28 February 2011
Local authorities have no justification for making disproportionately deep grant cuts to the voluntary sector.
That was the message from decentralisation minister Greg Clark and his colleagues at communities and local government questions in the House of Commons today.
Shadow local government secretary Caroline Flint said: ‘Local authorities are being forced to make cuts to the voluntary sector because of the front-loaded spending cuts, and the transition fund closed on January 21 before most councils had set their budgets.’
The fund is intended to smooth these grant reductions. Clark said: ‘It is clear that it is Labour councils that are disproportionately cutting the voluntary sector. There is a £100m transition fund, so they should not be making those cuts.’
He said spending cuts were an inevitable consequence of ‘Labour leaving a legacy that was unsustainable’ and told a later questioner: ‘There is a maximum 8.8% cut [per council] so there is no reason for councils to disproportionately cut the voluntary sector’.
Labour’s Stephen Timms, a former Treasury minister, said the Office for Budget Responsibility had estimated public sector job losses next year at 40,000, but the Local Government Association had predicted 100,000 from local authorities alone.
‘Why has the government miscalculated?’ he asked.
Responding, local government minister Bob Neill said some figures being cited were still out for consultation and did not show the scale of compulsory redundancies.
‘It is up to each council to decide this. The government has not miscalculated this because it has not calculated it in the first place,’ he said.
