Baroness Kramer (LD)

My Lords, I am standing in what would usually be a winding position, but I think Amendments 4 and 5 have been so thoroughly discussed and I am very much in support of most of the comments. I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, that I think it is very dangerous to always worship at the altar of simplification. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, if it was the precise phrase, you end up with so many hard cases as a consequence of that. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, talked about a specific charity that is delivering warm spaces—and on a day like today, when we have had to bring additional heaters into this Room, boy, something like that comes home. It is now facing additional costs that it could not possibly have planned for, without the time to put any kind of scheme in place that would give it the breathing space to be able to deal with that kind of challenge. I just find it extraordinary. However, I wanted primarily to speak to Amendment 8, which has been less discussed today. I thank the National Association of Local Councils for a briefing. Like many others, I was very shocked when the Government confirmed that the upper tier of local authorities would qualify for financial support to offset the increased cost of employer NICs, but parish and town councils were to be excluded because they do not receive funding through the local government finance scheme. Parish and town councils raise their funding via precept. Therefore, these councils will undoubtedly have to increase local taxes in order to cover the additional costs. They have nowhere else to go. I am sure that that was not in Labour’s manifesto and that this is something Labour did not intend, but there really is no other route they can go down other than to increase council tax. Its calculation is that the NICs increase will cost English parish and town councils approximately £10 million each year, requiring an increase of something between 1.5% and 3% to cover the additional cost—that is £10 million each year, and £50 million over the life of a Parliament. It really is a rounding error. I just cannot understand why town and parish councils were excluded from the provision for upper tier councils. Part of the argument is around fairness, but there is also an argument around democracy. Many people can relate to their town and parish councils, as others have said, in a way that they do not relate to higher tiers. It is at the parish and town level that money goes to projects that are specifically designed around the needs of a local community. They really are very different in the services that they provide. I am concerned, on a broader scale, about the centralisation of local government that we have been seeing: in essence, we are looking at unitary authorities with something like half a million people in them as the decision-making, strategic and implementation element of local government. I very much fear that the difficulties that parish and town councils will face will turn them much more into agencies of that upper tier, rather than something at the level of local government with the capacity to respond to local needs and to underpin the character and nature of each individual community. The amount of money is so trifling that, in putting these councils on an equal basis with upper tier ones, there must be some other agenda at work here. I do not know what it is; perhaps the Minister could enlighten us. This amendment is in my name, as are Amendments 4 and 5. I very much hope that the Government are listening because these are issues of significance.