Category: Local Government

TURBULENT TIMES FOR THE REGION’S TORIES

 

 

 

 

Tony Benn used to berate the media for concentrating on political personalities rather than policies. But politics is a heady mix of issues that affect real people and the people we elect to change our lives.

 

Personalities do matter. Colourful leadership attracts media attention and affects or improves morale amongst party activists. Politics is a turbulent brew of people and policy and unlike business management it is constantly changing. In a political life a politician will constantly face elections where he or she is pitted against colleagues on the climb up the greasy pole.All this has been in evidence over the past week both at Westminster and in our Town Halls.

CABINET NEXT FOR ESTHER?

 

Esther McVey’s promotion to Employment Minister caught everyone’s attention. The image of the Wirral West MP striding up Downing Street in a beautiful floral silk dress provided the picture the Prime Minister wanted of a northern woman on the up in the Tory Party. Esther ticks so many boxes. Whilst the national media have focused on her television career, we know her best as a Merseyside business woman who has devoted much time to encouraging other women into business. She may well be in the Cabinet before the General Election.

 

The emphasis on promoting women means it’s tough for talented Tories like Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster), David Morris (Morecambe), Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) and Ben Wallace (Preston North).

NEW LABOUR BLOW FOR HS2.

 

I heard Maria Eagle make a great speech on rail fares at the Brighton conference. She was across her brief but has been moved to shadow Environment,Food and Rural Affairs, an odd choice when you remember her constituency is the urban Garston and Halewood. She continued to speak up for HS2 after Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls had cast doubt on Labour’s support for the project and it looks even more now that the project could be cancelled if the party comes to power.

 

Luciana Berger(Wavertree) and Alison McGovern (Wirral South) got new jobs but Stephen Twigg lost his Shadow Education post. He’ll now handle constitutional issues. Twigg has been a victim of Labour’s confused position on issues like free schools, which is not all down to him.

 

TURBULANCE AT THE TOWN HALLS.

 

It has also been quite a week in local government. Barbara Spicer is quitting as Chief Executive of Salford Council. The elected Salford Mayor Ian Stewart said he hoped “false rumours about personality issues do not taint the good work she has done for Salford.” I doubt that statement will quell suggestions there has been a major falling out between the two.

 

Two of the region’s most colourful and talented local government Tory figures are in trouble. Before a recent county council meeting Geoff Driver narrowly survived a vote of no confidence in his leadership of the Conservative opposition. They lost power to Labour in May. Driver’s robust style is clearly not to the taste of many in his group but he remains undeterred. At the meeting he attacked the Labour administration for accessing his emails as part of an investigation relating to the suspension of the county’s Chief Executive Phil Halsall. He also supported a motion pointedly praising Mr Halsall’s work in securing Preston’s City Deal. This provoked a debate about the merits of the suspended officer which may have conseqences down the line.

 

Another Tory in trouble with his group is Mike Jones, the leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council. Cllr Jones has given vigorous leadership to the authority and has a senior position in the Local Government Association nationally.

 

However I was at a packed Chester Town Hall last week where plans for a student village on the outskirts of the city were thrown out with one vote in favour. Cllr Jones was known to favour the project but took no formal part in proceedings because of his friendship with the developer.

The run up to the vote saw the sacking of the Tory planning chairman and suspension of four Conservative councillors for voting to take the matter to a full council meeting.

 

Like Geoff Driver, Mike Jones won a vote of confidence in his leadership this week but still has a lot of bridges to build with his group. Meanwhile the problem of student ghettos in inner Chester remains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“DON’T TALK NORTH DOWN”: ERIC PICKLES

.

 

Eric Pickles seems to be relishing his role as the axe man in chief of Town Hall spending. The Communities and Local Government Secretary was in typical form addressing the parliamentary press the other day, telling us that councils knew the cuts were coming and that they had the capacity to be “enormously adaptive.”

 

He left his most substantial jibe for northern councils complaining about the unfairness of the cuts. He said their leaders were like the characters in the famous Monty Python sketch where they compete in telling each other what a deprived background they had. You know the one. “You were lucky to live in a slum; we lived in a cardboard box!”

 

Mr Pickles referred in particular to the comments of the Mayor of Liverpool. Joe Anderson. He has led the charge against, what The Mayor sees, as the disproportionate impact the cuts are having on northern cities. The Minister said the problem with this approach was that having painted a picture of poverty and deprivation, the Mayor would then say what a great place Liverpool was to invest in. Pickles then made a similar criticism of the leadership of Bradford Council, an authority he once led.

 

So has he got a point? Well the Liverpool Mayor and the leaders of our great northern cities like Leeds and Manchester are in a bind. Politically they have to speak up for their communities. They also have to try and lure investors in. If too bleak a picture is painted of the impact the cuts are going to have, it could well put off some potential employers.

 

Meanwhile Mr Pickles continues to rough up the councils. He is after all one of the token northerners in a cabinet of posh boys. He is frustrated that some authorities like Manchester have managed to get around his 2% council tax limit because levies by police and fire authorities are not under Town Hall control. He is already threatening fire and brimstone for the rebels next year.

 

“Sooner or later councils are going to have to sit down with their electorates and decide what to spend” said Mr Pickles.

 

Then there is the Graph of Doom. That’s not something out of an Indiana Jones movie. Instead it is a forecast that at the current rate of cuts and the growing need for elderly care, it won’t be long before councils will only have sufficient funds to empty the bins and look after the old. They won’t be able to do anything else. What does Indiana Pickles say about this Graph of Doom?

 

“Share services, end duplication, adapt. You knew it was coming,” that’s his uncompromising message.

 

Added to all these challenges, councils are soon going to face the ending of restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians coming to Britain. How many school places and houses should Town Halls prepare for?

 

Eric Bloodaxe’s answer is honest if not helpful. “Nobody knows. All that government can do is be careful of the ‘pull factors’ like housing and health benefits.” He then added an awkward truth about the Eastern European immigrants: “very few carrots would be picked without them.”

 

CUT COUNCIL ELECTIONS IN CITIES TO SAVE MONEY

Where ever I go it’s a chapter of woe. In the last few days I’ve been to Winsford, Manchester and Liverpool to witness councils struggling to fix next month’s annual budget against a background of swingeing cuts.

 

The problem with this story is that I’ve been covering this sort of issue for forty years. Councils complaining that these are the worst cuts ever and forecasting doom and gloom for the services people need. This time I don’t think they are crying wolf. The scale of the cuts means that they are having to completely rethink the way they provide services.

 

With health authorities, the police and fire service also facing the same pressure; there is a willingness for them all to get out of their “silos” and talk together about providing us with a joined up service. This may be the only good thing to come from the government’s squeeze on the Town Halls. It was a point I put to Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese. He had been explaining to a conference in Manchester that “troubled families” often had thirteen different people contacting them in the past. Now management restructuring and greater cooperation with other agencies would mean one person would be put in charge of a case.

 

It begged the question why hadn’t it been done before? His reply was revealing. Until now public sector bodies had been reluctant to cooperate. The budget pressures facing them all had changed that.

 

So credit Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles with one point, but little else. The man is a disgrace. The relish with which he is stripping councils of millions of pounds and suggesting that savings on providing mineral water at meetings will solve the problem is fatuous. His attack on authorities like Manchester for holding £120m in reserves is frankly dishonest. He knows that this money cannot be spent on the revenue budget.

 

Things are so bad in Liverpool that Mayor Joe Anderson has called for divine inspiration. This week he hosted a summit with the Bishop of Liverpool to protest at government demands that the city reduce its spending by 52% over four years. Mayor Joe has been attacked for forecasting civil unrest if this goes on. The criticism is probably right because the last thing his city needs is rioting but there is a burning sense of injustice among civic leaders from Liverpool to Leeds that the local government financial settlement appears to favour southern councils at the expense of the north.

 

Be that as it may, new thinking is required. Cheshire West and Chester Council saw this crisis coming and on Wednesday night in Winsford they began a series of public consultation meetings (which I am chairing) on their budget plans. They include their “Altogether Better” programme which aims to reduce duplication between agencies operating in their patch.

 

Apart from the general cuts, Wirral Council has suffered historic internal management failures not helped by political instability. There is a proposal on the table to scrap the election of a third of councillors every year and go for an all out election every four years. Sources indicate it may not be approved which is a shame. It would end the confusing system that applies across the metropolitan areas of West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. It would be better if Leeds, Bury, Wirral etc. had one big election every four years when the future control of the council would be at stake. It would also save money for other services which is what this crisis is all about.