Local Government Finance Bill

Indeed. Now, we see that the latest unemployment figure is nearly 7.8% for my constituency and nearly 12% for the north-east in general, and businesses are closing. Is the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) saying that those businesses are somehow going to grow over the next few years as a result of this measure? In fact, councils will lack certainty about how much they will get. The local authority is one of the biggest employers in County Durham, but there has been a reduction in the numbers of people. I think the policy is that by cutting back in local government and public services, all these new jobs will rush forward from the private sector, but today's figures show that 67,000 people have left the public service in the last quarter, while only 5,000 jobs have been created in the private sector. As I said on Second Reading about my constituents in the north-east, the Bill will actually help the affluent south. Clearly, it is a damn sight easier to attract business to the likes of Westminster and other economic hotspots in the south-east of England than to parts of County Durham. That is no criticism of the work that local councils do to attract jobs—for instance, with the council's full support, the area has succeeded in attracting Hitachi trains to Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. I know of the tremendous work that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) did on that campaign. The Bill is being rushed through with undue haste. We are expecting councils and local people to walk blindly into the future. The parties in government sometimes try to portray this as a simplified system, but it is not; it will be a centralised and bureaucratic system. We cannot allow a situation to develop in which local people or local government do not know how much money they will get or how the system will work in practice.