Local Government Finance Bill

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who is not only a distinguished Chair of the Select Committee, but had a long and distinguished career in local government. Today's debate reminds me of the Second Reading debate in that, as my hon. Friend said, Members on the Government Benches are trying to have their cake and eat it. They want the nirvana of councils keeping all the business rates while also recognising that there should be some redistribution. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) made some strange comments about perverse incentives for councils to remain poor. I am yet to meet such a council, but he tried to get his colleagues to help him come up with an example. Councils in my area work very hard to attract business and prosperity, as they want to make their areas not only pleasant places to live in but economically active. The Government talk about localism a lot, but this Bill centralises more powers in the hands of the Secretary of State than any other local government reform of recent years. On fairness, if we are to have a system whereby the contribution from national Government to local government is wiped out and we rely on business rates to provide the gap in funding, we must address the fact that different parts of Britain have different needs. Amendment 19 is important as it would ensure that that is reflected in the system. From listening to some Members on the Government Benches, people would think some parts of the north are responsible for their own unemployment. Those Members fail to remember what happened in the late 1980s, when huge swathes of industry in the north-east were wiped out. Many areas are still recovering from that today. There are also issues to do with population movement, which can lead to extra demands on local councils such as Durham county, where there is a large elderly population and many people who worked in heavy industry. Health needs in such areas are inevitably greater. Moreover, as County Durham is quite a rural community, even those in work often cannot move from place to place as easily as people in large cities. I give credit to councils of all political persuasions throughout the country that have tried to encourage business into their areas. I am not convinced that keeping a small slice of the business rate is going to have a major impact, however. We should consider what the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have done in the north-east in doing away with One North East. It was very effective at working with local councils and other partners to get inward investment and business growth. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) is not in his place at the moment, but he admitted that it is much easier to get business growth in his constituency than it is in mine or in those of many other hon. Members from the north of England.