Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron quoted Gary Porter, the Tory chair of the Local Government Association, praising reforms in the spending review that will allow councils to raise money for the cost of social care using council tax. The Tory leader was using the quote to prove Jeremy Corbyn wrong in his warnings about the NHS and social care. He said:
‘If he wants to swap quotations, this is what the chairman of the Local Government Association says:
“The LGA has long called for further flexibility in the setting of council tax… Today’s announcement on council tax will go some way to allowing a number of councils to raise the money needed…The £1.5 billion increase in the Better Care Fund announced today is good news”.’
But it’s worth looking at the context of that quote. It’s from a statement that Porter issued on the day of the spending review, and had Cameron continued reading from it in the Chamber today, he would have quoted the many paragraphs in which Porter criticised the cuts to local government. Here they are:
‘The LGA has long called for further flexibility in the setting of council tax and it is right that Greg Clark and Greg Hands have listened to the concerns set out by local government. Today’s announcement on council tax will go some way to allowing a number of councils to raise the money needed to offset some of the cost of social care. The £1.5 billion increase in the Better Care Fund announced today is good news, but it’s vital that this is new money and must be spent on adult social care.
‘Today’s Spending Review has handed down a difficult £4.1 billion funding cut over this Spending Review period for our residents and comes on top of almost £10 billion in further demand-led cost pressures facing councils by the end of the decade. The consequences for our local communities who will suffer as a result should not be underestimated.
‘It is wrong that the services our local communities rely on will face deeper cuts than the rest of the public sector yet again and for local taxpayers to be left to pick up the bill for new government policies without any additional funding.
‘Even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children’s centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres and turned off every street light they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020.
‘These local services which people cherish will have to be drastically scaled back or lost altogether as councils are increasingly forced to do more with less and protect life and death services, such as caring for the elderly and protecting children, already buckling under growing demand.
‘This Spending Review was never about just spending less it was about spending smarter. Local government has led the way at finding innovative ways to save money but after five years of doing so the majority of savings have already made. Tragically, the Government looks set to miss a once in a generation opportunity to transform the way money is spent across the public sector and protect the services that bind communities together, improve people’s quality of life and protect the most vulnerable.
‘Allowing local government to retain 100 per cent of their business rates income will help councils try to mitigate some of the pressure they face following further funding cuts. While it is positive that the Treasury has worked with us to localise business rates, this is just the start of the journey. We will continue to work closely with Greg Clark and the DCLG team on the detailed work and consideration that must go into what extra responsibilities councils should take on to ensure we get the best outcome for local communities.’
So it’s not as though the chair of the Local Government Association is really in agreement with Cameron on council services and the impact of spending decisions on local services. Indeed, it is local government that is likely to cause the most trouble over the next few years, with the Opposition in Parliament too weak to cause much of a fuss.
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