Council Tax

It is an immense pleasure to follow my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). Before I speak about the police funding formula and Lincolnshire, I should like to put on record the fact that the Ministers for Local Government and for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing have both treated the representations made to them with care and courtesy. At the end of my remarks I shall be making a further demand of the Minister, but I shall begin with a word about the formula. I have understood local government finance only twice, and then fleetingly. My right hon. and learned Friend said, with a degree of humility matched only by his eloquence, that he barely understood it at all when he had responsibility for it. The first time that I understood it fleetingly was when I studied it at university as part of my degree, and the second time was when, as a Nottinghamshire county councillor, I proposed a budget amendment during that council's annual budget meeting. Those occasions were brief candles, now long extinguished, but I do understand that the formula does not serve Lincolnshire well. From the communications that I have received from the police authority, as well as from my discussions with Ministers and my conversations with my hon. Friends, I suspect that that is due in part to the formula's failure to cope adequately with the particular problems of rural areas and their sparse and scattered populations, and in part to its unresponsiveness to change. My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) will speak about the situation in Boston with altogether more knowledge than I can, but, as has been mentioned, the incoming population from central and eastern Europe has caused dramatic change in the area. I am not sure that the formula is terribly good at dealing with the rapidity of the changes that we have seen in Lincolnshire, or with the difficulties of providing a public service in a demography such as Lincolnshire's. We might say the same about health provision or the social services, but the problem is exaggerated in respect of policing, which faces a combination of demands. One is the need to respond to urgent problems, and that is coupled with the need for a profile which, if not ever present, is at least sufficient to reassure the public and deter criminals. I am sure that the Minister has recognised that the formula needs to be re-examined. Unless it is, we will end up in this circumstance again, we will debate the matters in a similar fashion and Ministers will spend inordinate amounts of time trying to come to a settlement, following the representations made to them by people such as us, the police authority and others. That would not be a satisfactory position for the House, for Lincolnshire or, indeed, for the Government. The feeling in Lincolnshire about those matters is running high. I was pleased to present to 10 Downing street a petition that was signed by several thousand of my constituents and organised between me and the local newspaper, the Lincolnshire Free Press, which was kind enough to publish coupons that local people filled in, demanding that the Government take action. In that much I agree—although it pains me to do so—with the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), whose presence is a delight to me, if only because, however inadequate my contribution, by contrast with his it will shine. He is right to concede that it must be said that the Government have at least responded to the concerns by using their discretion on capping. The Government were right not to cap the authority at 5 per cent., because the effect would have been monstrous, but I understand why the Government took the view that the scale of the authority's proposed increase was intolerable, because it would have not only ridden roughshod over policy, but placed an unfair burden on my constituents. However, by allowing the 26 per cent. increase, the Government have implicitly acknowledged that there is an infrastructural funding problem, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham described it. By accepting an increase of that size, they acknowledged that the police authority was in crisis, and that if they had not permitted that—still very large—increase, it would have faced cuts and closures, jeopardising public safety and public order in the estimation both of the authority, which has done a good job in making its case, as Ministers acknowledge, and of the police force, which has worked closely with representatives and with the authority.