible subsistence payments to their employees, to cover the costs associated with travel necessary to do their jobs. Under the previous Government, to save companies having to check every single receipt that an employee accrues while abroad, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs introduced a benchmark expenses rates for employees travelling outside the UK.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered expenses rates for employees travelling outside the UK. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am calling on the Government to ensure that serious consideration is given to reassessing the scale rates for expenses and subsistence paid to employees who by nature of their work are required to travel outside the UK. My constituency of Crawley is home to Gatwick airport and many workers, including pilots and cabin crew, who are required to spend considerable time abroad with the flights they crew. That can last from several hours to several days for those working long-haul flights.”
“I am well aware that questions related to tax pose difficult decisions for Governments, particularly in times of global economic uncertainty such as these. But I would hope that we would all accept that people should not go without meals while undertaking travel essential to their work, particularly where those individuals might already be on a very low wage. I will closely follow the outcome of the Treasury’s review of overseas scale rates, and I hope that the various issues I have highlighted today are reflected in its outcome.”
“While simply increasing the 2013 rates in line with inflation would be welcome, I hope the Treasury takes the opportunity to undertake a full review of how subsistence rates can be systematically improved. Having secured this debate, I was contacted by Virgin Atlantic, which, among other things, raised concerns that there are some destinations where the current rate might not reflect the full cost of subsistence for an individual visiting or living in the city. For instance, it provided the example of Lagos where safety restrictions require pilots and cabin crew to remain in their hotels and rely on higher cost room service or onsite dining. It is its view—one that I share—that any review should give consideration to those concerns and ensure that safe accommodation is made affordable under new rates.”
“The issue has a real and detrimental impact on the working lives of cabin crew. A constituent of mine working for an airline operating out of Gatwick airport was blunt about this, telling me that the fact that the rates are so far behind reality means that they have been forced to “miss meals” while abroad for work. Another constituent stated that “current scale rate allowances do not reflect the real costs we face on these trips”, and reiterated that “the allowance provided does not cover even the most basic meals.” It is evident, therefore, that overseas scale rates must be raised. That is why I was delighted when, in his written statement, my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury committed to reviewing and uprating them last month. This has been a long time coming.”
“In these situations, as a direct result of the Treasury not having revisited those rates over the last 12 years, airlines and other organisations are able to justify under-compensating their staff by pointing to what is essentially Government guidance. When I wrote to the Treasury with those concerns last year, the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray), informed me that in situations where expenses rates do not cover the actual costs of needing to eat, drink and sleep while abroad for work, the employers can instead choose to “pay actual expenses incurred”. Unfortunately, not every company chooses to do that for their employees, with many of them instead choosing—I do not think this will be a surprise to any of us—to pay the lower rate, the Government’s fixed rate.”
“I take that fully on board. I am delighted that the hon. Member is here for this debate. There are cities in Europe where the situation is even more pronounced than in Amsterdam. In Budapest, the total residual rate set in 2013 and unchanged since 2014 has been eaten away by a compound inflation rate of 67% in Hungary. The current payment of 16,000 forints is well over 10,000 forints, or 40%, lower than it should be. The worst example among European capitals, however, is in Ankara. In the years since the overseas subsistence rates were first set, Turkey has experienced huge inflation. Prices have risen at an average of 22.5% every year. Despite that, Ankara’s residual rate remains at 240 lira, as set in 2014. If it had increased with inflation, it would be over 2,500 lira today, which represents an unrealised tenfold increase.”
“I believe it is possible to adopt them within the existing system and within financial constraints. However, we cannot do that while running up a flag to tell every developer in the country to ditch their responsibility to get the estates adopted. I am pleased by the recommendations before us, but further action is needed on an independent regulator and on turning off the tap on unadopted estates.”
“I have gone through the articles of association to try and find ways for residents to wrest back control, but the complexities mean that these people are completely unaccountable. It masquerades as ownership by those communities, while delivering an unaccountable system. What should we do? The Government’s existing proposals are an improvement, and I welcome the Committee’s recommendation of the independent regulator, which should come into effect. On the issue of unadopted estates, ultimately, we now have to turn off the tap. We need to establish fixed conditions and fees, so that they are all adopted at the point they are completed and handed over to local authorities. We also need to establish a pathway for existing unadopted estates to be taken on by the state, with a need for local authorities to plan how they bring them in.”
“It is part of a new town that has all the services that the neighbourhood principal should deliver for a neighbourhood, but unlike in my other neighbourhoods the residents of Forge Wood are all having to pay for them a second time: once through their council tax and a second time through their management agency, with a fee that rivals the level of district authority council tax. They are paying more for fewer services. There are questions over the nature of the contracts and the contractors that are brought in. If we look at any of those property management agencies, the company secretaries are registered to hundreds, if not thousands, of such companies. How effective can someone be when they are registered as secretary for thousands of companies? It is frankly little more than fee farming from residents for no benefit.”
“As someone who has delivered local plans, I can tell hon. Members that I was always very mindful of the requirements I was putting on developers, because I knew that every single requirement was an affordable house being taken out of the system. As legislators, I think we have sometimes been a bit careless with unnecessary additional requirements. We must ensure that regulation is proportionate, but in this case it very much is. I have been dealing with the issue of unadopted estates for the better part of two decades now, and no worse example exists in my experience than that of Forge Wood.”
“That is one reason why I was very excited this week to see the Secretary of State’s comments on the potential mass re-entry of this Government into housing delivery. It is one of the very few things that could resolve the issue, because we have a broken market. People are forced to accept unreasonable housing conditions because they have no choice. Until we resolve the broken market, we will continue to have various forms of exploitation. The reality is that developers—there are good developers and bad developers—will, overwhelmingly, seek to minimise their costs as far as possible, whatever the impact on the communities they are creating. If we allow poor practices to be possible within the law, we will see poor practices being delivered by these people. We need to be mindful, of course, that regulation has an impact.”
“I very much welcome, as I am sure do most of colleagues on the Labour Benches, the Government’s actions so far on commonhold and leasehold, and I look forward to their further steps. Today, I would like to speak to the issue of property management agents, particularly in the context of unadopted estates. As with so many issues, the fundamental problem here is a lack of housing. Despite the enormous actions taken by this Government to get the housing market moving, the reality is that housing delivery collapsed in the wake of the 1984 housing legislation. Anyone who looks at a graph of housing delivery since that point can see that the mass exit of the state from the direct delivery of housing has never come close to being replaced by the private sector.”
“I thank the Chancellor for her response. With the constantly growing evidence base behind it, wellbeing economics offers Governments an increasingly sophisticated means of supplementing conventional economics in decision making. It reveals that big-ticket items very often offer little wellbeing benefit to our constituents, while much cheaper interventions can have a dramatic impact. Wellbeing levels have even been shown across Europe to be a better predictor of electoral outcomes than traditional economic measures. Would the Chancellor be willing to meet me and other members of the all-party parliamentary group on wellbeing economics to discuss how wellbeing economics can enhance the work of the Treasury?”
“Despite the reduction in passenger volumes after covid, we are now essentially back to having the mid-week peak, so there is no time for delay. The works are urgently needed if we are going to move things forward. I appreciate that the Treasury needs to address a range of concerns, but this need is urgent now, and will ultimately deliver a much better offer for the United Kingdom in the long run. Please can we just get on with it?”
“If we pump prime this part of the south-east with the relatively limited amount of capital we are talking about, it will deliver a much greater return to the Treasury and the UK, through the social and economic benefits of the resultant growth. It is worth noting that passenger volumes are projected to increase by 50% by 2045, which is 15 years after we run out of capacity on the line. If CARS is not the solution to that, what is the DFT’s strategy for dealing with capacity limitations of that scale on the line? I am happy to lobby for something else if I am pointed in the right direction, but my understanding, from talking to transport people, is that this scheme is the only thing that is going to resolve that particular problem. There will be some temporary stops along the way, but they can be dealt with.”
“One business group, which tries to bring inward investment to the United Kingdom, said that people refuse to move here when they have experience the railway capacity or the delays on the line getting to and from Gatwick. That is a real consequence of the UK’s inward investment strategy. We need to ensure that we have the infrastructure to get the maximal benefits of the private investment that is coming in, and the south-east will deliver on that. This is the only profit-making line in the GTR network. The numbers coming through will quickly increase the rate of return for the Treasury, based on the investment. We are one of the very few areas where rail investment would do that, and subsidise other railway lines elsewhere. It will pay for itself in the long term, but we need the pump priming at the start.”
“I can understand that, and I respect why the DFT is going in that direction, but if we are to see additional benefits to the country coming out of economic activity, that has to come with the necessary infrastructure not only to enable my community to avoid the negative consequences of the housing and transport pressure that will result if the scheme is not put into effect, but to enable the country to get the best possible rate of return on the investment. Ultimately, that is what those of us involved want. A large number of business groups now support the scheme and are making the point that we are cutting off investment in the area. I was at a meeting last week with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons), the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) and a number of business and transport groups.”
“The Gatwick airport expansion is supposed to come forward in my community. My community already has full employment, and it has a housing problem. With the capacity limitations expected on the line by 2030, my community will have a very significant transport problem—and I should add that those limitations will come into effect without Gatwick expansion. Gatwick expansion will not necessarily bring any additional benefits to my community, but it brings benefits to the country.”
“As someone who lives in south-east, it is to my benefit for other parts of the country to develop. The direction of travel of policy in this country for many decades has been, essentially, “We are going to move the entire population of the United Kingdom to the south-east, and that is where the only jobs will be.” That is not sustainable. The housing pressures are just not sustainable. We have to have regeneration elsewhere. However, the risk with insufficient investment in the south-east is killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The south-east as a whole generates more economic activity than London. In combination with London, we are talking about a third of the UK’s economic activity. If we do not invest in the infrastructure that sustains that, we will run into very significant problems.”
“Unfortunately, it was the victim of the great strategic vision of our previous Prime Minister, who cancelled HS2 and a number of other proposals. Since that point, it has been very hard for a Department to get things back on the agenda. The new Government have come in with a significant proposal for investing in infrastructure. People underestimate just how significant the Government’s proposals for infrastructure are. We are talking about £100 billion of additional infrastructure investment under this Government, which will transform a very large part of the country. The risk we run into, however, is where that investment goes. There are different pressures acting on the DFT as a consequence. Some of it is about trying to regenerate regional economies in the north of England and other parts of the country.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. This issue has been on my radar for a very long time. I used to be the leader of the local authority in Crawley, and we have been aware for many years that the capacity limitations that are coming on the line will be so severe that they will gum up the entire network—the whole north-south link through London—from the coast in Brighton all the way through to Peterborough and Cambridge. Ultimately, we can address that only by resolving the bottleneck in Croydon. The Department for Transport has already commissioned scoping work and started the process of bringing CARS forward. A significant part of the land required to undertake the work has been purchased and is just sitting idle.”
“The Government are to be commended for the largest ever investment in police technology, including facial recognition to catch serious offenders, and a drone squad to crack down on waste crime. However, the rules around admissibility of some high-tech evidence, such as the six-month crime rule, are holding back enforcement, which could enable us to stamp out low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. Can the Minister commit to reviewing these rules to ensure that the latest technology can be used to protect our communities?”
“Is the hon. Gentleman astounded, as I am, that the majority of that debt is with the public works loan board, which sits underneath the Treasury. Where was the Treasury when that debt was being allowed to accumulate?”
“It is clear that the advice given to Ministers in MHCLG is poor; we have seen that in just one month, with fair funding miscalculations that took place, and we have seen that with the elections, with the conclusions that we now all have to deal with. Having been through the detail of the policy over and over again, I cannot see any way that it is not another example of that poor advice.”
“I am sure that Opposition Members would be delighted; it is why I thought they would be pushing the policy, not the Members on the Labour Benches. Talk to any Labour party organiser and they will say that the policy undermines our organising model. They are up in arms. Most Labour Governments in the last century would not have happened had there been a reform such as this. We are arguing for a policy that no longer reflects the principles on which it was first brought together. It no longer reflects the same goals: it will not save us money, it will be more remote and it will undermine the deprived communities that this Government are allegedly in place to serve.”
“We will end up with competition between the different communities in those areas, and policy will be driven by those communities whose voices are heard loudest in whatever administration is in control. That will, again, mean that the rural beats out the urban. Urban communities such as mine, which includes some of the most deprived parts of the country—certainly in the south-east, at least—will lose out as a direct result of the restructure. There are 71 Labour constituencies that trusted us at the last election, but that will see their quality of life decline as a direct result of the policy as well. When we look at the numbers, it might well be that if the Labour party, sacrificed those 71 constituencies, it would never be in office again.”
“The reason is that with footprints of this size we cannot build a meaningful relationship with a councillor. The distance cuts people off from their democracy and any sense of control, and increases their scepticism. Conversations about area committees are frankly meaningless; anyone who has actually worked with those structures knows they do not replace meaningful representation. The fundamental problem we will run into is geography. When we strive to get population sizes in rural areas, we come up with enormous geographies; for my patch, we are most likely talking about an area in excess of 50 miles wide. Greater London is just over 30 miles wide. What common interests can exist in that footprint? What common services? What common identity?”
“Currently, the average size of authorities in the UK is seven times larger than not the European average, but the authorities in the European country with the next largest—and this programme will make our authorities 14 times larger than those. Why are we such an outlier? Why are councils in Europe, which have far greater powers and far greater money than we do, apparently perfectly capable of running their local areas, while in our areas we have to bring things up to a central Government level? Again, I think that the civil service has far more to do with this programme than any actual rational thought does. The changes will also prevent people from having any meaningful relationship with councillors. In the UK, we are far less likely than in any other part of Europe to have independent councillors.”
“Debt is going up, budgetary decisions are being postponed and savings are being put off in order to invest in local communities while there is one last chance to do that. Over the next 12 months, section 114 notices are far more likely than in any preceding period. I will move on to the issue of democracy. Resident satisfaction surveys of local authorities have consistently shown a positive correlation between the perception of a local authority and the size of that authority. It is not the other way around, as though suddenly authorities delivered much more effectively when they got to a much greater footprint—why would that be the case? More remote Government is not necessarily going to make people any happier.”
“In fact, even on the most optimistic assumptions, on these footprints no savings would be delivered until the end of the next Parliament—but it is more likely that there would not be any saving at all. In fact, the situation gets even worse than that. Who knows when most of the country’s leisure centres were built? I will give Members a clue—it was in the early ’70s. What happened in the early ’70s? We merged all the district councils, and they looked at their accounts and said, “I am not handling this over to the next council”, and they got busy spending. We can see that in the country currently. The reality is that, until the protections come in with the new authority, people will be getting money out the door.”
“What do we think will be the dominant factor in these new authorities, where the politics is controlled by rural communities? Will it be a focus on economic development? Will it be a focus on housing delivery? Or will it be stamping down on those two things, as we have seen time and time again? This plan does not deliver on the Government’s missions; it kills them off, as many Members have tried to point out in recent times. The reality is that demography is destiny, and rural communities will have control over those authorities. Returning to the issue of finance, in my area the actual cost of the merger is estimated as three times greater than the estimate put forward so far.”
“One might imagine what other people might feel if we went to their areas and tried to impose our culture upon them. There has also been the claim that these reformed authorities will be engines for economic growth and housing delivery, but let us think about it in this way: I was the leader of a local authority that delivered over four times our Government-assessed numbers for housing, whereas—unfortunately—Mid Sussex district council, which was previously under Conservative control, often did not even have a core strategy for that entire period, never mind delivering any actual housing numbers. We are about to create unitaries where the areas that deliver large volumes of housing, and that need such housing at an affordable rate, will be swamped by rural communities.”
“Most of the areas that a district council deals with and most of the areas that a county council deals with do not interface in any meaningful way when it comes to savings. If they did, the County Councils Network report, which it paid PwC to produce in order to create the strongest possible case for reform, would have put that forward. Instead, the report solely states that savings can be made by reducing senior officer numbers. As anyone who has been involved in the sector knows, many of those posts no longer exist in the numbers that they did at the time that the PwC report was formed. At this point, such figures simply do not exist. The only people I can find who have any difficulty with the idea of two-tier areas are civil servants and politicians from unitary authority areas.”
“The problem with that argument is that the footprints that the change was supposed to create would align the mayoralties, the police authorities and the integrated care boards, so that we would get all the services in one area and they could deliver efficiencies. However, we are now talking about creating police authorities on a larger footprint than the existing mayoral footprint, so the two would no longer correspond. There will be a much more complicated structure now, with deputy mayors sitting on different boards in relation to it. Similarly, the ICBs have had to expand, so they no longer go along with the devolution footprint. The only form of public sector reform that we can now carry out around this process is reform of local government on its own, and that will not deliver the projected savings.”
“We hear bizarre arguments about issues such as waste collection and waste disposal authorities, as if the idea that someone collects the bins and someone gets rid of them is complicated. What particularly grates my gears about that argument is that there are many unitary authorities that are not waste disposal authorities. Take the Thames valley waste authority as an example—take Greater London—take Greater Manchester: in all those areas, waste is collected that is then disposed of on a larger footprint. There are many such areas where the powers do not perfectly align, and people manage to get through them without any great deal of controversy. The argument for much of this change, particularly with the mayoralties, was that we were would get wider public sector reform, which would deliver astounding savings.”
“However, when Governments do not release data, we come to the conclusion that they do not have data that backs up their case. The evidence base here is very hard to find. The other argument that comes up very frequently is that two-tier areas are too complicated and people do not know who runs what. I have lived in two-tier areas essentially my entire life, apart from when I was at university, and that is not something I have come across, despite being in roles where I might expect to come across it very regularly. If we say tiers are a problem, adding mayors across the country and encouraging people to set up third-tier authorities increases the total number of tiers at the local government level. It adds to the complexity rather than decreasing it.”
“We could merge existing unitaries together—that would save money. However, when we start creating unitaries, we are merging two different tiers together; if that is a smaller footprint than existing upper-tier authorities, it will always end up costing more money than the alternative. We now have a proposal that will not deliver politically or financially. I will return to the finances in due course, because the situation is much worse than people think it is. This proposal is somehow still on the table long beyond the original document that set this all out. If there are other figures on this then, like the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), I would be delighted to see them. I have asked for them repeatedly.”
“The reason was that, when we look at the County Councils Network figures, the £2 billion savings it talked about delivering, which it presented as if it were an annual statement—it is not, it is over five years—are achievable only when dealing with population sizes of 500,000 or greater. The problem, when we come down to it, is this: for the Labour party, that is completely unelectable. We have pockets of support within the south east, but we do not have larger footprints. With the politics unravelling around this question, we have started to talk about smaller sizes for unitary authorities, but here we run into a problem: unitary authorities do not save money. Merging existing councils saves money. We could merge districts together—that would save money. We could merge counties together—what an idea!—and that would save money.”
“In fact, the more I delve into it, the more opaque it becomes. My understanding is that this reform all kicked off with Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves—two people without any background in local government—making a deal: more money now, in return for local government reform. The only reason they thought it would deliver any results was that the County Councils Network had, for many years, been putting forward a document that seemed to set out a case that there would be financial savings if county councils were merged at the unitary level. Those figures relied on population sizes of roughly half a million people—that figure is critical; I re-read all the statements made by local government Ministers on this before this debate, and it is a figure that has been repeatedly stated and was consistently pushed for the better part of a year.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. Local government is an area of great interest to me. I did my master’s dissertation on models for English devolution; I have worked at the UK’s leading think-tank on devolution; for 17 years I worked as an adviser to local authorities, and I have served in local government in a county council and a district council, including almost a decade as a council leader. From 2015 onwards, I have also been involved in various devolution proposals for Sussex in one way or another. I say all that because, despite that background, I still cannot get my head around what the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is trying to achieve with all this. That is despite talking to the director at No. 10, special advisers and Ministers on this policy area.”
“I say to Ministers, “You’ve inherited a mess from other people; it wasn’t of your making and I really wouldn’t jeopardise your careers seeing this through.””
“If we deal with those three problems, local government finance problems will go away—but they are central Government’s problems to resolve, and we have not yet quite resolved them. I accept that all that is in motion, but when I talk to people in local government, very few of them want this policy. The reality is the boundaries are most likely going to end up lasting for another half a century—just look at the pain we are going through now; we are not going to want to go through it all again. We should not be embarking on something that will last 50 years when we cannot publish the evidence base because it is so weak. A pause is now needed to reflect on these proposals. I will continue to argue more and more loudly for that, adding more and more things to the debate about the best outcome here.”
“Lastly, there are the costs of temporary housing, which housing authorities, like the districts, are mandated to provide. They have no control over it, and are often dealing with the consequences of central Government decisions that move more people into the area and create that level of housing need. However, those costs ultimately stem from a failure of housing policy in this country. Those are the three areas bankrupting local government. Despite the fact that local government started out as the most efficient part of the public sector and has become still more efficient since, taking sensible decisions to maintain its survival, it cannot deal with pressures that are not being dealt with centrally.”
“There are three areas, and social care is one of them. The finances of upper-tier authorities have been totally compromised, initially by the costs of social care, where we have still not taken decisions all these years after the Dilnot review. We all know that social care is slowly bankrupting councils. Go to any single council presentation on local government finance—whether a unitary or upper-tier authority—and that is the thing that will be mentioned. Then there is SEND, which again has absolutely crippled local authorities’ funding to the extent that we allowed them to keep it off their books because the cost would have bankrupted them. That has now been taken away from them to be covered centrally, so that is one less problem to deal with.”
“On a point of order, Mr Vickers. Regarding my earlier breach, I just want to apologise to you and to the Chamber for referring to my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves) by their names rather than by their constituencies, and without forewarning. I was unaware of the process. I will make sure it does not happen again.”