Posts from — February 2008

Just back from a few days in London at the International Symposium on Empowerment and Democracy.

The conference was well attended by over 300 delegates from over 25 countries including representation from 35 UK local authorities. I chaired a breakout session on blogging and also delivered a closing speech for the event in my role as chairman of ICELE.

So, an interesting and useful few days but for whatever reason I’m really really glad to be home… it’s been a busy few weeks and I’m shattered!

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I caught most of Prime Minister’s Questions on the radio today whilst driving up to Stafford.

If there’s ever any doubt as to why there is such public lethargy about politics and voter turn out and general interest is in freefall, PMQs today answers much of it for me. The behaviour of MPs in the Commons Chamber leaves even me wondering how these people can run a country… I’m embarrased.

If similar behaviour happened in the local secondary school, the whole lot would have ended up in detention. With MPs going on the TV this week outraged at why they should have to be more open and accountable regarding their allowances and expenses and the sort of behaviour today in the Chamber it’s a wonder anyone bothers to vote!

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My second meeting at Stafford this morning was one which looks at how the County Council is run… it’s called Audit Committee and is the real nitty-gritty technical stuff which shows statistically what’s going well and what’s going wrong.

It’s not the most exciting but it often brings information ‘under the radar’ to us as County opposition politicians.

Today was particularly good for that. Labour’s PR machine at County has recently been promoting better inspection results by the Audit Commission about Staffordshire County Council. But what came out of today’s meeting was a little more detail on those results. I’ll explain…

Over the past 18 months the way the County Council is run has improved according to the inspectors. And to a point I would agree. In my view, the new opposition Conservative Group elected in 2005 has played a part in that by pushing Labour harder than ever before to take a more businesslike approach. I believe we have made a difference and I also think officials would agree.

The other big change recently is a number of new senior officials… you’d call them civil servants, the ‘Sir Humphreys’, and they are the ones that actually run the machine of government at all levels and deliver the policies of the politicians in charge. In Staffordshire County Council that has been the Labour Party for over 25 years now.

So, the officials have two distinct roles… running ‘the business’ and delivering political policy dictated to them by the controlling political party. And that’s where the meeting today was interesting because the two different aspects of inspection were remarkably different. The processes, ie. running ‘the business’, financial accounting and all the technical stuff is improving fast at the County. So well done to the officials.

However, wherever Labour politicians or their policy gets in the way of how things are done, the results are not so good. In fact they are pretty bad… little or no improvement in those areas. The difference in the two areas of inspection was marked. We’ve now got a pretty good team of senior officials in place at Staffordshire County but Labour politicians with their outdated approach to, well, everything are holding the County back. And it’s very frustrating… roll on 2009 county elections!

It’s a bit of a read but see if you agree. The papers for that committee are here. Make sure you look at all the high risk areas at the very bottom.

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Well, yesterday’s meeting in the County Chamber to set the Budget was much as I suspected it would be.

For the first time in fifteen years the Conservative Group produced a fully costed amendment to the Labour administration Budget. The Chamber soon descended into bahoo politics as the Labour Party were clearly more concerned at mocking the fact we had produced an amendment than actually looking at the content.

The content of our Budget, which had been signed off by the very officials who audit the official one, would have meant a smaller council tax rise of 2.5% as opposed to Labour’s 4%, a million pounds extra into policing, a million pounds extra into improving school discipline and children’s attainment and one and a half million additional money to spend on Staffordshire’s deteriorating road infrastructure.

Labour were never going to even look at it and unsurprisingly they didn’t. One senior Tamworth County Councillor even suggested that our 1.5% proposed reduction in the council tax rise was, and I quote, ‘insignificant’. I doubt his constituents would agree!

So, Labour won the vote for a heftier rise in council tax and the Liberal Democrats abstained. They sat on the fence as they often do and didn’t bother to vote either way on behalf of their electorate…. the electors who voted Liberal Democrat had their votes wasted!

The amended Budget we proposed this year was an opening gambit. Over the next 12 months we’ll continue to work on policies which will really make a difference to Staffordshire peoples’ everyday lives and stick to our gold standard of council tax rises under a Conservative administration of no more than the rate of inflation.

Watch this space

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Staffordshire County Council are in the midst of political meetings and negotiations to set their part of this year’s council tax.

Even though people in Staffordshire pay council tax to their local councils, whether it be Lichfield or Cannock or any other District or Borough, the great majority (nearly 80% including Fire Service) goes to the County Council with only about 10% going to the local District or Borough who collected it.

The rest goes to the Police Authority, which is chaired by a Labour County Councillor, and to anywhere with parish councils. The Labour Party who control the County Council, despite a much larger than expected central Government funding settlement, are looking to increase the County’s part of the tax by 4%. Because the County take by far the most, whatever is set at County Buildings basically equates to the overall council tax we all get billed.

We, as the Conservative Group, think the tax rise could be lower and still have enough left over to spend several millions of pounds on discipline in schools, long overdue maintenance of the County’s roads and a serious crackdown on anti social behaviour.

The meeting to debate the County Budget is this Thursday and I’ll write how we would plan to achieve the above after we’ve finished the meeting.

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