Just over a week ago I observed that the MP for for Knowsley in Liverpool, George Howarth had submitted a document during the Parliamentary half term session calling for Local Government Funding. When he returned to Parliament two weeks ago initially three of his MP colleagues endorsed the Early Day Motion he published. By the end of that week his call was supported by another seven MPs, so there were a total of 11 MPs including George who had signed the document. Since then this week there has been a significant number of MPs that have endorsed it and so there were a total of 24 MPs that have supported it by the end of this week, however rather radically a 25th signature has arisen today on Sunday 5th March involving Rachael Maskell!. I am delighted that these include one from Sussex who is Caroline Lucas who is my MP in Brighton and she was the first to endorse it at the beginning of this week. There are also three more MPs from Wales representing Plaid Cymru and John McDonnell who is a London Based Labour MP. The piece that George wrote is listed below but it can be obtained from here and that link also provides the list of all of the MPs who have signed it so people can see if there are any local MPs near where they are based. Clearly we still need many more MPs to endorse this document but we have moved a bit further this week. Here is my piece just over a week ago that did list the people who had initially supported George’s document which is listed here:

That this House acknowledges that local government fulfils a vital role and should be funded in such a manner as to enable it to continue to do so; notes with regret that councils face a funding gap of £3.19 billion for 2023-24; further notes that councils will be confronted with the unacceptable choice of cutting services or using already worryingly declining reserves to balance their budgets; expresses alarm that the gap is likely to increase to £5 billion in 2024-25 without taking into account increased energy costs and inflationary pressures; and calls on the Government to ensure that adequate funding is provided to local authorities in order to ensure that their budgets are future-proofed against the need to cut jobs and services in the short, medium and long term.

So the current 24 MPs represent: Merseyside(2), South Wales, NI(2), Manchester(2), Devon, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Birmingham, Nottingham, West Midlands(2), Sussex, Sheffield, Cheshire, Humberside, County Durham, Hertfordshire, North Wales(2), Mid Wales and London

The 25th MP who signed this was Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central and amazingly she signed that form on Sunday which is a day when I have never seen any other MPs that have signed these documents. Subsequently late on Tuesday (7th March) Kim Johnson the Labour MP from Liverpool Riverside has signed it so there are now 26 signatures.