Cornwall Council, Supporting People and another budget 15 February, 2011
Posted by Jeremy Rowe in News.Tags: Conservatives, Cornwall Council, Eric Pickles, Finances, Independents, Labour, Lib Dems, Local Services, Mebyon Kernow
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I’ve long been an evangelist for webcasting meetings, but sometimes I look at proceedings in the Cornwall Council Chamber and wonder if it would be better if the outside world never had to look in on the unedifying spectacle of a budget meeting. Today was one of those occasions.
Local authorities up and down the country set their Council Tax rates at February meetings and Cornwall is no exception, although in many respects this was an exceptional meeting. Firstly, the major part of the budget had already been passed by the Tory-led administration at the long ‘emergency’ meeting back in December and secondly, the question of setting a Council Tax figure had been rendered academic by central government’s indication that any rise would result in a corresponding cut to the amount given to councils in grants.
The only question therefore is how councils manage the cuts they have no choice in making. Back in December we put forward four fully-costed amendments to the administration’s ‘emergency budget’, all of which were defeated. Today we concentrated on the proposed cuts to the Supporting People budget, with an appeal to independent-minded Councillors to vote the measures down and force the Cabinet to rethink and come back with alternative proposals. We made clear that money from the Council’s £127m reserves could be used to protect these valuable preventative services which would save greater costs further down the line. Indeed, Eric Pickles (no friend of local government) has gone on the record to make clear that local authorities save £5-6 in other costs for every £1 spent on Supporting People services.
Such logic was lost on the administration, and at one point one of their Councillors resorted to some unpleasant insinuations about the motives of some of those who work hard to provide these vital services for the authority. Regrettably a number of the Tory Members seemed to derive some perverse enjoyment from this, and the cuts in general, grinning throughout this deeply unedifying spectacle.
In the end the administration’s weight of numbers was enough to see this short-sighted budget through with just one Tory and one Independent joining the Lib Dem, Labour and Mebyon Kernow Members who voted against.
None of us are in any doubt that times are hard for public finances – regardless of whether you blame the banks, the Coalition, the last Labour government or all three – but there is no need to make things harder by the myopic vandalism of important, cost-saving services. This was not a day for Cornwall Council to feel proud of itself, but I fear it will be some time yet before the administration start to realise the cost of what they have done.
The Localism Bill and Standards 13 December, 2010
Posted by Jeremy Rowe in News.Tags: CLG, Eric Pickles, Localism, Standards
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The Department of Communities and Local Government is due to publish its Localism Bill today. As I write this I haven’t yet had a chance to see what Eric Pickles is proposing, but what we do know is that the current Standards regime, the mechanism by which elected representatives can be called to account for impropriety, is likely to bite the dust.
The essence of the Coalition Government’s rationale behind this, as I understand it, is that it is a costly mechanism which leaves itself open to abuse by people with personal vendettas. There is an element of truth to this but it’s also worth remembering why the Code of Conduct and the accompanying measures came into being in the first place.
In the mid-1990s parliament was awash with allegations of sleaze, a situation exacerbated by the then Prime Minister, John Major, and his ill-fated ‘Back To Basics’ campaign. Aside from all the tittle-tattle around the personal peccadilloes of a seemingly endless stream of government ministers there were also serious cases of bribery, corruption and perjury. The cases of Neil Hamilton and Jonathan ‘Simple Sword of Truth’ Aitken were the headline-grabbing examples, but everything at the time pointed to an old fashioned system where politicians were simply trusted on their word and could essentially adopt a cavalier attitude to basic principles of public life which should have been obvious to everyone.
The Standards regime came in as a response to that and the effects have filtered through the British political system. An example would be Planning Committees. Any councillor who sits on such a body has to publicly make it clear if they have an interest in any of the items they are voting on, and if that interest is deemed ‘prejudicial’ (i.e. they or someone close to them stands to benefit or lose out) then they may not take part in the decision-making process. This may seem blindingly obvious but anyone who remembers the previous arrangements will tell you that this has been a giant leap forward.
Of course the system isn’t perfect, and there are still far too many instances of abuse of position, but the point is that there currently exists a mechanism which – for all its flaws – can call politicians to account, whether they are Parish Councillors or Government Ministers. If Eric Pickles wants to tear that system up I would very much hope that he will come up with some sensible answers as to what to replace it with.
