I think we should also deal with the myth that somehow the NHS has been protected. If we look at the King’s Fund and other commentators—the British Medical Association, certainly, or go to the GPs in my constituency—its spending has gone up in line with general inflation. Unfortunately, though, it has not been sufficient to cope with the increased demand, particularly from elderly people wanting ever more support from community GPs and hospitals.
If we have dealt with half the budget deficit this Parliament, is the Tory party saying that, if it is returned to power, this scale of local government cuts will continue? Can we really contemplate reducing local government spending as a percentage of GDP from 4% to 2.9% and below? If so, we will not be back to 1930s levels of service provision; we will have gone back even further. The graph of doom is coming. Tory councils as well as Labour councils are talking about it. Figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that by the end of the next Parliament, if the cuts continue on the same trajectory, we will reach the point where statutory responsibilities take up the whole local government budget, and nothing will be left for discretionary services. But I do not expect Ministers to respond, because, as the damning report from the National Audit Office said:
“The Department does not understand the impact over time of reductions in funding to local authorities, and the potential risks of individual authorities becoming financially unsustainable if reductions continue.”
That is what the NAO said, and that is the reality we are facing up to.
I do not have time to go into all the issues of decentralisation. I am a decentralist, and I speak on behalf of the Select Committee. We would decentralise not merely spending responsibilities, but tax-raising responsibilities, which the Labour Front-Bench team is beginning to move towards, with full responsibility for retaining business rates locally. I hope we can go further, but so far the Government are not prepared to move in that direction.
In conclusion, there are three big questions that the Government have not answered. Why have local authorities had to face more than their fair share of cuts, compared with other Government services, in this Parliament? Why have the poorest authorities faced the largest cuts—far larger than is proportionate? In the end, do Ministers seriously believe that in the next Parliament we can continue with the same level of local cuts and maintain the financial sustainability of local councils and the services they deliver?
5.2 pm