12 March (Part 1) - Budget Amendment rejected
Deputy Leader David Leaf Cabinet Member said that his colleagues
Kurtis
Christoforides and Cameron Smith had made excellent speeches and “The Labour
Amendment is frankly facile and vacuous, it achieves nothing for our borough
[except perhaps the chance of more affordable houses].”
He said that Labour Councillors Day and Ferguson both spoke “passionately about
Council housing, both of them spoke about BexleyCo. If they support BexleyCo
they will support this budget because that is where we are putting funding into,
Capital funding to support BexleyCo”.
Referring to CIL, “we can’t just spend it for the sake of spending it, we have
to have credible business cases. In Greenwich where they have a 20,000 housing
stock and the Housing Revenue Account is significantly overspending and their
temporary accommodation numbers are spiralling out of control spending £800,000
a month on Travelodge Hotels some of which are in this borough”.
“We heard the usual bluster and comments around Councils and the Budget [Jeremy
Hunt’s] and we heard Councillor Borello [sic] about hard pressed Council Tax
[sic], well as people have already said The Mayor of London has already put
Council Tax up 71% since he took office and he’s punishing people in our borough
with the unpopular ULEZ tax and we look forward to him being booted out of
office at the ballot box in May”.
“I’m surprised he keeps going back to reserves because Labour’s record was that
they left barely £5·5 million in the General Fund Reserves in 2006. Worse than
that they voted against our savings and efficiency proposals which have
protected our reserves but at previous budget meetings they voted to take money out of reserves.”
“I have the list here. £200,000 taken from reserves to prevent increases in car
parking and home care costs. £270,000 from reserves for staff pay rises which
would have breached our collective bargaining agreements. £130,000 on community
safety, £250,000 on CCTV and £150,000 on school crossing patrols. Without
inflation it comes to about £1 million a year of extra spend and [in total] a
£10 million raid on our reserves. I don’t think they have any credibility talking about our reserves.”
“I want to pick up their point about the Household Support Fund in the Amendment. They
ask us to lobby and we do, at the LGA Economy and Resources Board and at London Councils.”
“One other point which Councillor Borella and other Labour Members made, the 14
years of funding failure and they say things are going to be better under
Labour. Well the last time we had a Labour Government, a Labour Council and a
Labour Mayor Council Tax went up 40% in four years. Quite clearly Central
Government wasn’t funding to the levels it should have been but there is one
Member in this Council Chamber who stood for a party that was committed to
maintaining the coalition Government’s spending envelope for Local Government
Finance. That Member is Councillor Stefano Borello [sic] in 2015. Their
spokesman Hilary Benn said that “Labour Members recognise that Local Government
has to make a contribution to tackling the deficit, tough times require tough
decisions” but they went further and said they wanted to change the funding
formula that would have left Bexley worse off.”
“Labour has no credibility on reserves, no credibility on Local Government
funding, no credibility on the Council’s Budget and no credibility with this
Amendment. We should vote against this Amendment and Make Bexley Even Better.”
After giving full voice to the Cabinet Member for Resources brevity must now come to the fore.
Cabinet Member Philip Read said he hadn’t planned to speak on the Amendment
while waving around a large sheaf of notes. As expected he merely said that his Children’s
Services were rated better and more efficient than similar authorities followed
by a repeat of the criticism of Labour and their refusal to believe that Covid
is still impacting costs hugely.
Labour Councillor Francis defended his short Amendment with an extract from the
history books. When in opposition the Conservatives tabled Amendments which were
only 153 words long in total over three years and the [current] Leader’s was only three
sentences long. After 14 years in Government nationally and 18 locally Britain
is Broken and the finances of this Council are broken. We have the highest ever
overspends and the highest ever following year budget gap and an inability to
meet a quarter of the deep dive savings from last year’s budget. We will now
enter a third year with no sign of what the CIL money will be spent on. The
Cabinet Members who keep saying that we must live within our means are the very
ones who overspend their budgets. The recommendations of the CIPFA review are
still not implemented more than two years later.
Leader Teresa O’Neill summed up with a suggestion that the Amendment was written by Artificial
Intelligence while admitting that she didn’t really know what that is. She was
happy that Labour attacked the Government because it must mean they have nothing
with which to attack the Council. “We have a lot to be proud of”, for example the
regeneration in Slade Green and Thamesmead. The care overspends go on vulnerable
people. Is the party opposite suggesting they shouldn’t be supported? Sadiq Khan
fined Bexley people £1 million in just three months with his ULEZ tax. They are
people who cannot afford it and it is a disgrace.
The vote went exactly as you might expect. The debate then moved from Labour’s
Amendment to the Council’s own budget. More of the same?