Yesterday (Wednesday 14 July 2021) I tabled a motion at a meeting of Durham County Council which highlighted the impact that a decade of central government austerity continues to have on the people and communities of County Durham. The motion, and my introduction to it, are reproduced below in full:
Two reports submitted to the council’s Cabinet last week (Wednesday 7 July 2021) confirmed what we’ve all known for years: that a decade of needless austerity has had a devastating impact on this council’s finances, and in turn on the people and communities of County Durham.
Since the Tory/Lib Dem coalition first got together back in 2010 c£245m in central government funding has been lost to this council - all in the name of political austerity, designed to punish the poor for the mistakes of the rich. The impact of austerity on local authority services has been significant, with funding for children’s social care being hit particularly hard, and the costs of adult’s social care being essentially abandoned by government and burdened onto local council tax-payers through the adult social care precept.
It is noted in figures released by the LGA that spending power across County Durham has been reduced by £343 (or 16%) per household since 2011, while other local authorities, notably those in Wokingham and Surrey, have seen an actual increase in their household spending power.
In addition, these years of unnecessary cuts have led to an ‘extremely uncertain’ financial outlook for this council – caused in part by persistent delays to the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, its Business Rates Retention Scheme and its Fair Funding Review – and all compounded by the seemingly permanent delay to the government’s proposed funding model for social care.
The cumulative impact of this constant delay can be seen in almost every town and village in County Durham, and also in the restrictions imposed on this council in properly planning ahead, particularly in the medium to long-term as set out in last week’s Outturn report to Cabinet which highlighted ‘significant risks to the council’s funding’.
With that in mind we believe it’s high time this government finally got its act together, and began to deliver on its promise to ‘level-up’ across all parts of the country by properly funding local authority services to the needs of their residents, instead of handing over tens of £billions of public money on contracts for failed schemes to their friends and neighbours. In other words, it’s time to put need before greed.
Therefore this council resolves to:
Write to the prime minister and call on the government to:
- demonstrate its commitment to ‘levelling-up’ by assuring this local authority that it will not lose out financially as a result of the government’s ongoing Fair Funding Review, Business Rates Retention Scheme and forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review
- and also commit to resolving the funding crisis in Adults and Children’s Social Care and the uncertainty, potential risk and financial burden it creates for this council and the people of County Durham
As you can see the motion is direct in its aim of raising concerns about the impact of central government austerity and in its request to ask prime minister Boris Johnson and his government to deliver on their promise to ‘level-up.’ It was neither confusing nor contentious so I’d fully expected the Tory/Lib Dem coalition and their supporters to stand with us in encouraging the government to do nothing more radical than to come up with a fair funding deal for County Durham.
The door was left wide open for coalition members to recognise the devastating impact of austerity on council services and on the people and communities of County Durham, and particularly the way it’s limited the way the council can properly plan ahead for the future in addressing the crisis in adults and children’s social care funding. Instead the Tory deputy leader of the council rose to declare that writing to Boris Johnson would be a waste of time because ‘a letter to No10 would not get us very far’! But perhaps most damning for the coalition – and a true measure of how out of touch they are with reality – he actually denied that there was a crisis in social care! In this extraordinary statement he blithely dismisses the impact of the government’s refusal to adequately fund adult social care by passing the burden over to local council tax payers instead.
In an attempt to claim ownership of the motion he then moved an amendment which simply shifted words around the page without changing the impact of its content. In other words it was entirely unnecessary and nothing more than a device to take control - something of a concern as the deputy leader of the council apparently believes the use of motions like this, which actually draw public attention to the inequalities created by austerity ‘wastes a stamp’. The fact that motions from Labour have the impact of holding the government and council leadership to account, whilst at the same time revealing a few uncomfortable and inconvenient truths for the Tory party, may be the real reason he believes motions are ‘pointless’.
Perhaps the biggest concern though was that not one single member of the coalition or their supporters challenged the comments of their Tory deputy leader. Whilst several Labour members rose in turn to drive home the point that austerity was nothing more than a scam designed to hold back working class areas and then transfer the blame to local councils for spiteful central government funding cuts – all with the ultimate aim of rigging the system in favour of wealth and privilege – not a whisper of condemnation was heard from the coalition and its supporters.
Looking the other way while our communities suffer at the receiving end of political austerity will not bode well for the Tories, Lib Dem’s or their supporters in county hall. Labour will continue to hold power to account wherever it resides, and if that reveals inconvenient truths for the coalition so be it. By tabling motions we’ll continue to hold out the opportunity for them to condemn the inequity and unfairness enabled by Tory government austerity – and who knows, one day they might find the courage and the voice to stand alongside Labour members in condemning it. But on yesterday’s performance that may be some time away.
