Peter Black uses the WalesHome website to demonstrate that a little bit of cynicism can go a long way.
Under the cover of a supposed radical solution to local government funding, he admits that “Liberal Democrat-led Swansea, the Council has invested £10 million in Social Services at the cost of cutting back on schools. They are now in the position of having to manage teacher redundancies so as to minimise the impact on the chalk face. Swansea had to save £17m this year and projects losing hundreds of posts over the next few years.”
However, the impression he fosters is that the financial collapse at Calamity Hall is entirely down to public spending cuts as opposed to near manic capital borrowing by Lib Dems in the city over the last five years combined with a complete failure to realise anything like the year-on-year savings promised after spending £83 million on e-government ‘improvements’.
As it stands there is precious little radical about his suggestions which are no more than a long-winded rehash of local income tax intertwined with LA mergers, failed joint working proposals and a fuzzy localisation proposal thrown in for good measure. Even he admits that, “none of these revenue-side reforms will actually give more money to local councils”; so what was the point?
Wales really deserves better from a shadow local government spokesman and Swansea deserves a lot more honesty from its councillors.
8 Comments:
As much as Black tries to portray himself as the Lib Dem “thinker” among his peers, his contributions are often shallow and his reasoning superficial to the point of bordering on facile. He can be forgiven for a lack of originality but not for depicting a confused shopping list of measures as something radical. He really cannot expect to be taken seriously by the political & academic communities.
Knowing him of old, we will probably find that this epistle from Peter has been sent on to the regional press for publication. And knowing the appalling state of political journalism in Wales, they will maintain the “radical” tag.
A couple of points:
1. I have not sent the article on to the regional press for publication. If they pick up on it then that is their prerogative.
2. I did not describe the solution as radical. That was the subbing over at Wales Home who devised the headline. You are correct in saying that the solutions are nothing new and have been Lib Dem policy for some time. That does not make then any less right of course.
3. The cuts I describe are of course revenue not capital. The cost of borrowing to deliver popular and essential projects such as the Leisure Centre, some new schools, the bus station, the bendy bus road works and the civic centre is nowhere near the spending gap faced by the Council as a result of a retraction in public spending. In fact much of this capital spending has been paid for by capital receipts so your hypothesis is misleading.
4. The £83 million cost of e-govermment is itself misleading as the vast majority of that is an amalgam of existing budgets under one heading and it is of course spread over 10 years. The actual additional cost to the Council was budgeted for by Labour in 2003 and, with the exception of the payroll, the Administration has kept to that budget.
5. You are right about the savings from e-government but as these were never factored into the budget then this failure only impacted in that we did not recover the cost of the programme.
I refuse to be lectured on accuracy by some who describes five points as a "couple".
Peter Black’s description of the causes behind a serious cash shortfall at Swansea Council diverge significantly from those put forward by the authority’s own finance officers in evidence given to the audit scrutiny committee. This makes reference to constraints placed on revenue by borrowing and previous commitments. There is specific reference to e-government and a number of paragraphs which highlight that planned savings have not been realised.
Either the Lib Dems do not understand that financial basics or they are attempting to obscure the extent to which the council’s financial and service performance has declined on their watch.
We rejected the comment by Anonymous (15:15) as it mistakenly attributed certain comments to Peter Black which were ours.
Oops, did I say a couple? My description of the Council's shortfall is based on a report by the authority's own finance officers to Council. Yes, the Council has reached its prudential borrowing limit but this was not mentioned in the list of contributing items to the Council's £17.5m shortfall. As I said in the article this sort of shortfall is typical of all 22 Welsh Councils. I acknowledged the failure to achieve savings in the e-government programme but also pointed out that these were not budgetted for anyway and so did not need to be made up, though they would have been useful. Finally, I forgot to mention in my description of how capital spending had been financed the very significant grants from Europe and the Welsh Government.
Another Black trait is one of trying to engage the critics who expose his contrived arguments.
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