Speeches by McMahon.

“I feel that we have gone a long way to doing that, although we do accept that this is a bridging position to get us to the multi-year settlement. None the less, £3.7 billion of new money for adult social care in the settlement is a commitment laid out in pounds and pence in the way that local government has been asking…”

“I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend of that. Let me just say that in 2019, 11 district council elections were cancelled to allow reorganisations to take place, and so were seven in 2020. In 2021, the elections of three county councils and three district councils were cancelled to allow reorganisation. I say that bec…”

“My hon. Friend will be aware that Dame Louise Casey is conducting a broader review of adult social care for reasons that are well understood by the House. On whether the matter should or should not sit with local government, I will say that where local government really excels is in being local and rooted in the commun…”

“I am not sure that I entirely understood the question, but this SI is about new member councils joining an existing combined authority. Any member council can join, but its membership would need to be confirmed by secondary legislation, not least because in some places functions are exercised by the local authority as …”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Combined Authorities (Borrowing) and East Midlands Combined County Authority (Borrowing and Functions) (Amendment) Regulations 2025. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 19 November 202…”

“I do not want to say who has the largest number of mayors, but I do not think the shadow Minister needs me to remind him that there is only one Conservative mayor in the whole country, and in the smallest combined authority, as he knows. This is not particularly about rights and wrongs, and I suggest that it would be b…”

“I thank the shadow Minister and wish him a happy new year in return. His were generally positive comments, with the exception of the standard view of the Mayor of London, who is obviously doing a fantastic job of delivering the Government’s missions—and long may that continue. Let me answer the shadow Minister’s questi…”

“I thank the hon. Member for coming to one of our surgeries to make representations on behalf of his council. I know that he cares about these issues. We need to be careful not to think that those who have received the recovery grant are the only places that have deprivation, because that is not the case. The recovery g…”

“The Government were elected on a mandate of change, to deliver a new era of economic growth and national renewal, and reverse the years of failure and decline that we inherited. Through the tough decisions that we took in the Budget, we prevented a return to austerity while protecting working people’s payslips. The pla…”

“Here we go again. I would think that after 14 years of councils being on year-to-year watch to find out what position they would be in, the Conservatives would at least welcome the preparation now for multiyear settlements. They had 14 years to get their house in order, and they could not even line up to give councils …”

“Let us talk about Birmingham, because the Opposition referenced the £3 million new homes bonus. The new recovery grant—£600 million of brand new money targeted at those councils with high deprivation and low tax bases—just for Birmingham is £39 million. That will start the repair work of rebuilding the foundations. Whe…”

“I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for her question. We are all getting ready for Christmas and looking forward to time with our families and our own respite, but in the end it is hard to enjoy that moment given the prospect of just how many children in this country are in temporary accommodation. Some 159,000 c…”

“That was a cute way to get a long question in—merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the work that he does to represent the people of Harlow as well as the local authority. We stand ready to work on those long-term funding settlement issues to ensure that we genuinel…”

“We come back again to the broken housing market. The need to build 1.5 million new homes is there, but—let us be clear—they have to be the right homes in the right places for the need in the local area. That means not only more social homes but council provision. We continue to see a cycle—we have all seen today’s infl…”

“That is exactly the reason core spending power in St Helens will increase by 8.6% just through these measures. Given the type of council, we could easily expect that to top 10%. That is our down payment to say, “We need time to prepare the multi-year settlement and we need to do the fair funding review, but we know tha…”

“In the end, some of it is about the quantum of funding, and some of it is about freedom of funding. Taking away the ringfencing and reporting is absolutely critical to that. Gateshead, and every other council, has our absolute commitment. Finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I say thank you to the millions of public sect…”

“It is important that we have a debate on local government finance based on the numbers. I have said already that, when taking into account council tax, no council will see a reduction in its core spending power. That means that before the final settlement, and not including extended producer responsibility and live par…”

“Most in the sector would agree that Oflog—the Office for Local Government—had a vague remit that was an expensive way of gathering data. In the end, if it were to be developed, we could risk mission creep whereby its remit would verge into the areas that local authorities so disliked about the former Audit Commission. …”

“Again, the hon. Lady’s council will see a core spending power increase of 5%, and that is only this part of the settlement—it does not include extended producer responsibility or billions of pounds in other grants that will come. This is a genuine attempt to make sure we give councils the funding that is needed, and I …”

“That is the point: the previous Government knew just how bad the situation was, but they put off the tough decisions. For example, how many times in 14 years did the previous Government promise that they would go back to multi-year settlements so that councils knew where they were, but failed to do so? How many times d…”