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Public Accounts

I do not want to be too definitive in identifying the turning points that create such phenomena. I merely wish to draw attention to certain issues that need to be considered in different ways in different parts of the country. East London has a rapidly growing population. Public policy-makers cannot keep track of it, let alone get ahead of it. That is before account is taken of illegal migrants who are invisible for public policy-making purposes. Then there is real-terms house price inflation, and on top of that the long-term legacies of poverty, underinvestment and poor-quality public services. A rich seam is created on which, given our social formation, the far right is manifestly able to work. That takes different forms in different parts of the country, but we should be acutely aware of the way in which demography can contract or expand, and the effect on social cohesion in any part of the communities that we represent. My borough has long-term problems of health inequality. I believe that, apart from Easington, it has the worst health-equality profile in terms of investment per head. Two years ago, the Government said that they would overcome some of the health inequalities and move us closer to the formula for investment. The resulting increase will kick in this April. Arguably, since the Government decided to invest so that we could move to where we should have been in 2001, the population has moved even further from the baseline for such decisions. In real terms, therefore, the health inequalities are worsening despite the Government’s attempts to resolve them. I use that as an illustrative example of the tensions that this creates in terms of policy making. Housing is the other acute issue in terms of public sector provision, not least in a community that was built on the principle of socialised housing—council estates.