Local Government Finance

I shall be quick, because a number of Members wish to make speeches. I raised my concerns in an intervention on the Minister, so he will not be surprised to learn that, while I welcome the statement, I am upset—and so is the city of Leeds—by the fact that Leeds has been excluded from the working neighbourhoods fund. He was dealing with statistics when I raised the matter, but some of his statistics put a gloss on the problem, so they should not have been used. If it had been in the fund, Leeds could have expected to receive £54 million over three years. In fact it will receive £12 million. The first year, it will receive over £8 million; the second year, it will be down to £4 million; and in the third year, it will receive nothing. A ratio of 60:40 sounds good, but it disguises or masks the fact that in the third year, Leeds will receive nothing at all from the fund for work in deprived neighbourhoods. It gets worse. The Minister suggested that funds from the Department for Work and Pensions are tied to the working neighbourhoods fund. The £42 million that we will lose could be the tip of the iceberg if, as a result of the linkage, we do not get into the relevant list of authorities and thus do not get the DWP money. I should like the Minister to deal with that figure when he replies to the debate. On the same issue, in his final sentences, the Minister indicated another, I think, £30 million—perhaps it was £50 million—was going in to deal with immigration in cities. He said that he had put the figure on the website, and that that money would be distributed. However, it will be distributed only to those authorities in the working neighbourhoods fund, so that is another pot of money that could be used to help the Government and Leeds city council, which is not Labour-controlled, to deal with the huge problems in inner-city Leeds. I would like the Minister to send the leader of Leeds city council and me information on exactly how much we will lose in the three years. The worst aspect is the fact that we lose the money because of maths—we come down to statistics again. There is a calculation that means that 20 per cent. of areas have to be in the most deprived 10 per cent. nationally. Leeds has 95; if it had 96, it would have qualified for £52 million. In three years' time, it will get nothing because it is one short. That 95 as a percentage of 400-odd works out at 19.96 per cent. The city is excluded for the sake of 0.04 per cent. The Minister will say, and I understand this, ““That's tough. When you draw a line, you're either on one side of it, and you cheer””— as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner) cheers—““or you are on the other, in which case, tough!”” As the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) knows, because we have debated the issues in Westminster Hall, if people meet the criteria for social care and home care, for example, they get it. What is not said is that, if people do not meet them—many do not, despite their grave problems—they do not exist as far as the Government and local authorities are concerned. There are 149,000 people in deprived areas of Leeds who in three years' time will effectively not exist. There will be no help for them because they have not qualified by 0.04 per cent. The other aspect is about working neighbourhoods funding and trying to get people into work, which is laudable. In Leeds, 63,000 people are on benefit of one type or another, and are not working. That is the fourth highest level in the country, but Leeds does not qualify for working neighbourhoods funding because of 0.04 per cent.—which will be on the Minister's gravestone at some stage. I finish by saying this. I plead with the Minister to come to Leeds. I will personally drive him around; he can bring his whole office for protection if he likes. I would not have to take him anywhere other than my constituency—it is desolate. I have made speech after speech, and got into trouble with Whip after Whip, because of what I see in my constituency in the inner city after 10 years. Every city bar Coventry, which is smaller—Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Newcastle—gets the funding because big cities in the western world have prosperous centres, prosperous suburbs and dire poverty in the middle. We all know that, but in the eyes of the Government Leeds has done what New York, Paris and Rome have not managed: its inner city has disappeared. That happened at an administrative stroke because of 0.04 per cent. Poverty, deprivation, crime, drugs, bad health and bad housing have been abolished in Leeds—hallelujah! The reality is pretty dire. The Minister has said that he is not content with statistics. I hope that there will be a review to see whether the statistics justify taking Leeds, one of the major cities of this country but one with severe inner-city problems, away from Government help on those important issues.