Government childcare announcement: More Conservative chaos hurting families
Ian Shires
Liberal DEMOCRAT Activist Learn more
The case for a radical, liberal left
Blue light bill bombshell as emergency services face £144m fuel and insurance costs
Government childcare announcement: More Conservative chaos hurting families
The case for a radical, liberal left
Blue light bill bombshell as emergency services face £144m fuel and insurance costs
Labour’s budget cuts hit where it hurts most say Lib Dems
by Ian Shires on 22 October, 2014
So Walsall’s new Labour bosses have unveiled their plans on how to slice £86 million from the Council’s budget over the next four years.
As we predicted when Labour took over in August, their slash and burn proposals are aimed at all those services which people hold most dear.
Labour plan to close half of the borough’s libraries, twelve children’s centres will close along with delivering a crippling £2 million cut which will decimate youth services. Add to this moving to a fortnightly household rubbish collection and paying for the green waste service along with reductions in the street cleansing and looking after our parks and green spaces it all makes for pretty grim reading.
The new Council Leader, Cllr Sean Coughlan said at the press conference on Monday that “This is a really difficult day”. Well Sean, all I can say is welcome to the real world! A world that we as Liberal Democrats have been a part of since 2012 when we joined in coalition with the Tories because Labour decided at the time that you did not want to share “power” with other parties. because they did not have a working majority. It was left to us to tackle the problems, make the difficult decisions and curb the excesses of the Tories in deciding the way the budget cuts should be dealt with.
Whilst in the coalition we argued that there was another alternative to the slash and burn approach the Tories wanted to take, much the same as the ones which Labour announced the other day. It also needs to be said that Labour whilst in opposition didn’t come up with an alternative budget nor did they vote against any of the coalition budgets.
Labour talks of getting volunteers to run services such as libraries and looking after our parks and green spaces. That’s fine, but first you need to put in place the help and support the voluntary sector needs to take on this massive task.
Back in 2012 Walsall Voluntary Action (WVA) was virtually non existant having lost its chief executive and being reduced to a handfull of people. We set about the task of rebuilding this vital organisation by pursuading the Cabinet to invest in the voluntary sector in order to build the numbers of volunteers and put back the confidence in the sector to enable it to take on its new role.
As Liberal Democrats within the coalition we had planned to continue to invest in the voluntary sector so that over the next four years it would be in a position to take on the tasks that the council could no longer afford. We also wanted to work with the council’s work force to get them to use the expertese and talent that exists there to provide services through social enterprises and other similar organisations instead of chucking hundreds of them out onto the scrap heap.
To enable us to do this meant that we would have to “back end load” the cuts so that they were introduced in the latter part of the four year plan when there were people in place with the right skills and motivation to take on the task of providing some of those services the council will no longer be able to afford.
So don’t accuse us of not having a long term vision of how local services need to be run given the very different post 2008 world, and don’t make out that if we had a Labour Government elected in 2015 we would see a return to “business as usual” for Local Government. After all Ed Milliband has said should there be a Labour majority Government after the General Election it would have to continue the austerity programme currently in place.
Our verdict on Labour’s Budget proposals for Walall is one of disappointment. Disappointment because we genuinly thought that Walsall Labour would not follow Labour Groups across Birmingham and the Black Country by adopting tactics designed to hit ordinary people where it hurts, in their pockets, in a cheap political ploy to get people to vote Labour at the General Elction
10 Comments
Here in Somerset the proposals suggested by Walsall Labour have been implemented by the Somerset Tories and they blame the previous Lib Dem administration. Indeed, the move is to a rubbish collection every three weeks! There are three youth workers for the county (that is one for every 250,000 people). Green waste charges were introduced under the Lib Dem regime. All in all it leads to a realisation that no one in ‘power’ can do anything of lasting value. Why bother voting? You change the colour and get the same politics.
I can’t argue for what is going on in Somerset.
All I can say is that here in Walsall the Lib Dems have a plan to cut the budget over 4 years whilst at the same time creating the climate in the voluntary sector to continuing providing some, if not all of the services that the council will be unable to provide over time.
We also want to create a “Federal” Walsall devolving as much decision making as possible to the six Towns which make up the borough giving people a real say and making where you put a X on the ballot paper actually mean something……
I think you should have reminded your readers that the cuts are taking place because of the untold millions cut by the Tory-led Coalition with the Liberals backing. If you’d been in Parliament you would have been suspended for misleading the house!
And of course had Labour been in power after the 2010 General Election there wouldn’t have been any cuts would there?
You and your fellow Lib Dems held on to power and Why are these cuts so much if you did your very best for the Borough as a whole? Why don’t you and the Tories accept that you have some responsability for this being that you/they were in power for 14 years. The trouble with you politicions is that you live in a blame blame culture and whatever colour you are Red, Blue, Yellow or Purple, never accept that you are to blame, and you wonder why we don’t vote in big numbers! I have sufferred for almost all of my 70 years, with one thing or another. with one party after another saying it’s not our fault it was down to them before, and them before saying it’s the current lots fault, you should have stayed with us. No what we want for a change is, honesty, acceptability and the councillors and M.P’s to realise that they work for us not the other way round.
We held onto power because we felt that there was another way to achieve the £89 million cuts in the Council’s Budget which required more time to build capacity and confidence in the Voluntary Sector. We knew from what other Labour controlled Council’s have done that their way would hit the very people they say they want to protect. In particular young people services would be hit disprportionally.
But there are only three lib dem cllrs in Walsall. It is bit David Steele “prepare for government” is it not?
The three of us have to cover the same responsibilities as the two bigger groups which means that we work that much harder.
It all seems a bit pretend to me. Why not get real and recognise that the LibDem bubble is over. The Liberal party had a long tradition of national radicalism and local activism.
Still has. Chucking my hand in and running with the right wing hurd has never been my style. if I’d have wanted an easy ride I would have taken the easy way out long ago and joined the Labour Party. Something worth having is worth working hard for and no one can accuse me of not working hard…..