Tag Archives: local government finance

17 July 2024 – today’s press releases

  • Ed Davey on King’s Speech: Liberal Democrats will make the voice of carers heard
  • Child Poverty: Right that Government looks at how to tackle child poverty after economic damage by Conservatives
  • Chamberlain tables WASPI Parliamentary motion
  • London Lib Dems – King’s Speech – Extra Powers for Metro Mayors Welcome, but Need the Financial Powers to Back Them Up
  • Scottish Liberal Democrats respond to King’s Speech
  • Renew Europe: End Orbán’s Council Presidency

Ed Davey on King’s Speech: Liberal Democrats will make the voice of carers heard

Responding to the King’s Speech, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

After years of crisis and chaos under the Conservative Party, it is clear our country faces enormous challenges. The Liberal Democrats will carefully scrutinise the Government’s plans, striving hard to stand up for our constituents.

We will continue campaigning to fix the NHS, boosting GP numbers, tackling delays to cancer treatment and improving access to dentists and pharmacists.

We will make sure the voice of carers is heard, from increasing the Carer’s Allowance to the big challenge of fixing social care – so that our loved ones can get the support they need.

Child Poverty: Right that Government looks at how to tackle child poverty after economic damage by Conservatives

Responding to news that the government has created a ministerial taskforce to tackle child poverty, Liberal Democrat Work and Pensions spokesperson Wendy Chamberlain MP said:

It is right that the government is looking at how best to tackle the scourge of child poverty. Hundreds of thousands of children are trapped in poverty after years of chaos and economic damage by the Conservatives.

Scrapping the two child cap would be the quickest and most cost-effective way to lift children out of poverty and bring long-term benefits to our society and economy. We hope that ministers listen to the evidence and the many charities that their task force will meet and act accordingly.

Chamberlain tables WASPI Parliamentary motion

Wendy Chamberlain, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Work and Pensions, has today tabled a Parliamentary motion calling for the new Government to honour the recommendations of the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman’s report first came out in July 2021 and stated that women born in the 1950s had suffered significant financial loss due to maladministration by the Department of Work and Pensions. The final report was published in May 2024 and recommended 1950s women are owed compensation.

Posted in Europe / International, London, News, Press releases and Scotland | Also tagged , , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments

5 March 2024 – today’s press releases (part 1)

We’ve now managed to gain access to press releases from our Scottish colleagues, and so, welcome to our newly enhanced press release coverage…

  • Lords Rwanda Bill votes: “Morally bankrupt government” defeated five times
  • Ed Davey visits Chancellor’s seat ahead of Budget as GP funding in Surrey slashed by £10 million
  • January the worst month on record for waits over 12 hours at A&E
  • Scot Lib Dems respond as council debt at record levels

Lords Rwanda Bill votes: “Morally bankrupt government” defeated five times

Responding to the series of five heavy defeats for the government on their Rwanda Bill in the House of Lords this evening, which saw several Conservative peers voting against the government’s position, Liberal Democrat Leader in the Lords Dick Newby said:

For months this Conservative government has been pushing this policy that does nothing to solve the asylum backlog. This Bill has cost hundreds of millions of pounds, and doesn’t combat dangerous Channel crossings or create safe, legal routes.

By declaring Rwanda safe when it is clearly anything but, and excluding the courts, the Bill also undermines the rule of law. It is the product of a morally and politically bankrupt Government.

Ed Davey visits Chancellor’s seat ahead of Budget as GP funding in Surrey slashed by £10 million

  • GP funding in Surrey fell by 5.3% in real terms between 2018/19 and 2022/23, equivalent to a £9.2 million cut when accounting for inflation
  • Funding per patient took an even starker hit, falling by 8.6% in real terms resulting in a £14 per patient shortfall
  • Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey will visit a GP surgery in Jeremy Hunt’s seat ahead of the Budget to call on the Chancellor to cancel his planned £1.3 billion real terms cut to NHS spending
  • A recent poll of the Chancellor’s seat showed it was at risk of falling to the Lib Dems with voters in the seat naming the NHS as their top priority as 59% of them had close friends and family who had struggled to get a GP appointment

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey will today (Tuesday 5th March) visit a GP surgery in the Chancellor’s Godalming and Ash constituency ahead of the Budget to demand that Hunt cancel his planned real terms NHS spending cuts.

Posted in News, Press releases and Scotland | Also tagged , , , , , and | Leave a comment

Welcome to my day: 5 February 2024

February already, eh? And, with a May General Election seemingly less likely – would you really go to the country twenty points behind in the polls? – and the Government apparently focussed on nothing more than sabotaging an incoming Labour administration, it’s going to be a long Spring and Summer of misdirection and guesswork. For example, the Lords February recess, which is usually just over a week, has been shortened to a long weekend. Does that suggest an attempt to clear the legislative “decks” in anticipation of a May election, or does it simply reflect the fact that Peers are doing their job of scrutiny in a way that the Conservatives hadn’t calculated? At least my timeline is full of campaigning Liberal Democrats, which is always reassuring.

Rwanda, and Labour’s quest not to be controversial

A Bill which breaks international law, is opposed by the legal profession, human rights activists and which wasn’t in the 2019 Conservative manifesto? If ever there was a justification to vote a Bill down at Second Reading, this was it, yet Labour Whips in the Lords instructed their benches to stay away. And, whilst eight Labour peers did break ranks to support the Liberal Democrat motion to vote down the Bill, it was left to sixty-seven Liberal Democrat peers to provide the overwhelming bulk of the opposition. And yes, it will doubtless be claimed by Labour that they will seek to amend the Bill at later stages but how do you amend a Bill whose fundamental premise is illegal under international law?

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments

Support your local Parish Council, Minister…

Recently, the “great and the good” of the Town and Parish Council sector gathered in London for the Star Council Awards, our annual celebration of the work done across England in our sector, and an opportunity to lobby MPs, Peers and, probably most importantly, the Minister, for our key “asks”.

I was there in my capacity as a member of the National Assembly of the National Association of Local Councils (NALC), and I took the opportunity to ask the new Minister, Simon Hoare, for £1,000,000. Not for me, you understand, although I’d happily carry out some study visits to see how equivalent bodies work in, say, St Lucia. But, unlike the “trade body” for principal authorities, the Local Government Association, NALC receives no funding to support its work. I am of the view that, as unitary authorities are formed across England, replacing Districts and Counties, there’s a need to upskill those Town and Parish Councils who are taking on, or might want to take on, services that the principal authorities can no longer afford.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 5 Comments

Has time been called on Local Government investments in commercial property?

One of the most troubling trends in local government finances in recent years is the move by councils into commercial property. Not actually building much, although it’s hardly unheard of, but buying it, using low interest rates to borrow large sums of money. The theory is that, with returns on commercial property higher than interest rates for borrowers, councils can earn a profit in the investments, using the funds to support local services.

It hasn’t gone unremarked, and I wrote about this in December 2018. Of course, since then, the pandemic has had some dramatic effects on commercial property, with the market slumping as retail outlets go under, shopping malls fail and white collar employers in particular pivot towards having staff work at home at least some of the time.

Posted in Op-eds | 18 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 4 June 2020

2 big stories

Alok Sharma is awaiting the outcome of his COVID-19 test, having caused the suspension of business in the Commons yesterday after showing signs of ill health whilst at the dispatch box. Perhaps the message will finally get through to Jacob Rees-Mogg that his caricature of parliamentary democracy should come to an end? Or are his intentions sinister rather than ill-advised?

One of the less immediately apparent impacts of the pandemic is a crisis in local government finance, with many councils now dependent to varying degrees on income from commercial property assets and commercial services. The crisis in the …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

13 November 2019 – the overnight press releases

  • Food bank rise the result of brutal Tory cuts to universal credit
  • Lib Dems: We must end Tory erosion of local government
  • Lib Dems to invest £500 million in youth services to help tackle knife crime

Food bank rise the result of brutal Tory cuts to universal credit

Responding to data from the Trussell Trust which shows April to September 2019 to be the busiest half-year period for food banks in their network since the charity opened, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, Tim Farron said:

The UK remains one of the world’s richest countries, yet for six months of

Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments

2 July 2019 – today’s press releases

Umunna: Johnson Brexit policy will result in £90bn hit to the public purse

The Chancellor has today confirmed that the Government is already having to hold back £26-27 billion of fiscal headroom to deal with the disastrous impact of a No Deal exit from the European Union, and that even more than that will be needed. Furthermore, the Government’s own analysis shows that a disruptive No Deal Brexit will hit the public purse by £90 billion as a minimum.

Commenting on the Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s remarks, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Treasury and Business, Chuka Umunna MP, said:

Boris Johnson plans to give

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 2 Comments

Sure Start and the big picture: bidding farewell to Children’s Centres in Norfolk

Norfolk County Council passed its budget earlier in the month. Nothing remarkable about that – councils up and down the land have been doing the same. In Norfolk, though, it marked the final act in an intense debate about how the Council supports new families and gives children a fair start in life. It’s a debate that has exposed some of the rawest edges of today’s politics.

Sure Start was a noble idea from the first Blair government: Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto described it as one of the Labour government’s greatest achievements. It aimed to deliver support to children from disadvantaged families by breaking down the barriers they face when accessing services. Children’s Centres were at the heart of the ‘offer’. A network of one-stop shops where families could find a range of support. Support that would ensure children were well looked after, their health needs met and they were equipped to learn and develop as they headed towards their school years. Changes to the funding regime introduced by the Coalition saw funding for Children’s Centres cut by almost £1 billion across that government’s term. The argument in favour of that change was that Children’s Centres are an inefficient way of supporting families that are most in need and that it makes more sense to have a flexible provision that can be better targeted and so deliver good outcomes and better value for money.

In the end, Norfolk County Council voted to close 38 of its 53 Children’s Centres and to halve the budget for the services that had been delivered through them. Time will tell whether I was right in warning that the £1 million cut in funding for front line service delivery is storing up trouble for the future – I sincerely hope I am wrong. What I learned from the months of debate, though, went well beyond the question of how best to deliver early help for families.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 4 Comments

Is the next crisis in local government finance just a Brexit-induced slump away?

As the Central Government grant to Local Government has been reduced towards nil, we’ve all seen the impact. A retreat from non-statutory services, such as buses and libraries, cuts to grants for the voluntary sector who, ironically, have done more than most to cushion the blow to residents of earlier cuts, and attempts to devolve services to the Cinderella tier of local government that is Town and Parish Councils.

In an attempt to stem the tide, local councils have sought to generate income by borrowing at current historically low rates of interest to invest in commercial property. Unfortunately, suspicion is growing …

Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments

13 December 2018 – (not just) today’s press releases

You’d think that putting the day’s piece to bed after 11.30 p.m. should cover everything. But no, the Press Teams both in London and Cardiff had one last shot in the dying moments of yesterday, so I’m including them with today’s batch. Enjoy…

  • Theresa May Must Give the People the Final Say – Welsh Lib Dems
  • PM must now change course and offer people the final say
  • Soaring numbers of children trapped in temporary accommodation is shameful
  • Welsh Lib Dems Welcome Prostate Cancer MRI Scans
  • Govt must set out plans to avoid NHS winter crisis
  • Lib Dems demand MPs holidays are cancelled to vote on Brexit
  • Cable:

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | Leave a comment

Is austerity ending?

Cllr Tim Pickstone, Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners (ALDC) Chief Executive, provides the local government perspective.

For the Prime Minister, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to announce, as they both have in recent weeks, that austerity is ending is an insult to everyone involved in local government.

As all ALDC members will be too painfully aware, funding for local government has been cut by almost 60% since 2010 and there’s further reductions to come too (and let us not forget that local government cuts were happening pre-2010 too).

The reality of this squeeze on local services is …

Posted in Op-eds | 20 Comments

All Party Parliamentary Group on Land Value Capture calls for urgent action on housing crisis

Tacking the housing crisis requires a concerted cross-party effort at all levels of government from Downing Street to the parish council.

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report Capturing Land Value for the Public Benefit to be published on 31st October 2018 says:

There needs to be greater devolution of Land Value Capture mechanisms to mayoral and local authorities. Following the announcement by the Prime Minister of the government’s intention to remove the cap on local authority borrowing, consideration should be given to a netting of land assets from existing prudential borrowing limits; reform of the 1961 Land Compensation Act, to provide

Posted in News | Also tagged | 8 Comments

An American solution to the second home problem?

Last month, campaigners near where I live won a by-election where the key issue was that of second home owners and their impact on local communities and services.

This weekend, I’m spending a few days in Rhode Island, home of the chicken, and enjoying the tranquility of the shoreline near the Massachusetts border. Whilst doing so, I’ve been discussing some of the issues surrounding how you maintain healthy rural communities, especially in places popular as holiday destinations. As you do, right?

One of the challenges is how you ensure that local workers, whose salaries are often far lower than those seeking to …

Posted in Op-eds | 18 Comments

The decline of local journalism may mean more than just a lack of transparency…

Amidst the drama of Brexit, the Guardian covered a report from the US which may well have gone unnoticed by many. “Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Local Newspaper Closures on Public Finance.”, published by academics from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois at Chicago on 8 May, might not, on the face of it, seem of great import, but I would suggest that it gives those of us who care about local government some cause for concern.

The authors summarise their report as follows;

The loss of monitoring that results from newspaper closures is associated

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 6 Comments

How to pay for local services?

For many years now, governments of all political colours have seen fit to centralise more and more powers to themselves. The result of this has impacted directly on the councils that once were the major providers of services that have improved the lives for generations of our citizens. Today, they are a shadow of their former selves, whose lack of influence is clearly reflected in poor turnouts in local elections.

There have been promises to reverse the centralisation of powers and to devolve many of the powers back from where they have been taken over many years. So far, progress has been painfully slow.

Whatever services that remain the responsibility of local government must still be paid for. Traditionally the bulk of the funding came from central government grant, based on a formula devised and administered in Whitehall. The rest (around 30%) came from revenue and a smaller contribution from the recipients of those services via the Council Tax.

The strains are now really beginning to show. The 2010-2015 Coalition Government used its austerity programme to cut its central grant progressively and used the so called ‘Council Tax Freeze Grant’ to bribe councils not to raise Council Tax, at least not above 2%. The result was that a council like Lincolnshire that accepted the grant was forced massively to reduce its staff and many of the services it provided, libraries being just one example, in an attempt to protect Frontline Services such as Adult Social Care. Interestingly, had the County not accepted the grant but had raised Council Tax by 1.99% for the duration of the grant, it would now be around £30 million better off.

Posted in Op-eds | 21 Comments

Local Government doing less to achieve more

Darlington Borough Council is skint. One of the smallest local authorities in the country, Darlington was created as a Unitary Authority in 1997. Since then, it has been governed (like many Northern councils) exclusively by Labour, and it now stands on the verge of bankruptcy (the two facts may not be unrelated).

Specifically, the Council have calculated the need for £12.5m in spending cuts over the next four years. To go: Darlington’s historic indoor market, the public library (both of which were donated to the town by the Pease family), the town centre’s Christmas lights and floral displays, several children’s centres, and multiple other social, environmental and cultural services. Streets will be swept less frequently. Charges will be introduced for blue badge holders.

Are these cuts to local services best blamed on central government, with its reduction in funding for local authorities, or on incompetent and profligate local councils? Certainly, cuts in central government funding have been made, with the provision of local services affected; certainly, other local authorities facing similar cuts are not broke. The truth of the matter is probably somewhere between the two!

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 11 Comments

David Cameron is hoist with his own petard

Hat-tip to Peter Black for inspiring the title

Here below is some fascinating reading. First, a letter which David Cameron sent to the Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council (bearing in mind the PM’s constituency of Witney is in Oxfordshire) and then the reply he got.

Via, it seems, a somewhat incautious researcher or adviser, Mr Cameron reveals an extraordinary ignorance of local government finance, coupled with remarkable arrogance.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 16 Comments

“Lib Dems veto Pickles’ Council Tax cuts”

From the FT:

One of the government’s main tax-cutting drives has been to encourage councils to keep tax rises to a minimum. Ministers have done this in two ways: firstly, by giving councils a cash incentive to freeze council tax; and secondly, by forcing any council that wants to raise tax by 2 per cent or more to put it to a local referendum.

Of course, any self-respecting council is going to set a rate that’s just below the threshold. Eric Pickles was not chuffed and wanted to lower that threshold to 1.5%.

He did not get his way, thanks to the …

Posted in News | Also tagged | 28 Comments

Caroline Pidgeon writes: Setting our cities free from the stranglehold of the Treasury

City Hall and Tower BridgeReforming local government finance – a phrase that is enough to send many of us to sleep.  But put a different way, devolving financial powers to our great cities, allowing local innovation and genuine localism, may keep your interest for longer!

May saw the launch of an excellent policy report called Raising the capital.  The report was produced by the London Finance Commission, an authoritative wide ranging group of experts from both inside and outside politics, but crucially including experts from Birmingham and Manchester.  The commission was chaired by respected Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 15 Comments

Next week in the Lords: 8-11 October

Yes, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the House of Lords is back! And whilst I get to spend less time with my wife, legislation awaits. Will the death of Lords Reform change anything on the red benches? Just what are they going to discuss without it?

There are three Bills carried forward from before the summer recess;

As a gentle loosener after a summer of grouse shooting, light naps and memoir writing, Monday sees Day 6 of the Committee Stage of the Financial Services Bill, perhaps now …

Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged , , , , , , and | Leave a comment
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Peter Martin
    @ Chris Moore, You might find this surprising but I'd like to see the Lib Dems do well and establish a more viable centre party. The voters should have a cle...
  • Roland
    @Andrew Tampion I approve of kaizan / continuous improvement thinking since the 1980s - when I first had cause to look at quality control and Japanese manufact...
  • Tom B
    I'm confused as to what rights this group thinks that giving trans people the same rights as cis people would impinge upon? As far as I can tell, they just w...
  • Karen Pratt
    Health is a really important issue for us to promote but if we are going to win young voters and especially stand up against the Greens as they take more votes ...
  • Caron LindsayCaron Lindsay
    @tony: The name of the group: Liberal Voice for Women, a misnomer if ever there was one because most women in this party do not support this group either in pri...