Pickles 1 - Shameless Labour Councils 0

Eric Pickles has done what Eric Pickles does best today.

He has put information in the public domain that has 2 points to it - most importantly he is opening up the books of local government and shwoing tax payers exactly what they are (or aren't) getting for their money. But this has the added bonus side-effect of humiliating some councils (generally Labour run, but Tory ones too) who aren't doing their job properly.

Imagine this scenario. You are a large Labour-run authority interested not in the best for your local people but in your own re-election locally and in damaging the national coalition as much as possible. Along come those dastardly cuts (you know, the ones that take us way-way-back to 2007 levels) and you see an opportunity. Cut massively, slash services, impact as much as you can. Then blame the government and sit back as the votes roll in for Labour at the next local election and, hopefully, the next General Election. This is exactly what is happening up and down the land.

The trouble is that these councils have other choices before they start making deep cuts in local services. And today Eric Pickles shines the light on the assets those council have and urge them to think about using them before cutting. If I lived in one of those large Labour-run authorities I would be rightly angry that they were cutting, say, rubbish collection whilst owning an airport/football club/cinemas/golf courses (delete as appropriate).

Now I totally accept that many of these assets will actually be investments; we can't sell off the family-silver if, in fact, the family silver is generating income for the council (especially above that which could be obtained via other methods like banks, and a lot safer!). Councils locally, such as Breckland, I understand draw a decent income from their asset-investment and use this money to hold down council tax. Mr Pickles would approve I am sure. But frankly any asset which has been consistently either breaking even or making a loss needs to go.

And there is one last question - should councils own this stuff in the first place? If the asset doesn't produce an income (like a golf course can) and isn't in the community interest (as some football clubs can be), then why own it? And if possible could the poitn of the asset be achieved in some other way?

This is a complex issue which needs to be taken case-by-case. But the brilliance of the Communities Secretary (I am a self-confessed Pickles fan) is that in one sweep he has destroyed the arguement in the public eye about the need for deep and painful cuts at local level in certain places.

In the same way I don't believe Norwich City Council should cut one iota of service before "political assistants" (council employees paid to work for party political councillors) are removed or the salaries of top staff is cut, I wouldn't accept any cut whilst a council asset portfolio hasn't been publicly examined.

Take a look at any message board today - the standard comment is "I can't believe my council have cut X whilst they own a Y!!!". Another round to Mr Pickles, me thinks.

I urge everyone to get online, see what their council owns and start asking questions about it!

Clegg shows leadership over tax review

Having been on my holidays, one of the joys of returning home is sifting through all of the political news that you missed whilst in depeest darkest Devon. I understand that the LibDems are now mooting (but not confirming) abandoning Local Income Tax and instead backing a reformed land tax instead. So, let's check on how all these LibDem sacred cows are doing ...

The party of "1p extra tax for education" is now the party of low taxation.
The party of "tough liberalism" now believes you shouldn't lock anti-social youths up.
The party of students is now considering dumping its opposition to fees.
The party of scrapping the council tax now thinks it may be OK after all, if you tweak it a bit.

Only really the Iraq cow is still there, although fewer and fewer people notice that cow despite the occassional "moo". And what do I make of all this? Step forward my new hero ... Nick Clegg.

Now you'll be aware (and nobody believed me at the time) that I thought Chris Huhne was a much more dangerous LibDem leader for Cameron to deal with and that Clegg was a lightweight who would snap in the political wind. Although popular opinion may think that to be true (there is no love for Clegg on the doorsteps of Norwich), I think Clegg is (to quote Cameron) building a house with solid foundations.

Gone are the populist LibDem ideas, where the party would run a whole election with only 3 policies (Iraq, council tax and tuition fees). Gone is the idea that the LibDems are too nice, or too gutless, to have a real policy debate. Clegg is taking on his party and good on him.

Whereas the LibDems used to debate goldfish in bags or porn for 16 year olds, they now seem to be addressing some of the "hard choices" (copyright, T Blair) facing Britain.

Nick Clegg has taken a long hard look at their policies and their election result - LibDem PPC in Guildford, Ms Doughty, has long said that the LIT cost her seat in 2005 because it hammered young professionals and working families too hard. She was right, and credit to Clegg for seeing beyond the populism of "axe the tax" to think about an alternative. Louise and I were hundreds of pounds a year worse off under the LibDem LIT at a stage in our lives when we can least afford it, with 2 young kids. How many more people in our position realised this and didn't vote LibDem as a result?

Even though many of these cows are not yet dead, just wounded, it is clear that Clegg may yet have the political courage to take on his party - even the SDP dwellers. I don't yet know if he is Blair circa 1994 or Cameron circa 2006, but Clegg has shown in the last week he may yet surprise us all.

The Budget Debate

Yesterday was the longest and hardest council meeting of the year; both physcially in terms of the lenght and stress of the meeting but also because of the issues involved. Nobody in the council is an expert on every section of the budget and, despite our claims, no party leader has a total grasp even given all the extra meetings we've had on this recently. Our meeting saw some robust exchanges and some honest views being set out - given that most of the budget was thrashed out well in advance, god knows how long we'd have been there if we hadn't of done that!

Firstly the Leader of the Council, Cllr Morphew, moves the budget framework; that is the high level strategy direction that the budget will follow. Cllr Morphew couldn't resist turning it into a kind of two-year review of his administration; incuding battering the poor LibDems - the first of many batterings and their party must have left the chamber feeling very down indeed. Cllr Morphew set out changes to the financial regime, improvements in housing, CCTV extension ... in fact, I accuse dhim of sounding like a Stalinist Minister reeling off the tractor production figures. Outgoing LibDem Leader Cllr Hereward Cooke took an open shot at Cllr Morphew but seemed to be leaving his best fire for later. LibDem Cllr Carl Mayhew (Mile Cross) joined us in abstaining on this item, against his own party decision to vote in favour.

Then the budget itself is moved. Cllr Alan Waters, Executive Member for Finance, made a decent and amusing stab at justifying the budget - including some very amusing powerpoint slides and a pre-emptive attack on other budget amendments. My only feeling was that Cllr Waters spent too much time knocking the alternatives rather than saying why his budget was the best. Then came the LibDem budget amendment...

... they wanted to have a council tax rise of 2.95% and give an extra £32,000 to Visit Norwich Ltd - and to pay for it, they'd cut the wardens programme by £92,000. I have to say on first hearing this I couldn't believe our political luck. The wardens are popular, hard working and successful - the LibDems wanted to sack some of them in favour of tourism???

Cllr Cooke seemed like a man who knew his time was up and hardly flourished on his last big occassion. He put forward the amendment but did so in a quiet way, almost hoping this might take the edge off the atatcks from other parties. A shame - Cllr Cooke is, despite his party's difficulties, one of the best orators on the council. This should have been his moment to really make one last stand before standing down. It feel flat; not a disaster but without any spark. The same can't be said for his Deputy, Cllr Brian Watkins (Eaton), who led with a clenched fist in a passionate defence on VisitNorwich. Cllr Watkins has long been an advocate of a strong tourist strategy and he clearly had the bit between his teeth. However, a good speech went bad when he slipped and said the LibDems wanted to give "32 million" to VisitNorwich rather than just £32,000. Oh dear.

The LibDem amendment cut little ice with other parties; I'm afriad I couldn't sit by and watch all this go through without making a fuss. Whilst I'm sure Labour would be happy just to let the votes roll through, Cllr Ramsay accused the LibDems of "throwing good money after bad" and suggested they were writing "a blank cheque" for VisitNorwich.

I was rather less kind. I said it, "looks like a visionless effort from a leaderless party ... it has the desperate smack of a party who knows its time is up ... we're dealing with a failing organisation who don't seem to be able to fulfill their purpose, wandering lost and trying to find some measure of support (that's the LibDems, not VisitNorwich) ... perhaps this is about undercutting Labour, well I tell you they aren't going to undercut the Conservatives; we'll deliver tax cuts because we believe in tax cuts ... thousands raised, thousands spend, thousands wasted but only now do the LibDems realise that tax is too high ... no ideas, no vision, no leadership and quite frankly, no hope!"

Cue LibDem groaning and plenty of cheers; I'm told even clapping from the public gallery. The LibDems lost their amendment 7 votes to 17 with 11 abstentions; including their very own Cllr Mayhew.

Then came our amendment. We would have;
Reduce spending on Unitary by £500,000
Use £300,000 to reduce council tax
Use £200,000 to support community projects through the People's Fund

In my speech, I said that this "was not an attempt to de-rail unitary - believe me, we've tried that - ...now is the time to say that the project has gone on long enough and cost more than enough ... other districts will be paying out just £300,000 so why can't we just spend what everybody else will ... this isn't about unitary, it's about unitary without the waste, it isn't about council tax, it's about a signal that this council won't accept ever higher bills, this isn't about extra funding for community projects, it's about the best use of our limit resources."

I have to admit to not knowing quite what the opposition arguements were. Cllr Waters was so nice and charming that I totally lost what he was saying. He did use a typical Labour trick of plucking a figure out of the air and claiming we'd cut service. Errr, no. There's only 2 cuts - the unitary budget and then everyone's council tax bills. We were then told that council tax bill cuts would only benefit the middle classes. I'm sorry, does everybody else not pay council tax? Finally Cllr Waters assured us that the rise was only 3p per week anyway. Well, that's OK ... if it wasn't my 3p in the first place and I can still spend it better than the council can.

The other-Cllr Little (Green, Town Close) made an incoherant and bizarre speech of which I can remember little (no pun) other than being accused of electioneering. I'm surprised that Cllr Read could contain himself, but it took Cllr Collishaw (Con, Catton Grove) to come to my aid. I then surprised the council by revealing that I am a conservative, favour a small council and tax cuts; one mans electioneering is another man's political principle.

After our sound defeat (31 votes to 3!) Cllr Ramsay, Green Leader, clearly felt his own side had missed their chance so tried to come back to our amendment which, needless to say, I had to stop using a Point of Order. Come on, chaps, let's do this right!

In the final vote on the budget, it was left to Labour and the Conservatives as the other groups chose to sit it out. The final result was 13 votes to 3; we voted against Labour's 3.7% tax hike.

A good debate, well natured and largely good fun. We all had our say, votes were taken and I suppose the will of the city was heard. Roll on next year...

... one pleasing footnote was that during another topic, I managed to force te delightful Cllr Lubbock to storm out of the chamber. Half a dozen other councillors congratulated me afterwards, saying they had always wanted to do the same thing!!!

More tomorrow ... a friend in the galery wrote some pen portraits which I will publish.

Norwich Tories 0% council tax rise bid

Norwich Conservatives will today launch our alternative budget ahead of Tuesday’s crunch council meeting. The budget will see more investment into key areas such as recycling but will trim the unitary spending of the council to deliver an overall freeze on council tax.

Taxpayers in Norwich have been hammered by Labour year after year. Once again we are looking again at inflation busting rises that will see senior citizens and low income families suffer.

That’s why, as Conservatives, we believe in keeping council tax low. Conservative run South Norfolk Council has led the way in setting a freeze on council tax and now we hope to do the same in Norwich.

Clearly much of the spending is good, but unitary stands alone as being Labour’s great white elephant in the City. We’re picking up the bill for Labour’s political vanity.

It is ridiculous that when services are in need of extra investment and people across Norwich are being told there is no money available, we are planning to spend £800,000 of taxpayers money on Unitary. This brings the bill for Unitary well into the millions for the people of Norwich.

Clearly the council needs to do some preparation work so we are suggesting a compromise – that £300,000 be taken out of the unitary budget and be used to cut tax for thousands of hard working people across the City.

However, we would go further than that – trimming another £250,000 off Labour’s unitary bill and putting that money directly into future community projects, making the lives of people around our City better.

The unitary debacle has gone on long enough and cost more than enough. It’s time people knew that at least one party is willing to put them, their families and their services first in all this. The Conservatives are willing to take tough decisions and say that tax is too high and must now come down.

Residents can also use the elections this May to send Labour and the LibDems a message – if you want to pay less tax, spend more on services and less on political bureaucracy you have to vote Conservative.

I hear Hammersmith & Hillingdon are nice this time of year...

Two new Conservative run authorities have recently announced tax cutting measures in their first budgets, being good for the party locally and for ratepayers but I suspect rather difficult for David Cameron.

The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham was taken by the Tories in the early hours of 5th May last year and they have now said that Council Tax will be cut (yes, that's cut) by 3% from April. In a similar vein, Hillingdon Borough has said that senior citizens will recieve a 2% council tax discount to help them - Hillingdon was won by the Conservatives in a landslide win where both the Labour and LibDem Leaders lost their own seats.

This will all serve to put pressure on the Tory Leader on the issue of tax cuts for the next election. So, what should DC do? Praise them to the hilt. Show this is Conservative councils at their best. But he must be sure to say that national government is different. The national situation is more like Norwich. Let me explain.

The biggest lie in politics is "if you cut tax you have to cut services." Not true at all and only left-wingers believe this in order to justify hike-upon-hike. Now I know that local authorities often face difficult settlements - Norfolk County is a classic example - but there is so much waste in local government.

I am shocked by what I see on the inside of City Hall. We could easily neutralise council tax increases and still, in my humble opinion, spend more on key services by having a cost-saving zeal in the next few years as we did have when the LibDem £2m overspend was announced.

The public quite rightly expect us to be careful with their money. They want a responsive council doing good work for a value-for-money tax.

If Hillingdon and Hammersmith can clear their decks and cut costs (not services) like that AND deliver a tax cut then those local politicans deserve praise. Should Norwich do the same? Not yet ... when the council cuts its costs then more money should go into the woeful recycling system, into environmental services and street cleaning. After they are sorted then we cut tax. Similarly, when the education system, NHS and police service are reformed and working efficiently then we cut tax. Both in Norwich and Nationally I would expect that to be inside a four year Conservative majority term.

Rumour is that the council tax hike will be big again this year. Why are our senior officers not on holiday in west London this year?