Business as usual…
Yesterday normal service was resumed at Prime Minister’s Questions as Tony Blair stepped back into place, for one of his last few appearances, taking questions from the despatch box.
After John Prescott’s dismal performance last week, (see here http://richardspring.mpblogs.com/?cat=88) with his hot air and blustering, I was fortunate to have a chance to question Tony Blair. As Prime Minister for a decade, he has presided over a huge increase in public spending. However, much of this money has been disproportionately allocated to traditional Labour strongholds. I am thinking particularly of the urban city centres in the North and especially in Scotland.
Therefore, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the injustice felt by many of my constituents to see that in 2006/07 Scotland received 40% more in public funding per person than people in the East of England. That works out at £2500 more from the Government for a person living in Scotland.
Not only have we seen council tax rise by more than 120% since 1997, but NHS organisations in the East of England are facing deficits of £152 million this year due to below-average NHS funding from the Government. It is simply not fair that rural dwellers are discriminated in this way.
Here is the full text of question and answer:
Mr. Richard Spring (West Suffolk) (Con): Considering the massive health deficits and high council taxes in the east of England, may I tell the Prime Minister how interested my constituents would be to know that in Scotland public spending per head is higher by 40 per cent.?
In retrospect, does the Prime Minister consider that to have been a worthwhile investment?
The Prime Minister: I do support the Barnett formula, as a matter of fact. It is there for very specific reasons, and it has been there for almost 30 years. Let us be absolutely clear: as well as the extra investment that has gone into Scotland, with the Barnett formula applying there, there has been extra investment in education and health, not least in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. He need only look around to see the massive amount of investment in, for example, new health care facilities in his constituency, schools in his constituency, and programmes such as Sure Start and the new deal. Of course, the Barnett formula will no doubt continue to be an issue of dispute, for the Conservative party at least, but I think that we have put a major amount of investment into our public services, and that investment is paying off.After hearing that typically Blairite evasive answer on the reasons for this stark inequality, I felt that it really was business as usual…