Sunday 20 February 2011

Agitators disrupt the Council's Budget meeting



The Council's meeting to set this year's budget was an ignominious affair.  No-one was happy about having to set a budget that was based on an enforced 16% reduction in our overall budget, thanks to the Tory-led, Lib-Dem-backed government.  A lot of people don't realise that 75% of the Council's annual income is made up of grants from Central Government, and if the Government decides not to give us the money, there is not a lot we can do about it except work out what we are going to have to cut.  If you wanted to recover the money that the government has cut from Islington's budget this year, on the back of an envelope, we would have had to double the rate of Council tax to make it up. And the Tory's have made a rule that we can't do that either, even if we wanted to.

What we have managed to do is to achieve around 50% of the cuts through efficiency savings, and we have protected as many frontline services as we can manage, including saving lollipop patrols outside schools, adventure playgrounds, as many voluntary groups as we possibly could, and we are not closing any libraries as a result of the cuts.  The Labour Group, and in particular the executive sweated long and hard on this to try and get the best (ie least worst) outcome for the most vulnerable and needy in the Borough.

As reported in the press, the Council was prevented from holding its meeting to set the budget by an organised protest from the gallery; - a group of people who shouted down all attempts to hold the meeting, hurling abuse, and chanting, effectively stifling any possibility of holding the meeting or of there being any proper debate.  Personally I cannot see what this achieved.

I am not entirely happy that we ended up moving to another meeting room in order to agree the budget.  I would have preferred to wait until the more disruptive elements had been removed, and then resumed in the chamber, although I accept it is easy to be wise after the event. Ultimately, however, the decision on how to deal with that level of disruption of a meeting rests with the Chief Executive, John Foster, and the change of venue decision was his.  Several perfectly reasonable members of the public asked me, as we removed to a committee room, why they couldn't be allowed in, and I couldn't really answer them.  I did however question the decision under a point of order, and was told by the Chief Executive that he took the decision on the advice of the Police.  Which doesn't exactly explain why some members of the public managed to gain entry to the re-convened meeting, and some didn't, although the press were there.
Once ensconced in the committee room, members had no appetite for debate, and the budget was dealt with simply by vote.  Given that I was intending to speak, and was also deprived of the opportunity, I reproduce here the text of my intended speech, for anyone who cares to read it.  You have to try and imagine me raising my voice firmly against heckling from the opposite benches to get the intent of the speech:

Madam Mayor.  Last month, the Liberal Democrats’ strategy on how they hope to regain the trust of people in Islington was leaked to the local papers.

I would like to thank whichever Lib Dem leaked the document, because they have done the borough a service by exposing the naked cynicism of the Liberal Democrats.  And I have to say,  the document shows the Lib Dems have a pretty odd idea of how you win people’s trust:  By their account you achieve trust by being irresponsible, misleading people, confusing  them, and deceiving them into thinking you’re their friend.

The cynical attitude betrayed in that document can be seen again in the Lib Dem amendment to the budget which is in front of us now.   ‘Don’t be a constructive opposition’, the document said.  Don’t be ‘responsible’, and where possible,  ‘flirt with populism’.

And Madam Mayor, this is a direct quote from their own document: “Use the budget process, especially the cuts”. On the cuts, their advice is just to repeat, that it’s not their fault.  Finally, madam mayor, and this is perhaps most galling as we debate this budget, they have come up with the maxim, “it’s not our problem, it’s theirs.”

The job losses and cuts to community services are a problem for hard working, low-income families in my ward and across the borough.  But those families will most certainly be interested in how the local Liberal Democrat Party has chosen to shrug its shoulders at their own Government’s deliberate, cynical and brutal attack on communities like ours.

So their strategy document says exploit the cuts for political advantage, and that is what they are trying to do.  The whole point of the so called ‘people’s fund’ in their amendment is to give them material for focus leaflets for whichever cut they are, in the words of their memo, ‘championing’.  They suggest taking the food out of children’s mouths to pay for a focus leaflet slush fund, which can be, and will be, double and treble counted as they cherry-pick particular cuts to oppose, conveniently ignoring the fact that any change to the Council’s budget will take away from one service to pay for another.  This could hardly be more cynical.

They suggest comms cuts so unrealistic that they would leave the council unable to effectively promote things like summer activities to keep kids off the streets, direct people to the new Citizens Advice Bureau, or inform people of the benefits available to them.

Now I’m not opposed to cutting the communications budget:  We said we would do this as part of our manifesto pledge.  However, I do know that under the Liberal Democrats, the council spent quarter of a million pounds on its ‘Islington Now’ magazine.  Next year, we expect to have cut this to around £80,000 – and we have improved the content, to provide help for local people, rather than just trumpeting how marvellous their administration was.

So we are on track to save more than half a million pounds on comms in one year since the Lib Dems were in power.  But the amendment in front of us has nothing to do with the real business of saving money in the wake of the huge Lib-Dem/Tory Government attack on our community.  It is all about trying to save their bacon after they have abandoned our community.  It is about, as their document puts it, “not getting caught defending the Tories” about “using the cuts” and about “flirting with populism”.

Madam Mayor, the Lib Dem document shows that the Lib Dems have no plan to defend Islington from the cuts.  They are too busy lapping up what they see as an opportunity for political attack.  The people of our borough need representatives who are on their side, not this kind of cynical, insupportable, two-faced politics.