Now both Tories and Labour want to take more money away from local government.

The only tax cut the Tories are putting firmly on the table is a complex 2.5% sweetener for local authorities which manage to freeze their expenditure – worth, they say £200 per year for the average band D property. It’s wrong in so many ways, not least because of how little that really is for the average householder. It translates to a whopping £5 per person per month in my Band A, two people, two cats household.  And yet it’s still more generous to the wealthiest in the land.  Anyone living in a Band H house gets double what anyone in Band D gets, and three times those of us slumming it in Band A.  

Their policy also means that Government have even more say in local government spending, with one Lib Dem Blogger* suggesting it meant a shift from a quarter of money local authority raised locally to a fifth. We’re already the most centralised country in Europe – with the honorable exception perhaps, of tiny little Malta – but the Conservatives don’t think it’s centralised enough.

But maybe the worst aspect of the policy, as James Graham points out is the breathtaking, hypocritical statement the Tories are making about local government.  The Tories don’t believe it’s possible to find any tax cutting potential from the £600billion pounds that central government spends.  At the same time, they think it’s entirely possible that local government should be able to find 2.5% of savings every year from budgets that range from a few million for your average district council to up nearly ten billion for Birmingham, Britain’s largest local council.

Supporters of the Lib Dem tax cut proposals, which mean cutting 3% of the enormous £600billion spent by central government, have been keen to point out in recent weeks that local government has already been finding such savings year on year.

But let’s not think for a moment that it’s only the Conservatives that are taking money out of the pockets of local authorities.

There have been at least two recent instances where the Labour government has made promises to voters on the eve of election, knowing that local government will have to pick up the tab.  Firstly in the run-up to the 2005 elections, then Chancellor Gordon Brown promised free off-peak travel to the over 60s – then rapidly passed the buck to local authorities to pay the bill.  In Nottingham, we already knew how much that cost, because the Council already gave local pensioners free travel.  But Government weren’t happy to pay the full amount, even for those authorities who could say exactly how much the entitlement cost each year.

Now Labour are playing exactly the same game again by offering free swimming to under 16s and over 60s.  But guess what?  The Government doesn’t run many swimming pools whilst of course local councils run thousands of them. And yet again, the Government has made a promise with local government money and then refused to reimburse out-of-pocket local councils.  They know full well that refusing to honour extravagant unfunded promises will not play well with local people, and are gambling that most local authorities will suck it up and pay the difference.  Not so in Sheffield, where Lib Dem councillors have balked at picking up the quarter-million pound cost.

Too many politicians have been able to trade on the relatively poor reputation of local councils whilst robbing them blind.  The last ten years have seen Council Tax completely distorted and raised out of proportion to average income changes, whilst at the same time paying for fewer and fewer local services. Labour have ring-fenced money sent to local government, and used their control to influence spending.  They’ve also carried on using the Tory capping powers to limit local authorities’ power to raise money locally.

It’s time for a sensible discussion in this country about where money is raised and where it is spent. Tiny little Malta is no model for a country the size of ours.

* I read this somewhere recently and now can’t find it again – please let me know if it’s you!