Cllr Barbara Potter Proposes No-Cuts Amendment to Labour Council

Speech given by Cllr Barbara Potter on February 25, 2015 to the Labour City Council’s budget-setting meeting in support of Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts’ (LICAC) proposed no-cuts budget amendment. All the Labour councillors present voted to reject LICAC’s no-cuts amendment, and to accept a totally unnecessary cuts budget that will see £50+ million cut from the councils budget over the next three years.

Today we, Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts, put forward a proposal gives some hope to people in Leicester. This council’s services are seen as vital to many of our residents, providing them with council houses, support services, and environmental services — amongst the many things we do to support day-to-day life in our city. Yet the Labour Group in our city, supposedly the “People’s Party” have tried everything in the book to discourage our stance for protecting our services and resisting making cuts.

Our stance against cuts is not a flash in the pan idea, our thinking will not go away. TUSC Councillors in Hull and Southampton are doing the same thing as are TUSC Councillors in other cities. We may be deemed as “Rebel Labour Councillors” but the reality is that we are, what we should be, and what members of the Labour Party should be — socialists at the core, with people at the centre of what we do, Something Leicester’s Labour Group has lost, a big part of the reason why we sit opposite you rather than with you.

Our proposal of one-off expenditure buys time. It was said to us by the City Mayor when challenging him some time ago – in talks about taking the argument about funding pressures back to Westminster — that “he understood our frustrations and others, but we would be far better off working towards Labour winning the next election rather than wasting time with the Coalition”. Our challenge to the City Mayor is simple – in the event of a minority Labour Government running the country, negotiate the replenishing of the council’s reserves. You will be in a better position to negotiate, use it!

If it’s good enough for Health services to change the way they look at health, moving from firefighting health conditions to a more “prevention is better than cure” stance, this should be how we approach providing council services. Services lost now will be difficult to recreate, with escalating costs. Preserving the “status quo” at least gives a chance of saving services in the longer term. For some, the loss of key services will drastically reduce their quality of life. Just this dinnertime I have been told of Homeless people sleeping on the kitchen floor of a community organisation supporting homeless people, homeless people who according to the Assistant Mayor for Housing do not exist! How many others are there? How many desperate people in need of our council’s support today? For some of them tomorrow will be far too late.

Last month Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds Central and the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, made it clear that deprived areas of the country like Leicester are being punished disproportionately by the ongoing attacks on public funding — at a time when the richer parts of the country have found themselves better off in real terms. Importantly, Mr Benn pointed out that if Labour were elected to run the country they would start to share resources differently so that deprived councils receive their fair share of funding. In Leicester’s case such a redistribution of resources could immediately bring a further £15 million to the city. Given this optimistic take on events there seems no good reason why the Labour members of this council could not support our suggested amendment to the budget for one off expenditure. After all, we are merely proposing to spend £7 million in the coming year instead of putting it into the bank. This will minimise unnecessary cuts to local services, until a new government has come to power.

Amongst a number of reasons we left the Labour Party, one is because of its continuing support for austerity. Indeed, not one of Leicester’s elected MP’s could bring themselves to oppose the tens of billions of pounds of future cuts to public services when it came to a vote in parliament last month. However, building upon Leicester City Council’s recent pledge to support the Towns Against Tax Dodging campaign, we believe that there would be plenty of money for improving public services. Corporate tax avoidance is costing the British taxpayer around £100 billion a year according to the estimate by the Public and Commercial Services Union.

Seen in this light, we believe that a future government could resist austerity if it chose to, or was forced to by a partner political party in a potential coalition government. For example, earlier this month SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said that her party would be prepared to prop up a minority Labour government – but only if it dropped its austerity policies. Surely even if there was the slimmest likelihood that a future coalition government might drop their commitment to austerity, shouldn’t Leicester’s Labour Council play their cards safe and hold off from cutting public services for the time being?

Are you really honestly saying that if the Labour Party was elected to Government then it would make no difference to our local city budget? As this is certainly the clear message you will be sending to the public if you vote to support the proposed budget of doom, poverty and cuts here tonight. In a modern age and progressive nation, everyone in this city should have access to the support they need, how that support is provided and to what extent that it is provided is informed by political decisions. We say to the City’s Labour Group today, be the Socialists you should be and put the city’s people first!