It ain’t fair
There has been a series of reports showing that rural areas across England are losing out on huge amounts of public money. This is mainly as a consequence of funding being transferred from rural areas to selected Labour dominated urban towns and cities.
For example, it is instructive that Suffolk has received a smaller increase in NHS funding per person than the national average. In 2006-07 Suffolk was given £1,091.88 per capita in NHS funding – an increase of 38.9% from the £786.04 Suffolk received in 2002-03. Yet NHS funding in England has increased by 45.6% from £959.39 per capita in 2002-03 to £1,397.55 in 2006-07. Suffolk receives £305.67 per person less then the national average. Scotland receives £2,019 per capita in health funding. My frugal Presbyterian forebears would have thought this difference very interesting indeed.
This pattern is not just exclusive to NHS funding.
In the past decade, council tax bills across Suffolk have risen by 130% compared to only 51% in Scotland. Official statistics show that public spending per head was 40% higher in Scotland than in the East of England in 2007/08, with each person receiving £2,624 more in Scotland than in my region.
Suffolk received £3,591 per pupil for 2007/08 in education funding, below the national average of £3,888. The cost of educating the average secondary school pupil in Scotland is £6,120 per year.
Despite seeing much needed work to our transport system being delayed, Scotland receives more than double the amount of funding for transport compared to the East of England. Scotland gets £552 per head compared to £250 in my region.
Of course there are not massive health deficits in those parts of the country that are in receipt of such public largesse. I wonder to what extent the people who live there ask the question so many of my constituents regularly ask me: “Where has all our money gone? It certainly is not coming here.”
It is clearly true that under this Government we have had one of the most ruthlessly gerrymandering financial operations this country has ever known, basing decisions on political calculation rather than need.
Ironically in the end it will make no difference at all, as even those in receipt of these higher levels of funding are fed up with this Government too.