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by Lib Dem team on 25 October, 2010
As you may know, Labour were adding £400 million to the national debt every day by the time they left office, and spending £4 for every £3 raised in tax. That’s simply not sustainable and I’ve supported calls to sort out our huge deficit since I had the chance to question Nick Clegg about it over a year ago.
The cuts, big as they are, will leave the country as a whole with many more public sector workers, and spending more on the public sector, than during the whole of Labour’s first term of office. At the end of the process, when we’ve got rid of the deficit and we’re finally living within our means again, we’ll still have more people employed by the public sector than there were in 2002, and we’ll be spending about as much on the public sector as we did in 2006! That doesn’t mean it won’t be painful – it will be.
So, be in no doubt that I support the need for cuts. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep on mounting up billions of debt with no bad consequences? That’s not the way the world works. We either act now, or our children and grandchildren will pay an even higher price.
But there’s a big difference between supporting cuts in general and looking at specifics. Which service shall we cut? Which job? Every service is valued by someone, every job is important to that person, and most likely they’ve a family it’s pretty important for too. There are few pain-free ways to reduce our spending.
Over the next few months, councillors in Stockport will be figuring out what our contribution will be. We’ll have less money to spend (and we’re already the lowest-spending authority in Greater Manchester). Council tax will be frozen next year, which means you’ll be paying less in real terms, but the Council will be having to save even more as we’ll be getting a lot less money from central government.
We won’t know the final details for a while yet (and beware of scare stories in the media).
What I will say is this.
As far I as can see, we will have to cut or reduce some of our 620 services. Some jobs will be going (though I hope as many as possible will be from voluntary redundancies). Stockport Council will be spending millions of pounds less in the year 2011/12 than in this year and there’s no pain free way to achieve that.
We as councillors will have to make some very difficult decisions along the way – decisions we didn’t go into politics to be making and decisions we’d prefer not to have to make at all. But they need to be made – we can’t spend money we haven’t got and we will not spend now just so we can pile huge debts onto our children.
Over the coming months I will be involved – in a small way – in the process of deciding what cuts we make, and I expect to be held accountable for the decisions that are reached. You are welcome to contact me if you’re concerned about a specific service, or indeed if there’s an area of spending you think could be easily chopped (though I should say that it might be there for a very good reason even if we can’t immediately see what it is – as councillors we can spend a lot of time going into the reason for certain areas of spending and discovering that it’s rarely as simple as it seems).
I’ll be keeping people informed as the process continues – if you’ve got questions or points to make, please make them (politely would nice).
8 Comments
Iain – I understand the need for cuts (and understand that the scale of them is an issue of political difference between parties).
However, one thing I can’t get my head round and you might be able to explain. When employees are made redundant, they are entitled to redundancy payments which, if they are long serving (as many Stockport staff will be)then the payments can be sigificant. Surely this increases costs in the short term, doesnt it?
(If I may declare a sort of interest – I’m an ex public sector employee – and still hold a “retired” membership of my trade union, UNISON)
Hi John,
I believe you’re right. It may not increase costs over what it would have cost to employ someone, but it certainly means the Council doesn’t always save the full amount and we have to take that into account.
That’s the case for redundancy, but – I believe – not so much when someone takes early retirement, or when someone’s left the Council of their own accord (e.g. to take another job) and their post isn’t filled.
Iain, can you confirm that council tax will be frozen next year? There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors around the CSR and, as the saying goes, the devil is in the detail.
It’s now being reported that police are expected to raise the police precepts to try and help fill the gap left by cuts from Central Government.
If the police precept has to rise then the bill landing on people’s doorsteps will rise. In which case it would be misleading to say that council tax bills will be frozen.
Thanks, Iain. Glad I hadnt missed anything 🙂
Not filling vacancies is, presumably, the cheapest way forward (and, of course, doesnt have any direct personal consequences for anyone).
My own ability to have become “ex public service” was an agreement to take early retirement – no redundancy payment, no enhanced pension. Suited both them and me.
Hi Matt,
The Government have said that, if Councils freeze council tax, they will receive what they’d have had if they’d increased council tax by 2.5%. It’s up to each local authority to decide if they want to take that deal.
On police precepts, I genuinely don’t know. The police and council bills come bundled together (I assume for administrative convenience) but they’re really different taxes set by different people and going to different places.
Cut the councillors ! No, really – 30 seats, 30 councillors, elected once every 5 years. That be more than enough !
Likewise for the rest of England unitary authorities only. Most people do not even vote for said politicos anyway, so this represents no diminution of democracy… it be diminished anyway !
Ofcourse this would require an act of parliament, so ? so lets hear it from your party’s leaders !
Because David Cameron’s Big Society idea looks like falling apart already because of austerity cuts, he’s lining it up to get government funding. So why make the cuts in the first place?
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