Where did all the money go?

This is the text of my piece in the Whitehaven News two weeks ago:

The local government cuts – by Copeland councillor Stephen Haraldsen (Hillcrest ward, Conservative)

COPELAND Council’s budget consultation has raised many questions, but one in particular needs to be answered: “Where did all the money go?”

 

People rightly want to know why the cut in Copeland Council’s government funding is so large. I hope I can shed some light on this here.

Local government cuts have been ‘front loaded’ to get the pain over with quickly, so it seems very harsh, but you can’t look at Copeland’s budget in isolation. The majority of council services we use day-to-day are provided not by the Borough, but by the County Council – schools, roads, social care, libraries, sure start, waste disposal and many more. It doesn’t seem such a large cut when you look at the Borough and the County together and see the full picture.

How the government calculates funding to councils is complicated, and is based on the things that councils do and the unique problems each faces. Inequality is an issue that we are sadly all too familiar with in Copeland, where we have some shocking levels of deprivation. The government seeks to protect those least well off when calculating council funding, but because most funding which addresses deprivation goes to the County Council, their funding take less of a cut than Copeland’s. The principle that those most in need get the most help means borough councils take a bigger hit so we can protect our schools, sure start centres and so on. The councils with the greatest deprivation still have the most per head to spend.

I know people look to shire councils in the south and think they’re getting preferential treatment, but they’re not. It’s not political, fewer than half of the ten most cut councils are Labour controlled. Those shire councils are seeing smaller cuts because they don’t get as much from the government to start with, and over the last fifteen years their funding rose more slowly than their urban and northern counterparts.

These aren’t tory cuts, they’re necessary cuts, and even Labour’s leader Ed Miliband recognises this harsh truth. Booed at a trade union rally this weekend for saying that a Labour government wouldn’t reverse any of the cuts he knows, as does Mr Reed our MP, there is no credible alternative. We can’t risk ending up like Greece.

We’ve been wasteful, shown by Copeland Council managing to save £3 million over the last two years without any detrimental impact on services. If that was possible now, why not years ago? It’s casual waste like that and reckless spending across government which led us as a country to where we are now.

Britain is poorly, drunk for years on a toxic combination of an economic boom that Gordon Brown daftly promised he’d sustain forever, reckless borrowing both by Government and households, and no budget discipline. When that all came crashing down, it was left to this coalition government to administer the treatment, and we’re making good progress. The deficit is already down by a quarter, unemployment falling, youth unemployment down, inflation falling and borrowing figures down more than expected too. Yes the treatment is painful, but that’s because the patient was so very near the edge.

As a victim of redundancy myself in 2010, I know how painful it can be. No one wants to be in the position we find ourselves in, with difficult choices to make, hard truths to face, and a bright future which seems further and further away. Prosperity doesn’t just come from Westminster or the council chambers, it comes from us all. We can do great things when we pull together.