Local Government Finance Bill

I do not support amendment 79, but think it a useful vehicle for debate on an important subject. In my experience, local government is good at adapting to change, provided that it is given sufficient time to do so. I am sure that local authorities will be able to adapt to the Government's timetable, but there are many pressures in different areas. First, most authorities are cutting spending; secondly, they will have to grapple with the 10% reduction; and thirdly, the Government have stated clearly that that should not affect pensioners. In an area such as Poole, with a heavy preponderance of pensioners, the burden will fall on a small minority of those claiming that benefit. Fourthly, as most local authorities will have to freeze their council tax, or will freeze it anyway, and have limited balances, they may well err on the side of trying to ensure that they get their figures correct and that there is no cross-subsidy in terms of the benefit falling on the council tax payer. A perverse incentive may arise to make larger reductions in support for the vulnerable than the figures necessarily entail, because authorities do not want to take the risk. The current system is predictable in the sense that it is running and the Department for Work and Pensions can transfer money equally on a monthly basis. The direction of travel in localisation is fine and I am sure that many local authorities can draw up good schemes, but in year one the new arrangements will not be as predictable. Some authorities will draw up schemes that turn out to be more generous than they thought, and others will draw up schemes that are less generous than expected. Ministers have to consider what will happen when a scheme is got wrong, because as sure as eggs are eggs, there will be one authority that gets its figures substantially wrong and has a problem.