Shaun Davies

I declare my interest as a serving unpaid councillor at Telford and Wrekin council and an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association. I welcome the Government’s local government finance statement, and particularly the real-terms funding increase of 4.3% for local authorities across England. I am particularly pleased to see the £16.5 million of extra funding for Telford and Wrekin council—a 9% uplift. What a contrast that is with the last 14 years of Conservative Government, during which authorities were, in the words of the Institute for Government, “hollowed out” by austerity, with core funding per resident falling by 18% in that time. We have all felt the impact in our communities. A third of English libraries closed during the 2010s, the number of miles covered by bus routes has fallen by 14%, and the proportion of councils’ budgets coming from council tax has risen from 36% in 2010 to 53% today, hitting working people hard in the pocket. I say to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) that it is a bit rich for him to talk about council tax rises, given that council tax doubled over the last 10 years under the Conservative Government. This settlement is a vital first step—I emphasise the word “first”—in the right direction. However, as we have been saying as a sector, and as I had been saying as the chair of the Local Government Association, local authorities need more funding, but they also need reform and a focus on prevention, because local government is the best preventive service that this country has. When it comes to housing vulnerable children and adults, local authorities and local government provide that housing. When it comes to social care and looking after elderly or disabled people, it is predominantly councils, not the NHS, that support those residents. Councils are essential frontline services that intervene to protect our most vulnerable, but they also keep our villages, towns and cities as places where people want to live and bring up their families. I will address the financial situation that local government finds itself in. If 10% of NHS trusts anticipated that they would have to declare themselves bankrupt in the next year, it would be on the front page of every single national newspaper. But when it comes to councils, there seems to be a situation of normalisation. Over the last 14 years, more councils have gone bankrupt than in the entire history of councils in this country prior to that, and the normalisation of that needs attention. Councils do vital work in protecting vulnerable people, especially the young. That should be celebrated, but my council, like many others up and down the country, is now spending £8 in every £10 on social care, and some councils are spending up to half of their budgets on temporary accommodation.