Presentation: Boris Johnson opposes municipal tax and social care Andrew Vine

No, the blame falls on the government for perpetuating what is now a long and dishonorable tradition of hitting councils with a ruinous one-two. The first slap on the face starves them for money. The follow-up setback is draining responsibility for the rising cost of social care for them. Slowly but surely, this aggression on two fronts is pushing boards to insolvency because of the ever-widening gap between their income and what they have to spend.

Last year, several authorities luckily not in our county warned that they were on the verge of not being able to meet their statutory obligations. This year there will be more.

I would like to ask our Prime Minister how he reconciles this with his declared intention to revive the economy. How is it possible to have an economy that gives every region of the country an equal opportunity to prosper if the boards face financial ruin?

This is not the image of a thriving economy, but of a system of public services that is slowly collapsing. Over the past decade, there has been a 40% reduction in public funding for local authorities and the consecutive increases in municipal tax have not prevented dark cuts.

Regions like ours, anxious to attract investment and exploit new business opportunities, are prevented from doing so in the event of a shortage of good services.

There is a disparity between rhetoric and reality that the government chooses to ignore. And a key element of the crisis hitting the local community is the burden of providing social care, which consumes an ever increasing proportion of its funds.

So far, there is no evidence that the government has tackled the crisis that has engulfed the care system for the elderly and vulnerable. Boris Johnson came to the leadership of his party and eventually across the country with the pretension that he was going to fix social care, and had a plan to do so. Well, where is he, Prime Minister?

Responsibility for care should never have been dropped in the first place. This is not a local problem, like emptying garbage cans and repairing potholes, but a national issue that must be treated as a strategic priority just like the NHS or the benefit system.

If current trends continue, there will be one million people with dementia by 2025. However, in the past decade, there has been a cut of $ 6 billion in social care budgets.

Not surprisingly, during this same period, the number of elderly patients trapped in hospital beds as there is nowhere to care for them increased by 50%. This is bad enough, but things are potentially worse for us here in the North because of what is actually a poverty trap which increases the burden of care on local authorities.

In poorer regions, of which we have many, lower savings rates mean that fewer people can finance their own care, which forces boards to take the bill sooner than their counterparts in wealthier regions from the country.

This is one of the most shameful aspects of governments' shortcomings in social protection as the regions that can least afford to face a higher share of their income to provide it.

This inequity must stop, forcing the government to start looking at care as a national problem instead of abdicating responsibility.

But it must also adopt a new and realistic attitude towards advice, which is currently grappling with the impossible task of providing services with constantly shrinking budgets. If Mr Johnson seriously wishes to level the economy, the local government must receive a fair deal.