Speeches by Curtis.

“I am Chris Curtis, MP for Milton Keynes North.”

“That is probably a good place to start, Tom. How do we avoid those problems with new towns, which are effectively public bodies?”

“To link these two points together, in his previous comments John was implying that TIF is a way of getting stuff off the Government balance sheet to pay for infrastructure projects. Are we not going to run into that problem with new towns? If they are public bodies, they are going to have to borrow money in order to pu…”

“Why has that not been happening with development corporations in recent years?”

“Maurice, do you have any views on how we can maximise or do land value capture as we create these development corporations and build these new towns?”

“Just as a final point—I do not know whether anyone wants to make any comments on it—many of my northern colleagues get quite frustrated with some of the infrastructure spending from Government being so concentrated in the south of England and the Treasury always seeming to find money to infrastructure projects in the s…”

“How much would the Treasury probably need to put in at the start?”

“That is the most important thing.”

“A few months ago I stood in this Chamber and told a story that I wished I did not have to tell. It was about my 91-year-old grandmother, and the night that we had to rush her to hospital with a suspected heart attack, only to be told on arrival that the average waiting time was nine and a half hours. Our brilliant NHS …”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and for the work that her family have done for our national health service. It is not the staff’s fault that our NHS has been let down; it is because of Tory Government after Tory Government, and decision after decision. Fourteen years of Conservative mismanagement have holl…”

“Yes.”

“I have one follow-up for Rob, if that is all right. Let us say the Government choose to consolidate funding for demand-led services: temporary accommodation and adult social care. Do you think they could use reasonable unit costs and level of demand in each authority to better calculate a base level of funding?”

“I am Chris Curtis, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes North.”

“Just coming back to the small pots point—if that is what we are going to call it—the other element of this is that often the allocation can be quite an inefficient process, as in the Government having to allocate it and councils having to bid for it, and there is a dead weight cost in that. Do you have any particularly…”

“Thank you for joining us this morning. We are going to start by talking about some key cost pressures facing local councils. What have councils been doing to manage the increased demand and costs of services, with adult social care and SEND probably being the biggest examples? What can the Government do to help? Do you…”

“Jane, is there anything you would like to add to that list?”

“So potentially leave the more radical options until we have LGR done?”

“Is there anything radical to the way we fund local government that you think would be a good idea for the Government to put on the table—for example, introducing new taxes, such as a tourist levy; moving from the poverty taxes we have to a land value tax; looking at assigning a portion of national taxes to local author…”

“I get this is geographic, so we should not dismiss that point. It is easier to get investment in some areas than others, but ultimately, a business rates reset will take money away from those that have been really encouraging investing in business and potentially moving it to places that have been trying to block inves…”

“This question is potentially to Owen on the rates resets. I understand that there is obviously a geographic inequality element to this that has been growing since 2013, but the councils that have probably seen the biggest growth are the ones that have really tried hard to move barriers to investment, encourage business…”