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    Local and Regional Government

    Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): It was always ridiculous making the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) the Deputy Prime Minister, because the Government then had to create a whole Department for his entertainment. Having created the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, they then had to find something for it and its junior Ministers to do. All they have managed to do is meddle; there is compulsive meddling on the part of this Government. Oxfordshire is about to lose its fire control centre; the Home Office is deciding whether Thames Valley police should join Hampshire police to form a new force; and there is a comprehensive reorganisation of primary care trusts only a few years after they were introduced.

    However, I do not think that the Government have any noble intent in suggesting a reorganisation of local government. It is a ploy; they know that next year there will be some very difficult local government elections for them—in London, in the unitary authorities and in a number of the shire districts. They know that they will get squeezed by Conservatives and Liberals, and I suspect they will find themselves in a very humiliating position. This proposal is a distraction from future election losses and a distraction from the extent to which, under the Government's stewardship, council tax has gone up and continues to go up. Last year, the Government injected a one-off £1 billion into council tax—a pre-election give-away that clearly will not be repeated this year. As I shall later say, we are likely to see an average increase of £100 in council tax because of the Government's actions.

    We do not need to look too closely, because we know from the experiences of history what happens when one seeks to reorganise local government. As Sir John Banham, who undertook the last consideration of reorganisation, said only the other day on "The World at One":

    "Any reorganisation costs more, takes longer and delivers less than any proponents of change ever thought. Everyone needs to be very careful before they undertake further disruption."

    However, that is what the Government want to do in rural England: to be disruptive and expensive and to deliver less. When I go down the high street in Banbury, I am not stopped by people who say, "We would really like to see Oxfordshire county council abolished. We would love to see a unitary authority here." What they are really concerned about is the collapse of the NHS in Oxfordshire and the fact that their council tax bills are going through the roof.

    When the council tax was introduced in 1993–94, it averaged £456; today it averages £1,009. Sir Jeremy Beecham, the vice-chairman of the Local Government Association and a Labour councillor, said only the other day that the LGA is hoping for a substantial sum from the Government along the lines of last year's one-off £1 billion payment, because if it does not get that there will be a shortfall that could mean an average £100-a-year increase in the council tax this coming year. That is not because local authorities have been wasteful, irresponsible or profligate or because they have been tearing up £5 notes and throwing them into the River Thames; it is because authorities across England face extra costs of £2.8 billion to cover the new responsibilities imposed by Whitehall. Those are Sir Jeremy Beecham's figures.

    The Minister for Local Government (Mr. Phil Woolas) : Even the Local Government Association does not say that the figure to which the hon. Gentleman refers is made up of supposed new burdens.

    Tony Baldry : That is the reported figure. Perhaps the Minister will give the new burdens figure when he winds up; we look to having the whole of that incorporated into the local government settlement. That settlement will be difficult not only because of council tax, but because we will be hammered in Oxfordshire on the supporting people budget. It is wholly unsatisfactory that councils should regularly have to plead for one-off cash handouts, rather than having a stable and predictable source of income from the Government.

    What is also particularly distressing about the ever-increasing hikes in the council tax bill—which are, of course, a very effective stealth tax because they result from the Government's shifting of burdens from central Government to local government without proper funding—is that the people who get really hammered are those on fixed incomes such as pensioners. Council tax has risen and continues to rise by far more than prices and the state pension rise. We have seen the council tax go up by nearly three times the inflation rate.

    There is another particularly stupid aspect of the proposals for reorganising, merging or scrapping Oxfordshire county council or other tiers of local government. In its reports, the Audit Commission shows that in the south of the country, for example, local authorities—many of which are Conservative-controlled—are better than any other part of the public sector in delivering efficiency savings and are persistently among the best performers in the Audit Commission league tables. If parts of central Government were as effective as local authorities such as Oxfordshire county council and Cherwell district council at delivering efficiency savings and doing more for less, public finances would be a lot better and there would not be that sizeable black hole in the Government's finances.

    The whole debate about the reorganisation of local government is a deliberate distraction on the part of the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministers. They want to attract attention away from the substantial hikes in council tax that we will see as a consequence of this year's local government settlement, which always comes up just before Christmas in the hope that the Christmas break will also somehow distract people's attention. They want to distract people's attention also from the devastating local government results that will occur quite rightly next May.