Local Government Finance

It seems that it is damper one side of the river than the other. All I can say to the hon. Lady is that when I was a local councillor and was chairman of the social services committee in the 1980s, I was not under pressure to work out how I could fund the meals on wheels service; and when I was chair of an environmental services committee, I was not under pressure to increase charges to provide key services such as bin collection. Perhaps we can talk only on the basis of our experience, and it is increasingly the experience of many local authorities that this is a bad settlement that fetters them. Where authorities have been efficient, it seems that they have not just cut the fat, but had to get right down to the bone. That is the reality of this settlement.