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Local Government Finance

I think that if the Secretary of State came to Salford—as the Minister for Housing and Local Government did recently—and said that he had given extra protection to the most vulnerable members of our community, he would receive the sort of typically robust Salford reply that I could not possibly use in the House. Over the last couple of weeks, we have heard a great deal about the big society. Apparently Lord Wei is unable to do quite as much as he used to because he no longer has time to volunteer, which I thought was a wonderful irony. As the Secretary of State will know, I strongly support the underlying principles of involving the community, devolving power and introducing more plurality to the provision of public services. However, as has been pointed out by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless of the Community Service Volunteers, Thomas Hughes-Hallett, chief executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care, Sir Stuart Etherington of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and Sir Stephen Bubb of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations—none of whom are partisan people—while the Government talk of the need to empower voluntary organisations and local communities, they are making massive, deep, draconian cuts in the voluntary sector. That simply does not add up. It is totally contradictory, and it is increasing the sense of cynicism and disempowerment that exists in our communities. If the Government have any genuine commitment to giving people the power to change their own lives, they must recognise the total incoherence and inconsistency that lies at the heart of their so-called big society. This is not community action; it is do-it-yourself. The Government are telling people, ““You are on your own, with no back-up and no ability to take on roles of this kind.”” I know that some Members genuinely support these principles, but I fear that, given the cuts that we are seeing, they are going absolutely nowhere except into the sand. My final plea to the Government relates to community budgeting. For goodness sake, let us get on with it more quickly. We will be able to ameliorate some of the pain that our communities will feel only if we can re-engineer our services, pool the budgets, achieve the necessary co-location, and start to address many of our current problems. At present that programme is minimalist. I think we have been told that four areas in the country might adopt community budgeting. We know what happened with the four big society areas. I ask the Secretary of State to enable us to support many more areas, so that they can provide services in a new and, I believe, more integrated way that could lead to a transformation in the provision of local government services.