Will people 40 miles away use this £20million Arts Space?

Following on from my earlier entry…….I’d got just over an hour to put together what I needed for the scrutiny meeting examining proposals by the County to spend millions on building a new performing arts facility in Stafford Town.

The idea of scrutiny is to examine what the governing Labour leadership is doing. I’m really enjoying scrutiny at the County and one thing they do well at Staffordshire County is scrutiny!

I’ve always liked programmes about court cases with barristers and prosecutors. Judge John Deed is something I always try to watch! Scrutiny committees can be a bit like the court process. The idea, from an opposition point of view, is to try and get Labour politicians to change policy where we think they are wrong.

They don’t have to listen; they can just say thanks, but no thanks. The art of scrutiny, with something as wrong as the Arts Space plan, is to use a similar approach to that used in court; using innocuous questions to get to the difficult ones before they realise it. You try to back them into a corner. When the journalists are there we try to ensure our key messages find there way into print and hopefully Labour’s shortfalls are publicised. So it is really important to have a structured approach that makes it easy for the press to write the story I want them to write.

Anyway, in the hour or so I’d got before the meeting I had to work out what to ask to help the press write articles supporting my Party’s point of view. I’d got dozens of reports that I’d read before but there were so many lines of attack available that remembering which questions to ask and in what order was tough. I’d almost got too much to have a go at.

2.30 arrived and I took my place in one of County Building’s very old committee rooms. There were three Labour county councillors on the committee with me, various officials to administer the meeting, Maureen Compton, Labour’s lead on the Arts Space project, her boss Robert Simpson who’s the Cabinet Member responsible and a couple of departmental officials.

Also watching were half a dozen press, who I’d reminded by e-mail the day before, a handful of Labour Members and fifteen or so of my own Conservative colleagues.

The meeting lasted a couple of hours but several things surprised me; Robert Simpson, who has been his normal vocal self in defending the Arts Space plans prior to this, said absolutely nothing. Nothing at all! Usually he can’t wait to fight his corner and goes out of his way to have a go at me whilst doing it. But he said nothing; not even when I tried to bait him. He left it all to Mrs Compton, and worse still, to her senior official who looked more and more uncomfortable under questioning.

Also odd, was the lack of input from the other Labour committee members. Quite often controlling group members weigh in with support or ask questions which will allow their senior colleagues being questioned to make a point.

I think the message I was pushing was clear and also understood by the press.

Firstly, that £20million shouldn’t be spent when Labour are cutting the County’s front line services; proposals to cut down on road gritting this winter, more reductions in funding youth services, millions off road maintenance spending and also talk of closing some libraries.

Secondly, that the business case figures don’t add up and are unbelievable. From the consultants’ projections of 500,000 visitors each year to them predicting that people will travel from an hour away to go there; very unlikely in my view, and the public’s, judging by the number of constituents’ letters I’ve had over the past few weeks.

Thirdly, even if there wasn’t a budget crisis and the risk to tax payers’ money wasn’t just too great, why should Staffordshire people 30 or 40 miles away pay for a local Stafford Town project? I still believe this whole thing is a pet project for senior Labour County politicians who want a legacy.

As I thought would probably happen, the Labour committee members voiced little opposition to the plans despite the fact that one of them has been firmly against the proposals at the previous two meetings about it.

I did ask if Labour Members were whipped at the meeting but was told that they weren’t. I remain unconvinced on the whip issue and even more determined to make sure this whole thing stays fresh in people’s minds right up to the next County elections in 2009.

I’m sure that County Cabinet will make a final decision to proceed with the next stage of plans for the Arts Space at County Cabinet on 15th November.