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Local Government Finance

I am pleased to be able to provide the right hon. Lady with the reassurance that she needs. A redistributive approach will have to remain in whatever system is put in place. I will return to that in a few moments. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) made several good, intelligent points. He called for a settlement that is more predictable because it is provided for more years in a row. As the House knows, we have made a settlement for this year and for next year, after which time we intend entirely to reform the system to do what everyone has called for, which is to dump the failed redistributive formula grant system in which, as the Chairman of the Select Committee pointed out, everybody, even in the good years, complains that it has been poor for them. My hon. Friend provided a very useful list of different things that local authorities could do before they start savagely cutting the front line, as in the case of some authorities in the past couple of days. Members will do well to refer back to that list in Hansard to see all those different methods. Until an authority has run through each one of the ideas that he presented, it has no right to be cutting the services of the most vulnerable in society. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) made a very impassioned speech. I have seen some of the things that his local authority has done; the £4.5 million that it saved by cutting some of the senior management is of course the right way forward. However, he says that his council is still incredibly badly off. Let me make this simple point to him: while Liverpool is experiencing a reduction in its funding formula of 11.3%, my Hertfordshire council is experiencing a reduction of 16.1%. This Government have gone out of their way to try to protect the most vulnerable, and it is about time it was recognised that the spending formula was designed to do that. The hon. Gentleman made another claim that was extraordinary and, as much as he may not realise it, untrue—inadvertently, I am sure. He said that his local authority is cutting Supporting People by 30%. If that is true, his local authority is getting it wrong. Supporting People is one of the budgets that we have protected way more than the general picture. There is a reduction of less than 1% in cash terms on average in the Supporting People budget over the next four years. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman so that he can put pressure on his local authority not to slash it, given that the Supporting People budget is largely protected at national level.