Originally posted @ 9:38 am, Sun 23rd Jan 2011
I’ve received a letter from the local Unison branch expressing concern about the City Council’s shortfall of £60 million.
The union claims that the council has already reduced the number of jobs by 800 in the last 2 years.
It points out how services will be decimated (which, if the cuts is 16% of its revenue budget, is a literal underestimate, since the Romans invented the concept to describe the cutting of one-tenth; what’s Latin for cutting by one-sixth?).
The letter asserts that Nottingham’s citizens will be angry once they understand the full extent of the cuts, with again a sense that it’s a point Councillors wouldn’t understand. If in any way, there’s a sense that the scale of the cuts are being masked, I suspect it’s because Councillors are trying to mitigate any potential damage as much as possible and spending time to improve decisions. It would indeed be unfortunate if such measures were seen to be masking the problem, cos masking a problem doesn’t solve it and the case for demonstrating that this is the consequence of the Conservative-led coalitions cut in grant is easy and simple to make, if harder to get repeated often enough.
The union branch calls for public meetings to be held across the city and the Council have in fact called 10.
It also calls for using up reserves and borrowing. Borrowing might be credible, in as much as it is allowed under prudential borrowing, if there was a sign of an upturn in grants in the year after – and there isn’t. As for reserves, we wouldn’t have that much unallocated above the minimum required to deal with ensuring cashflow and / or the unforeseen.
Then the letter takes it a step too far. Refuse to pass on the cuts. Well that means calling an illegal budget. This on the grounds that it worked so well in 1980’s Liverpool, not.
I’m grateful to Luke Akehurst (from London) for his analysis of and critique of this policy - http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2011/01/ideas-from-labours-past-not-to-revist-1.html#links which I’ve paraphrased and re-ordered –
It didn't work in 1985. No one actually stopped the cuts. All that happened was that the councils which had tried to resist ended up making chaotic unplanned cuts at the last minute.
The law has changed since 1985. You can't even get as far as setting an illegal budget and being surcharged. All that happens is that the council officers set a balanced budget for you, with no reference to your political priorities.
The central government cash will not be in council's bank accounts so it will be physically impossible to carry on funding services to the same value as before even if the political gesture made sense.
There's a whiff of refusal to come to terms with losing the General Election in this. We told voters "vote Labour or else there will be massive cuts". 71% of those who voted, didn't. So the cuts are here.
Town hall vs. Whitehall is such a lop-sided battle there can only be one winner. It isn't good strategy to pick a fight against someone who holds all the cash and legal powers.
It will remind older voters of some of the nonsense of the eighties and help the Tories establish a narrative that we have embraced the nonsense again.
If Labour doesn't balance budgets at local level where it is a legal requirement, it hardly sends a message that in power nationally we would be fiscally responsible.
A gesture of defiance to Eric Pickles wouldn't cause him to think again. He cut his political teeth attacking Labour municipal gesture politics in the '80s and would love nothing more than to send in the commissioners to take over a few Labour councils. And offer an oportunity for him to reclaim ground he's lost with his own Conservative Councillors, who are very distressd at the nature of the cuts.
Holding public office brings with it fiduciary and legal responsibilities which trump your political instincts. All councillors sometimes have to make cuts. Councils often have to make people redundant when service requirements or funding streams change. The scale and distribution of spending cuts this year is horrific, unfair and draconian, but every councillor knows when running for election that their duties include setting a balanced budget in bad times as well as good. If you are not prepared to accept that responsibility, don't run for office.
To which, Labour can take pride that we increased public services, broadly in line with growth until the banking crisis when we pushed on to keep people in jobs and businesses going as best we could, as well as bringing forward some capital projects (which kind of exaggerates the drop in capital budgets now).
All this is a bit more thorough than my previous blog on this - http://www.labourblogs.com/public-blog/michaeledwards/28924/ As it happens, the Unison branch chair who signed the letter shares those eighties revolutionist views.
Meanwhile, cuts in Nottingham’s Supporting people grant was discussed this week in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2011/jan/19/public-sector-cuts-housing
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