Local Government Finance

I congratulate the Minister and his colleagues on the statement and urge them not to take any lessons from a party that produced record deficits and doubled the council tax. Does he accept that it is critical that if we are to have genuine local accountability, it must be in a climate in which we continue to move away from old-fashioned dependency on central Government grant and to break down the ring-fencing that has inhibited innovation, as we have seen demonstrated by the better care fund, which deals with one of the key pressures on upper-tier authorities?