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1087
Local Government
15 DECEMBER 1969 (Rate Support Grant)
Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Gentle- man knows perfectly well what I was trying to say--that interest rates are so high in other sectors that they are causing local authorities to borrow at high rates. I referred to the increase between two years from £32.1 million to £35.3 million.
Mr. Howell: If the hon. Gentleman is questioning whether we can hold these rates it is an incipent tribute to the Government in that, despite all the fore- bodings, we have managed to hold these rates at that level. The hon. Gentleman is really trying to have his cake and eat it. I take note of the fact.
Similarly, referring to housing finance, in another purple passage the hon. Gentleman said that too many local authority tenants are getting too good value out of the Government or out of local authority financing. If that means anything, it must mean that rents should go up.
Mr. Graham Page indicated assent.
Mr. Howell: The hon. Gentleman nods his head in agreement.
Mr. Graham Page: I have said it many times.
Mr. Howell: Then no one will object to my underlining on this occasion that the Tory Party, at 25 minutes to mid- night on this historic day, is saying that local rents have not gone up enough and should go up more. The hon. Gentleman was saying that the tenants were getting too good value for money- in other words, that their rents on the whole should go up.
My hon. Friends the Members for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) and Reading (Mr. John Lee) raised points of considerable substance while recognising what the Government are doing to pro- duce more help for the local authorities. I agree that, at a time when high interest rates are prevalent throughout the world, and when local authorities and certainly the Government wish for major capital schemes to be undertaken, there is here perhaps a considerable dilemma for both Government and the local authorities. There may well be something in what was implicit in the remarks of my hon. Friends about the whole question of
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local government financing. I will con- sider in detail their suggestions, especially those of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, but I think that, in general, the considerations they were advancing properly fall to be taken under the general review of local government finance which is following the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government and all the thinking that the Government are doing on this at present.
The hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) referred to wages and salaries. I thought his speech rather interesting. I was not sure, however, whether he was complaining about the wages bill of the local authorities, which this order is partly about. I was under the impression that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite opposed the Govern- ment's prices and incomes policy and any attempt by the Government to regulate prices and incomes. Had we not done so, the increases in local government expenditure would have been consider- ably greater than they are at present.
The other fascinating feature of his speech was his reference to the Govern- ment trying to shift resources from the taxpayer to the ratepayer. That filled me with nostalgia because, a few years ago, I made much the same speech from almost exactly the same spot in the House. Now I have to give the answer, which is the same as that which he would have given if he had been replying on behalf of the Government.
Mr. Arthur Jones: I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not referring to resources, because that is where the difference between us would lie. I was referring to the shift of expenditure from central Government to local government
-not resources.
Gentleman looks up the speech that I Mr. Howell: I suggest that the hon.
made on that occasion. I did not put it quite as eloquently as he did, but cer- tainly that was the burden of what I said. At the time, I was opposing the general grant system and arguing that we ought to retain the percentage grant system, so that one could relate what one paid to the-
Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Gentle- man is kicking the ball through his own goal.
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