Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 20 Rhagfyr 1973.
I do not know, but I think that it was on the basis of a 1p rate. No doubt the Minister can tell us.
I return to the question of staffing. A monolithic Department of the Environment has been established. Has the Minister found it possible to achieve the sort of economies of staffing and so on which are obviously desirable in local authorities? Three Ministries—the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works—were brought together in the Department. If, as I and most people suspect, it has not been possible to make substantial savings there—the signs are the other way round, and I do not necessarily complain about that—it is obvious that local authorities setting up a duplicated system of local government will not achieve the results which the Department has not been able to achieve.
We are in an unprecedented situation, which will have a tremendous effect upon local authority services, as my right hon. Friends said in the debate over the past few days. The country should be under no illusions about the situation. The Government are advising local authorities to make slashing reductions in many nonstatutory services. There will be enormous cut-backs in all our local authorities in adult education, training centres, social service departments, and the home help service, which is essential in helping the sick and the needy. The Government are advising local authorities to cut back also on day centres, miscellaneous community care services and meals on wheels. All of that is work to help the handicapped in our society. The benefits under measures put on the statute book by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris), placing a statutory obligation upon local authorities to help handicapped and elderly people living alone, and to provide telephones and aids of different kinds, are to be drastically cut back because of the Government's economic measures.
It is worth putting on record what the Government have told the local authority associations. They have said:
The Government accepts that to achieve these reductions would involve refraining from recruiting staff to make good wastage or to fill additional posts, depressing standards of maintenance and repair and increasing charges where possible. It also accepts that this could mean less frequent collections of refuse, reducing the hours of opening recreational facilities, increased delays in dealing with planning and environmental health matters, and some longer-term diseconomies.
There can be no doubt that what the Government intend as a result of their local government cuts is a substantial lowering of the standard of life and the quality of services for almost every citizen. It is not just for the ordinary citizen, who might be expected to take care of himself, but for the old, the needy, the sick and the handicapped. They, too, will have to bear the full brunt of the cuts.
That is one of the charges we make against the Government. There has been no attempt to get their priorities right, no attempt to have any priorities. There has been no selectivity about what the Government propose.
The deficiencies of the order are to be added to future orders. The Secretary of State for the Environment has now told us that he expects a minimum of 7 per cent. to be added to the rate bill next year, even though there will be a cut-back in so much of the service. My calculation, based on the best advice I can obtain, is that the Government have no hope of keeping the increase in rates down to 7 per cent. unless they are prepared to be much more active about the provision of finance in future rate support grant increase orders. This is because of the increased charges that local authorities are already facing and the higher wages and salaries, even under phase 3, that they will have to pay.
Next year, ratepayers will at one and the same time face a monumental decrease in the quality of local government services and a monumental increase in the rates they will have to pay for the deteriorated services. Those are the stark facts which local authorities and rate-payers have to face in the coming months.
I hope and believe that local authorities will try responsibly to help the Government in the national emergency. We on this side say that they should try, and we believe that they will. This is why I ask the Government to give a lead by cutting back where they can on new organisations which have not yet been set up.
Local authorities should make economies where they can, but they have a prime duty to look after the quality of life for the ordinary people. That cannot be cut back without disastrous results. We have said many times that that is what matters more than anything else to the ordinary people. It is often taken for granted, but essentially the services provided by local government are of that high degree of importance.
If at the end of the day it is found impossible to achieve all the contradictory aims and instructions of various Ministers, particularly of the Chancellor, we shall expect Ministers at the Department of the Environment to tell their Cabinet colleagues that they are asking for the moon, that it is impossible to have the cut-backs, to face the increased charges and to do all that without raising rates by 1p, which is what the Chancellor demanded. Those contradictions in Government policy must be resolved before the House debates the White Paper on local government finance which has been promised to us for so long.
I make no complaint about the Minister not having produced the White Paper although he promised it. Obviously with the country in a serious economic situation it would have made nonsense to have produced a White Paper until the up-to-date information was available for the House and for local authorities.
I hope that the Government understand the impossible position in which local authority treasurers find themselves. By now most treasurers in any normal year have done their sums, they have been able to do their estimating and have been able to advise their finance committees what the rate should be for the coming year. This year they cannot even start on that task for at least another month or two.
The choice which local authority officers throughout the country will have to make between various priorities and their attempt to conform with Government policy, such as it is, will make life almost impossible for them. To the confusion of local government reorganisation the Government have added the chaos of their situation on the economic front. The people who will have to bear that chaos are those working the machinery of local government and those whom it serves.