Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Apr 2025 · British Steel · Hansard source

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  I take at face value what the Minister has said today about British Steel having a bright future. However, she did not mention any figures, other than a global figure of £2.5 billion floating around somewhere. Will she tell the House when she expects to publish the accounting officer assessment that is required when public money is committed? We can then test in the Public Accounts Committee whether those rules for spending public money are being adhered to, particularly in terms of feasibility.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Driving Licences: Zero Emission Vehicles · Hansard source

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  It is interesting, when sitting in the Chamber, to hear colleagues’ expertise on subjects that we did not know they had expertise in. I wish to draw my hon. Friend back to a slightly different subject, which he was beginning to touch on. Electric vehicles, which of course have batteries, tend to be far heavier than equivalent vehicles with an internal combustion engine. Some of the vehicle combinations that the Minister talked about—for example, he mentioned a vehicle and a trailer not exceeding 7 tonnes gross vehicle weight—would vary in weight depending on whether the car or van was electric. That might affect a person’s decision to change from a vehicle with an internal combustion engine to an electric vehicle.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Armed Forces Recruitment · Hansard source

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  In recent years, for every 100 servicemen recruited, 130 have left. That is completely unsustainable. What is the Minister doing to ensure that we retain more troops, with not only the package within our armed forces, but competitive packages in the private sector?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  On the point about not doing any harm to nature, would the hon. Member’s party support the water companies becoming statutory consultees so that we can ensure that, with any new housing, not a litre of extra sewage goes into our rivers?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome much of what the Bill will do. It will speeding up the planning system, which as a chartered surveyor who has practised in planning is I know desperately needed if we are to get more houses built. However, the one area of the Bill that I have concerns about is what she has just come on to. If local people feel completely overridden by their planning system, they will feel very hard done by. If we are to override local people, we might just as well have a nationally directed planning system rather than a local planning system. Will she think carefully about that balance?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q13. Most people would accept that we need more housing in this country, yet so often it is not accompanied by the necessary infrastructure. In my constituency, thousands of houses are proposed, yet without £250 million to upgrade junction 12 of the M5, the inspector is likely to rule our plan unsound. Will the Prime Minister use his upcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill to see how developer and landowner contributions can more effectively build this vital infrastructure, which would benefit communities up and down the country?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Sustainable Farming Incentive · Hansard source

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  The announcement was sneaked out with no notice last night. If the Minister knows anything about farming, he will know that it takes months, if not years, to plan. Farmers had no notice of this. Will he tell us what will replace the SFI, when he will consult, and when it is likely to come into operation?

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee for her endorsements of the worthy work that all these individuals have put into the health service. The Department of Health and Social Care is one of the highest spending Departments in the UK, with a total departmental expenditure limit standing at a huge £210.1 billion. I am not sure anybody believes that the NHS is working at optimal productivity. NHS England is the largest quango with the highest budget in Whitehall; however, when allocating funds, it is also one of the few Departments that is making life and death decisions that affect the lives of literally millions of patients and their families. I think it does, therefore, deserve the highest level of scrutiny, which is part of what we are doing today. Before even getting on to the figures, the NAO confirmed that the level of productivity in the NHS has dropped by around 23% since the pandemic. I simply say that unless that is sorted, any reform that the Government announce will be sucked into the black hole of the NHS without commensurate value for money or results.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes an extremely powerful point. I am coming to the conclusion of my speech, which is on precisely that point. The social care system is not working in this country. It is a political football that keeps being passed from one Government to another. I understand that the Government have committed to another review of adult social care and that we should not expect results until at least 2028; for many of our elderly patients, that will be too late. The funding of social care is rising exponentially. There needs to be more focused and joined-up thinking from the DHSC, NHS England and local authorities on how they can support those who need help to be discharged from hospital in a timely manner and live in their own homes for a longer period than they might otherwise be able to do. It should not be a postcode lottery, as exists now. With more joined-up thinking between different parts of the NHS, the patient experience could be better. However, without substantial increases in productivity, increased spending on preventive care and public health, and a better functioning social care system, our NHS will never be able to operate at the optimal level with world-leading standards.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I do not want to give way to too many people; otherwise, you will reprimand me for taking too long, Madam Deputy Speaker. However, I am, of course, happy to give way to the hon. Lady.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely with the hon. Lady. She has obviously been reading my speech— I will cover the announcement later in my speech, at which point she will hear exactly what it says. As I say, the NAO has confirmed that productivity levels have dropped by 23%. I welcome the Government’s commitment to a 10-year plan for the NHS. We have also repeatedly warned that, with an ageing and increasingly sick population, the NHS will struggle to cope with the ever-increasing multiple complex demands of our population. I wish to split this speech into three sections: how productivity could be improved in the NHS; funding; and, as the hon. Member for Stafford alluded to, technical advancements and a shift into community care. The Department of Health and Social Care’s day-to-day spending—RDEL—is set to increase by £10.9 billion—from £187.9 billion to the main estimate as produced today of £198.5 billion. The capital spending is, however, set to decrease by around £1 billion, from £12.5 billion to £11.5 billion—a decrease of 8%. That is worrying as it shows that more and more funds are being redirected from long-term investment—for example, in the new hospitals to which the previous Government had committed themselves. I welcome the new Treasury guidelines that have stopped the practice of the past few years of redirecting up to £1 billion from capital spending to day-to-day spending. That should help to make more money available. The NHS estate, as we all know from our constituencies, is in desperate need of investment, and our capital investment programme is running behind schedule. The problems with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete have only added to the necessity of upgrading our hospitals, and I hope the Minister will listen to this plea. The latest NAO report on the DHSC annual report and accounts shows that local systems, such as integrated care boards and NHS providers, reported a year-end overspend of £1.4 billion. This has nearly doubled from £621 million in 2022-23. This was despite an extra £4.5 billion of additional funding during 2023-24, which was to support pay deals for non-medical staff, mitigate any impacts from industrial action and provide money to address the costs of new pay arrangements for doctors and dentists. What I do not think is acceptable is the glacial pace of agreeing priorities and approving final budgets for the local systems. In November, our Committee was shocked to hear that, in the past two years, those local systems—ICBs and others—had not had their financial plans approved by the Department until June and May respectively. That is up to three months after the start of the financial year. How can our poor local systems plan efficiently when these final allocations and guidance are so late? If the Department’s own accounts were finalised much sooner, our local systems would be able to have the money allocated in a more timely way, making wastage and inefficient spending less likely. I welcome the Secretary of State’s prognosis that the NHS is far too big and complicated. There should be a shift towards allowing NHS trusts more control of their own budgets, as clarified in the 2025-26 priorities and operational planning guidance published in January. Moving more funds directly to NHS trusts, ICBs and local systems will improve accountability and give them a level of flexibility about how their funds should be better spent, rather than just focusing on targets and directives. For example, if they were to run a surplus because they had run their operation so well, they could reinvest the money in desperately needed capital projects rather than returning it to Whitehall. That must also go hand in hand with a need to improve productivity. Between 1996 and 2019, the NHS averaged a measly 0.6% a year increase in productivity. Since the pandemic, productivity has now fallen by 23%. In March 2024, the Conservative Government announced that the NHS would receive £3.4 billion of capital investment for digital improvements between 2025-26 and 2027-28, which begins to address the point that the hon. Member for Stafford mentioned. As part of that investment, NHS England committed to achieving ambitious average productivity improvements of 2% per year through to 2029-30. However, those digital improvements, presaged by that additional £3.4 billion, have not yet been fully actioned.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. The NHS employs an enormous number of staff—more than 1 million people, I think—and their conditions of work are really important if we are to retain them. That does mean that their mental health needs close attention, especially when they have problems. If the NHS cannot help with mental health issues, who can? The hon. Gentleman has hit on a really important point. One reason that productivity is not improving more is that there are 19% more staff in the NHS, but they are seeing only 14% more patients. At our hearing, NHS officials stated that this was due to more complex and acute health needs, meaning longer stays in hospital. I also understand that it was due to staff sickness, absences and the then ongoing workforce industrial action that affected most patients last year, making targets more difficult to meet. I do not know about other hon. Members, but I am still getting emails from constituents whose appointments and operations were cancelled at the last minute due to that industrial action and who are still waiting for their procedures to be rearranged. Along with staff, technology plays a big role in improving efficiency and productivity. The 2025-26 priorities and operational planning guidance stated that the NHS organisation “will need to reduce their cost base by at least 1% and achieve 4% improvement in productivity.” I understand that these figures are hard to pin down due to the NHS still negotiating with bodies such as the ONS on the definition of productivity and how it can be measured. I say to the Minister that, even if the numbers are disputed, we have still not seen a plan for how these productivity gains can be achieved, and the Committee believes that NHS England has produced unrealistic estimates. We need to have a realistic estimate from the Department of what productivity gains can be achieved over the next few years. Without significant productivity gains, the NHS will not substantially reform waiting times and achieve the best value for the large amount of money that we spend on it. On average, there is a 4% real terms increase in our spending each year, when the economy is growing by only 1%, which is unsustainable in the long term. If we go back to 2013, the Health Secretary had set the NHS a challenge of going paperless by 2018. Clearly, as we all know, that has not happened, because the NHS is still using fax machines. In a digital age of AI, that lack of modernisation produces a risk to both patients and employees in the NHS. Investing in better technology would help with the Government’s ambition to shift more care into the community. Community healthcare can take many forms, from GP surgeries and community hospitals to pharmacies, dentists and social care. I fear that when we talk about the NHS budget, we predominantly focus on hospital care, rather than the care that most of our constituents need every day. Indeed, Lord Darzi’s report, which was commissioned by the Government last year, said that “the NHS budget is not being spent where it should be—too great a share is being spent in hospitals, too little in the community, and productivity is too low” This is where I would like to pay tribute to our GPs and all their staff across the country, especially in the North Cotswolds. Our GP surgeries are usually the first point of contact with our NHS, from antenatal services to blood tests and vaccinations. They also offer a number of services that could be termed preventive care. As a Committee, we questioned NHS officials on their prioritisation of preventing ill health rather than treating it, thus avoiding much more expensive hospital interventions in the future and a much better patient experience. Their reply was that they had little additional headroom to grow preventive services, yet the public health grant used by local authorities to commission preventive measures, such as health visitors and drug and alcohol services, is expected to fall in value next year by £193 million, despite the Government’s commitment to maintaining it in real terms. I cannot stress enough how I believe that we should be paying much more attention to prevention rather than cure; it is just so important. NHS England said that, rather than moving funds, there should be a focus on the role of GPs and how they can advise their patients. However, according to the Royal College of General Practitioners, although more than 90% of patients’ direct experience of the NHS is through primary care and GP practices, less than 10% of the total budget is currently spent on primary care. I say gently to the Minister that we are getting our priorities wrong there. As a Committee, we have recommended that the Government clearly define what counts as health prevention spending within the next six months and track that spending annually. ICBs should be given more flexibility in how they spend their money, which might include redirecting services to more community settings that are closer to patients. It might also include redirecting funds to help manage discharges from hospital. According to the House of Commons Library, the latest data shows that last year an average of 12,340 patients a day remained in hospital despite being clinically fit to be discharged. Even though there is a slight decrease of 1.2% from last year, more can be done to ensure that patients who are well enough can leave hospital for the community and be closer to their families. That will require better working between social care and hospitals.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I shall be brief. I thank the Minister for her very comprehensive reply, and I congratulate her on her new role. I also congratulate everybody who spoke in this debate; there were some excellent speeches. Can I ask the Minister to thank her officials for appearing before my Committee? It is very much appreciated. I also thank the members of the PAC, a very hard-working Committee that produces two major reports a week, and in particular my deputy, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). To sum up, as I said in my speech, productivity is the key to long-term reform of the NHS. Increasing funds at 4% per year in real terms when the economy is growing at only 1% in the long term is unsustainable, so something has to be reformed in the health service. As I did in my speech, I ask the Minister to consider producing a productivity plan, so that, without all the arguments with the Office for National Statistics and everybody else, we can see the DHSC’s best estimate for productivity gains over the next five to 10 years, and can start to see how such goals will be met. In such a productivity plan, modern digital technology will be really important. The Minister skated over one word that I am really concerned about, which is “cyber”. We had a wake-up call with WannaCry two or three years ago. The NHS has some very important personal data, so it is vital that we move towards modern machines that can withstand cyber-attacks better than some of the analogue equipment in the NHS. It has been a great debate, and I am sure that the Minister will have plenty to think about. Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to intervene on my deputy, who does an excellent job on the Public Accounts Committee. In the last Parliament, before he joined the Committee, we went to Denmark, where they do precisely what he is talking about: give chemotherapy treatment to people in their homes where they have a history of not reacting to it.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting us the opportunity to debate this supplementary estimate, which provides an opportunity for all Members of this House to look at the Public Accounts Committee’s report on health and discuss how the money might be spent on different priorities. As the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, I am honoured to introduce the first estimates debate on the supplementary estimate of the Department of Health and Social Care. I made this application jointly with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). As Members of this House will know, the Public Accounts Committee is one of the oldest Committees of this House. It exists to protect taxpayers’ money and ensure that their pound is being used effectively. It goes back, I think, to about 1867. Unlike other Committees, we do not take evidence from Ministers; instead, we take evidence directly from permanent secretaries and the most senior civil servants and public sector officials. The National Audit Office provides us with audited accounts and value for money reports, and we produce reports of our own with recommendations to Government to which they must formally respond as part of the Treasury minute. At this point, I pay tribute to Amanda Pritchard, who has recently announced that she will be stepping down as chief executive of NHS England this summer. She oversaw the NHS at a time when it was under so much pressure post pandemic, and I wish her well in her future endeavours. I also congratulate Chris Wormald on his promotion to Cabinet Secretary. These vacancies at the head of NHS England and the Cabinet Office provide an opportunity for completely fresh thinking within the NHS.

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I, too, thank the Deputy Prime Minister for ending the uncertainty around the Gloucestershire county council elections taking place this May. Bearing that in mind, will she set out a clear timetable for those two-tier counties such as Gloucestershire as to when they are expected to provide proposals on any wish to change? Will she also confirm that the county council elected in May this year will serve a full four-year term of office?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because I am about to raise a really important point that has not yet been addressed. A lot of councils are seeing their reserves diminished hugely, and I worry that there are a lot more councils in the pipeline that might well come under a section 114 agreement. Will she commit tonight to her Department working ever more closely with councils to try to prevent them from getting into that situation? As I said in my speech, once we get into that situation it is always more expensive for council tax payers, and they get cuts in their services.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the whole business of devolution, because I am going to come on to that at the end of my speech. What I think we should do is build it from the bottom up, as we did, and let local people have a real say in what they want for the future of the delivery of their local services. I am going to say a little bit more about that and ask the Local Government Minister some quiet questions about it at the end. I turn to a matter that is bread and butter for the Public Accounts Committee, which the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, also raised, which is the whole business of local auditing. Without proper auditing, there is no guarantee that all the money—I say “all the money”, but I just mean “the money”—that councils get from both council tax and local government grants, in one form or another, is being spent wisely and providing value for money. The shocking position that we find ourselves in with local auditing at the moment is not, I think, helping the whole system. The Public Accounts Committee recently held an evidence session on the whole of Government accounts, as the hon. Lady referred to, where we found that 44% of councils did not submit any data at all to those whole of Government accounts, and that 46% of accounts had not been audited for nearly five years, in some councils’ cases. The Local Government Minister has laid before the House measures to ameliorate the timing of producing local audits. Hopefully, we can get to a situation where we can start those local audits and get a set of figures we can begin to rely on. The next year, once we have started with an established set of figures, we hopefully ought to be able to get a properly audited set of accounts.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Just a second. Another part of the budget that is consuming more and more is temporary housing accommodation; this, again, needs a fix in some way or another. Structurally, we cannot let these areas of spending go on unreformed, so that they continue to put huge pressure on the finances of all councils. I give way to a former member of the Public Accounts Committee.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I will in just a second, but I want to make a really important point to the Minister about why all this matters. Why does it matter? If we do not have a set of properly audited accounts, we do not have a sound basis on which to know what we are spending money on. As the Local Government Minister knows only too well, it is not only the audited accounts that are important but the assurance that goes with them, so that council officers, councillors and the public—the council tax payers—can begin to get an idea of whether something is going wrong with their council. I say to him gently that if more councils knew that, we might not run into a situation where they issue section 114 notices. However we cut the cake, when a section 114 notice comes into effect and the Government send in officials to run the council, it always ends up with local people getting a poorer service—they have their services cut—that is more expensive in council tax. It is really bad when a council gets into that situation, and that is why we need proper audited accounts.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  The Minister has partly answered the question, but he did say that it was a very short timeframe. I understand that we will receive the letter very soon and that is great, but how long will there be after that for the county council to work up a proposal that might be acceptable to the Government? That is what it will want to know. I request earnestly that we have enough time to consult people as widely as possible, for the reasons that I have just given. [ Interruption. ] The Minister is indicating that he will write to me; that would be very helpful. Perhaps he will put a copy in the Library so that everyone else can benefit, and also respond to the question about whether the newly elected council will be in place for four years or not. This has been a very constructive debate, as is often the case when there are relatively few Members present. When Members on both sides of the House can get our teeth into a subject like this and come up with constructive proposals on behalf of our constituents, which is what we are here for, we really are achieving something. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  The Local Government Minister must be clairvoyant—or he must be reading my notes. I warmly welcome the Government’s consultation on local audit reform, which would establish a statutory and independent local audit office. It would be responsible for the co-ordination of the system to provide the quality oversight and reporting that is currently missing. There is even talk about setting up some form of backstop public auditing system. A lot of reforms are being consulted on, which is to be warmly welcomed, and the Government are to be congratulated on tackling this subject. I really hope, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, that the Local Government Minister and the Government succeed in that quest, because if we do it, we will begin to make local government much more efficient. We have not talked much about efficiency, but it is common across public services that if we improve efficiency, we make taxpayers’ money go further. The consultation document—this is the core of the matter—states that “just one per cent of councils and other local bodies publishing audited accounts on time last year and a backlog of nearly 1,000 outstanding audits dating back to 2015/16”. That demonstrates that real reform is needed, and quickly. We are in total agreement, and we will go on examining the matter and pushing the Government to see how we can do that. I will move on and make some remarks of my own on Gloucestershire county council. First, I pay tribute to the chief executive, Pete Bungard, who has run the council for 27 years—as I will say in a minute, it has been pretty well run financially—and to the retiring council leader, Councillor Mark Hawthorne, who has led the council so well. They will both be sorely missed. It is because it has had such constant leadership that I believe Gloucestershire county council is in a strong financial position today. As a Conservative-led council, it is one of the few that is not raising council tax to the full 5%. It is raising it by only 2.99%. That means, based on a band D property, that residents will pay only an additional £6.65 each month. That is a very creditable performance. I am pleased that Gloucestershire is on track to invest an additional £32.7 million in local services in critical areas for its residents. That includes £10 million towards road improvements, with a focus on rural roads, as part of a £100 million four-year programme in Gloucestershire. The Public Accounts Committee recently focused on the condition of local roads. Over £1 billion a year is spent on that, but the Department for Transport admitted—this is something we really need to concentrate on—that it did not know exactly how local authorities spent that money, as it is not ringfenced. As with a lot of areas of government, we need better data on how councils are spending money to make sure we get better maintenance of our roads and avoid potholes. I am sure that all Members of Parliament find, whether they are looking through their postbags or knocking on doors, that everyone raises the issue of potholes. I am pleased that the county council will be investing £12.8 million in a 200-place special school for Gloucestershire. Sending special needs children out of county is one of the most expensive actions that any council has to undertake, and I think that, in the long term, building our own facility in Gloucestershire will be good value for money. As I have said, the Public Accounts Committee carried out an inquiry into special needs, and we reported that the system was broken. This comes back to my earlier point: just spending more and more money when the structure needs to change is not the answer. It does not matter whether we are talking about special needs, children’s social services, mental health services or adult social services; it is just not the answer. We need longer-term structural reform, and I hope we may see some proposals for that from the Government. As the Committee discovered, in the last 10 years the cost of SEND services has doubled, but we are not getting double the service. That demonstrates that the system is well and truly broken. Let me now say something about a point raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), my former colleague on the PAC. During the exchanges on the statement this afternoon, I said to the Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister that people in Gloucestershire would be pleased that they now have certainty that our elections will take place this year, which means that a new county council will be elected. Can the Minister give any indication—I asked his boss this question—of a timetable for when he expects my council to move towards devolution? I am not against devolution at all, but what I will say loud and clear is that I would like adequate time to be provided for a wide consultation to take place in Gloucestershire so that we can have the wholesale backing of its people and know what they really want the structures for the delivery of local government services to be in the future. If they have bought into it, they will be much happier with any change that may take place. I should be grateful if we could have that timetable either tonight or in the relatively near future, and if the Minister could explain how a transition might work in Gloucestershire. Will the new council stay in place for four years, albeit perhaps towards the end of those four years shadowing a new unitary authority, so that we do not have elections again within the four-year cycle? That would be very helpful information.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to follow my very hard-working, excellent deputy on the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who has huge knowledge on local government matters. In fact, whenever we come to local government matters in the Committee, we always defer to him. I echo the opening remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) about our hard-working councillors up and down the country, whatever their political persuasion. Often, they work many hours and do not get much pay for it. They do it because they want to improve the lot of their local communities, so I warmly welcome that. I even echo his opening remarks to the Local Government Minister, who I always think is a fair and reasonable man. He has dealt with this matter in a knowledgeable and professional way, and I pay tribute to him. I want to pick up on a couple of things from the excellent speech by the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi). She is very knowledgeable on this whole matter. First, the local health grant, which has been picked up by others, is peanuts in comparison with the total health budget, but if we can keep the population more healthy through the things that she said and other preventive measures, it would be far better for them and far cheaper for the country in the longer run. I do not know why Governments of all colours have not paid more attention to that. Secondly, I want to pick up on local housing allowances, which the hon. Member for Sheffield South East also mentioned. As he said, the impact on homelessness has not really been calculated, which our PAC report made perfectly clear. The Minister needs to look at that relationship and how we can get a closer, more targeted local housing allowance or another allowance to alleviate the problem of some of the poorest in our society who cannot afford the houses that they live in, and who have to be subsidised to a considerable extent by the local authority, putting even more pressure on it. Often, local government is not understood by our constituents, but they certainly know when they are not getting the services they pay for from their council. Council tax bills are increasing up and down the country. I was shocked to read that some people’s council tax is going up by as much as 10%, as the Secretary of State has given permission to override the legislation in place for a referendum to be called if council tax is raised by more than 5%. I remind the House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton did, that the Prime Minister stated in Bristol that he would freeze council tax bills for all. Clearly, that is not the case. I would love it if he was able to, but clearly when he said it, it was not realistic. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the great honour to chair on behalf of this House to try to expose how the taxpayer’s pound is spent—well or not, as the case may be—has taken a strong interest in local government. We will shine a light on the areas needed, as will the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. Together, hopefully we can make a real positive difference in the way that services are delivered for people up and down this country. It is clear that local government finances have increasingly become more dependent on council tax rather than central Government grants. I listened to the speech by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) about his local council, but it cannot be denied that some councils have managed their budgets better than others. I welcome the multi-year settlements that this Government have introduced. We often criticise the Government, but I think these settlements will be warmly welcomed by councils, and would, I think, be welcomed in other areas of Government spending, too. Like a business, local authorities will be able to plan, investing taxpayers’ money into longer-term projects with more certainty, and therefore hopefully using money more efficiently. I urge the Government in their review of the funding formula to keep in mind the rural-urban divide, which we have had quite a lot of discussion about this evening. In what I am going to say, I do not to wish pit one council against another in any way—that is not the object of what I am saying. I simply say that if we put the emphasis more on one facet and less on the other, we will benefit some councils and disadvantage others. The problem with rural councils is that in many cases it costs more for them to deliver services, which is not properly reflected in the grant. Even the House of Commons Library says that scrapping the rural service grant and replacing it with a recovery grant already demonstrates a divide. According to the Library, which is supposed to be independent, the change in methodology for allocating money has meant that rural areas are losing out to urban areas and city centres. Now, I do not want to get into deep water, but a need is a need. Adult and children’s social services, which have been mentioned today, are both high-consuming, voluntary parts of the budget, and are increasing. If the Government take away the needs basis and put it into deprivation basis, they will benefit some councils and disadvantage others. I repeat: a need is a need. That includes adult social services and children’s social services; it also includes SEND—our Committee produced a report on SEND, which said the system is broken—which is a hugely consuming part of the budget, and is consuming a greater and greater percentage.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Crown Court Backlog · Hansard source

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  The Justice Secretary has said that she agrees with the old legal maxim that justice delayed is justice denied. We currently have a record backlog of 73,000 in the Crown courts; rape cases are not being prosecuted for three or four years; and, in particular, on any one day 25% of cases do not take place, for a variety of reasons. What is the Justice Secretary doing to speed up the whole system?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Crown Court Backlog · Hansard source

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  12. When her Department expects the Crown court backlog to decrease.