If you only read one thing today…

Posted on May 5th, 2010 by Jeremy Cliffe

… read this article by Johann Hari in today’s Independent. Here are some excerpts:

In 2006, a group of rebranded “compassionate Conservatives” beat Labour for control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, a long stretch of west London. George Osborne says the work they have done since then will be a “model” for a new Conservative government, while Cameron has singled them out as a council he is especially “proud” of.

[...]

The Conservative administration was determined to shrink the size of the state and cut taxes as an end in itself. Rather than pay for it by taking more from the people in the borough with the most money, they slashed services for the broke and the broken first. After the homeless, they turned to help for the disabled. In their 2006 manifesto, the local Conservatives had given a cast-iron guarantee: “A Conservative council will not reintroduce home-care charging”. It was a totemic symbol of leaving behind Thatcherism: they wouldn’t charge the disabled, the mentally ill or the elderly for the care they needed just to survive.

Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: “This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it’s been so frightening… The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having ‘lower moderate’ needs was totally cut off. So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills.

[...]

And in this boarded-up youth club, in Debbie’s panic, in the image of Jane and her bump on the floor of the park, I realise I am peering into the reality of David Cameron’s “Big Society”. The council here told people that if they took away services like this, there would be volunteers; if the state withered away, people would start to provide the services for each other. But nobody opened their home to Jane, or volunteered to feed Debbie, or started a new youth club on their own time and with their own money. The state retreated and the service collapsed. It’s a rebranding trick. The Conservatives know that shutting down public services sounds cruel, while calling for volunteerism sounds kind – but the effect is exactly the same.

[...]

So what is Cameron so proud of here? There seems to be only one answer: in this area the Tories have managed to cut council tax by 3 per cent. They’ve given back about £20 a year to somebody on an average income, and about four times more to a rich person. That’s why, when Cameron was challenged about what has happened here, he said: “When I look at the record of what the Conservatives have done here in Hammersmith and Fulham, far from being embarrassed as the Conservative leader, I’m proud of what they’re doing.” As I heard this, I remembered that earlier this year Cameron’s close friend and shadow cabinet member Ed Vaizey said Cameron is “much more Conservative than he acts, or than he is forced to be by political exigency”. The principles that run through Cameron’s politics seem to become visible at last, as clear and as stark as the Westway on the Hammersmith skyline: tax cuts, whatever the social cost.

Is wielding the Hammersmith hammer really worth it? Is cutting taxes by a fraction justified if it means abandoning the most desperate people – the homeless, the disabled, the poor? Is that who we want to be? The last time I see her, Debbie Domb tries to move a little in her chair – painfully, slowly – and says: “People should look at what they have done to us in Hammersmith. This is what Cameron and Osborne want to do to Britain. They say so. Remember, the people running this council said before they were elected that they were compassionate Conservatives. I can see the Conservatism. Where’s the compassion?”

Brighton and Hove City Council – failing to deliver vital services

Posted on January 6th, 2010 by Nancy Platts

Britain’s population is ageing.  As a result the care that the Government provides for the elderly is going to become a more and more pressing issue as time passes. Even if it cannot be agreed on whether the Government should take on more responsibility for the provision of care, surely it should go without saying that cutting current levels of adult social care is a bad idea?

The Tories became the largest single party on the Brighton and Hove City Council in the local elections in 2007; before that the Labour Party had either been in overall control of the council or at least formed the executive. Since the Tories have been in control of the council the standard of adult social care has slipped according to several reports (see the CSCI reports from when Labour controlled the Council, compared to 2007-08).

The Council report on adult social care and health services notes that: “The outcome of these various judgements is that the Council has been judged to be 2 Star overall as against 3 Star in the previous two years”. In spite of this the Tories continue to slip the possibility of front line service cuts into reports.

Worse than the reports hinting at the Tories’ dark intentions is the most recent budget. This budget outlines cuts that have threatened 160 jobs: in all 51 jobs from the Adult Social Care and Health Department were singled out in the December Cabinet Paper leaving it the worst affected department so far (the full 160 jobs likely to be cut are identified on p.13).

When something as important as adult social care is getting worse you would not expect those in charge to make significant and damaging cuts to the Adult Social Care and Health department; yet here we have the Conservatives of Brighton and Hove City Council doing just this. Once again cuts hitting the most vulnerable in society in order to make savings that will benefit the richest most.

The Tory ‘ideological’ revolution: more spin, less swim

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 by Jeremy Cliffe

“Like any distinctively Conservative discourse, Cameron Conservatism is radically pragmatic rather than radically dogmatic” – Oliver Letwin, 2007

In May 2008 ‘Cameron Conservatives’ in Southampton ousted the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition on the city’s council. Alec Samuels became the new council leader, and in October that year outlined his party’s ‘Southampton Revolution’: “We do not in principle favour “free this and free that”, eg swimming or transport, school means or computers or whatever it is”, he wrote, adding: “For ideological reasons we are going for outsourcing, externalisation, privatisation, wherever possible and sensible” and “Unless we have a pressing need for retention, we are disposing of assets”. In line with David Cameron’s aspiration to unload service provision onto the voluntary sector, he defined charitable organisations as a low-cost alternative to the public sector: “but for [the voluntary sector] the local authority would have to provide the service, which would be not so good and more expensive”.

Samuels and his team wasted little time in rolling out their ‘ideological’ revolution. Within weeks of the election the new council was arguing that its “capacity to undertake effective media liaison is not seen as being adequately proactive […] This area needs to have priority attention”. The proposed solution: a £100,000 image consultant. The following year the council also created a new £85,000/year communications role.

Other areas, it seems, were not deemed worthy of such ‘priority attention’. The 2009/10 budget proposals comprised cuts to the council’s family crisis intervention service, its road safety camera scheme, maintenance support for the poor, elderly and disabled, home improvements for the vulnerable and disabled, city bus services, libraries, neighbourhood wardens and an advice centre.

The council has since attempted to sell off art from the popular City Art Gallery (an “unethical, undemocratic and ill-thought through” move criticised both by residents and the media), privatise leisure facilities and close three Family Centres and the two most cost-effective residential care homes in the city. The latter measure, entailing the loss of 80 beds and 70 jobs, came up against substantial opposition: 5,000 people signed a petition calling for the homes to remain open, yet the council described Labour proposals to retain or replace the homes as “unrealistic”.

Residents and staff at the homes led the protests: 96-year old Les Proctor, a former Spitfire engineer, said “I just cannot think what’s going to happen. It’s too good a place to shut it down. I cannot fault it in any way.” Concerns were raised about the effect of all this on residents’ health, whilst the council also faced accusations of deliberately under-investing in the homes in order to justify their closure and of doing so in order to cash in on the value of the land. Nevertheless, in June 2009 the cabinet voted unanimously in favour of evicting the residents, claiming that the private sector could provide cheaper care (despite having had to suspend a private domiciliary care provider only months before).

This ideological commitment to private provision also cropped up with the issue of free swimming. In July 2008 the government made new funds available to help councils modernise pools and provide free swims for the under-16’s and over-60’s, all as part of a £140 million scheme to improve the health and wellbeing of these groups. Southampton was offered £56,199, but the council – opposed to “free this and free that” – not only rejected the money but also axed free swimming lessons for the under-12’s (a programme that had been introduced by the Lab-Lib administration). Under pressure from locals and an Olympic swimmer, however, it was later forced to perform a U-turn.

Is this apparently dogmatic Tory behaviour restricted to the ‘Southampton Revolution’? The statistics on national take-up of free swimming funds suggest not. Swindon’s ruling Tory councillors have only part-implemented the scheme and, in the words of Labour MP Anne Snelgrove, “seem to go to any length to avoid working with the Government”. Meanwhile Basildon’s Tory council entirely forewent the £47,714 it was offered, describing it as a ‘gimmick’.

In fact, as of December 2009, 49 of the 64 councils to have rejected the money are Conservative-controlled whilst all Labour-controlled councils have implemented the scheme. In April, May and June of 2009 it provided 4.5 million free swims via 253 different councils, a figure that (at an average of 17,800 swims/council) suggests that over the same period some 870,000 free swims fell victim to “radically pragmatic” Tory councils.