The Stockport Labour Group want to make public its reasons for voting against the attempted Liberal Democrat amendment to Labour’s Council Budget of 2018/19.
In our view this amendment was never a serious attempt to alter the budget for the benefit of the people of Stockport. It was plainly a political manoeuvre designed for leaflet headlines, further designed so that other groups would not accept it, with the final aim of allowing the Liberal Democrat group to vote against the entire budget.
This therefore allows the Liberal Democrats to say they voted against anything in the budget which is raised on the doorstep as a concern, a deeply cynical move given the fact the Liberal Democrats voted for the first part of our two-year budget plan last year. This is made all the worse by the fact that we have worked in good faith with the Liberal Democrats on many aspects of the budget package.
The below sets out our reasons as to why this amendment was not acceptable to the Labour Group.
The amendment comes in four parts
Funding the Mayor of Greater Manchester (Mayoral precept)
The Liberal Democrats proposed to compensate tax payers to the same value as the Mayoral Precept rise, with a lesser Council Tax rise. The difference would be funded by dipping into Council reserves to the tune of £750,000.
This wouldn’t have meant that Stockport would not pay the Mayoral precept. It effectively means we pay this with resources the Council uses to invest in generating savings through reform, generating income, funding regeneration or resourcing time-limited areas of spend. This is also our chest of savings which insures us against any unforeseen economic shocks during turbulent times as well as unforeseen areas of spend, such as in response to civil emergencies.
In our view, this is highly irresponsible as it could mean we pay for the mayoral precept through these resources over and over for years to come. The Liberal Democrats outlined no plan as to how next year’s Mayoral precept would be paid. With no plan, are we to assume they would recurrently fund this through the council’s contingencies pot – year upon year? Highly irresponsible budgeting.
Furthermore, referring to the Mayoral Precept as the ‘Burnham tax’ in the amendment wording itself tells you everything you need to know. This refers to the GM Mayoral Precept, which will be used to tackle growth and reform priorities, improving school readiness, homelessness and reducing traffic congestion, among other programmes which will benefit residents of Stockport. Moreover, the devolution plans were signed up to by the Liberal Democrats when they were in control of the Council.
This amendment is designed for leaflets, is not serious politics, not serious budgeting and forms an irresponsible precedent for the financial future of the Council.
Freezing District Centre Parking Charges
We have been aware of Liberal Democrat objections to our plans on parking charges. Indeed we met with them to discuss how we could come to a compromise arrangement which would still generate the additional revenue needed for the Council.
As a result of this meeting – and positive engagement with Councillors from the Conservative Group – we came up with alternative proposals which the Liberal Democrats then hailed as a ‘victory’ for themselves in online media.
As such, we were shocked (but not surprised) to see this amendment put forward given the work we had put in, in good faith.
Although a difficult decision, a review of parking charges was needed to reduce the subsidy coming from other budgetary areas for the maintenance of parking, ensure our facilities do not fall into disrepair and are fit for the 21st century. We were careful to take on board feedback from traders and account for the impact changes would have upon local economies in setting the charges. We have further committed to review the effect of our charging policy in these areas later in the year.
Underlying this approach has been an effort to be honest with residents throughout as we believe this to be the best policy on these issues in order to provide the full picture of the issues we face.
Finally, this proposal once again intends to pay for this freeze in part through reserves and therefore has similar flaws in its reasoning as those outlined above.
Again, the Liberal Democrats are not offering serious or sustainable policy for residents of Stockport here but rather leaflet headlines for their target wards.
Improving business rates collection through expanding the Business Rates Inspector Team
This item proposes to increase the rate of Business Rate collection through spending money to hire additional enforcement officer capacity.
Usually, in order for policies like this to go ahead, some work needs to be produced to show the proposal offers value for money for taxpayers and will generate more income than what it would cost, known as a ‘business case’.
This has not happened here, and the amendment’s own wording admits ‘the benefits are hard to calculate’. Again this is not serious policymaking and the Labour administration will not support policymaking not backed by evidence.
As a side note, current calculations for the amount of missed business rate revenue show this is already at its lowest level five years, reflecting the success of our current Inspector team. Much of what remains is subject to legal challenges, toward which additional officer resources would provide little benefit.
Reducing the size of the Cabinet
The Liberal Democrats want to see the size of the Cabinet reduced by two, down to the Leader plus five rather than seven.
If we thought we could do what we do with six members without detriment, we would have already adopted this policy. However, we believe this will lead to worse decision-making as officers and Cabinet members would face additional time pressures with more work being shared by fewer people. This is compounded by the fact the Council is being expected provide services which do more with fewer resources due to policies on local government finances voted for by the current leader of the Stockport Liberal Democrats when he was a member of parliament. We further believe this will lead to a democratic deficit as fewer people will be held accountable for the decisions taken over the management of Council resources and services.
Our administration has already brought through numerous measures to save money from Councillor remuneration and benefits, including voting against independent advice to raise Councillor allowances, scrapping committee teas and reform to car parking allowances.
If the Liberal Democrat’s experience of executive leadership in Stockport leads them to conclude they could have offered the same quality of leadership and decision-making with two fewer Cabinet Members, that is for them. Our commitment to Stockport suggests otherwise.
We see this as a deliberate attempt to slight the hard work of our Cabinet Members. We do not take offence but we do see this as designed to be rejected by our Group (and others) because of this, as opposed to a serious and constructive contribution to the budget.
And finally …
The way Council amendments work means that if we oppose any part of this amendment, we have to oppose the whole thing. The only route around this is to sit down with the Liberal Democrats and see if compromise can be reached.
Sensible policy making takes time. We received no prior notification of this package of amendments. If we had, we would have been happy to work through all of them to find areas of agreement, eliminate areas of disagreement or come to compromise. We have always made it known our door is open.
It was felt that this could not be achieved during a brief adjournment at the budget meeting. This was partly because so many of the above measures appeared to be designed to fail and be voted down, not only by ourselves.
Summary
This amendment package appeared designed to fail from the outset, allowing the Liberal Democrats to vote against the 2018/19 budget as a whole. This risked the entire budget failing and therefore risked an additional £18million of cuts befalling Stockport residents.
The view of our Group is that this is irresponsible in the extreme and represents a leaflet-oriented view of political activity to which Stockport Liberal Democrats are prone. This fits a pattern of behaviour which shows the Liberal Democrats are not serious about Stockport.
We believe the people of Stockport deserve leadership which is serious about Stockport and it is this we will be campaigning for in the coming local elections. This lies at the heart of our approach to the budget, our view on which is available here.