Murnaghan 16.12.12 Interview Paul Carter, leader of Kent County Council and Joe Anderson, Mayor Liverpool
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Before the break I spoke to the Secretary of State for Local Government, Eric Pickles, and he said he wants local councils to cut even more from their budgets. Well I’m joined now by two of Britain’s most powerful local leaders, from Liverpool by the first elected Mayor of that city, Joe Anderson in a moment and in the studio by the Leader of Kent County Council, Paul Carter. Good morning first of all to you, Mr Carter, well you heard Eric Pickles there saying he believes there’s more to come out of your budgets, is there really? I know Kent County Council has a large budget, some compare it in size to that of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is there more fat that can go?
PAUL CARTER: No, I think the tank is very much running on empty. I think that local government across the country should be congratulated on the way it’s adapted to running its front line services with 30% less money. Our budget is about £1.4 billion outside of the education budget and we’ve had to take out in excess of £300 million and maintain good quality front line services and we’ve done it.
DM: And council tax frozen for how many years in Kent, what is it, three years?
PC: Hopefully, provided we get a reasonable settlement from Eric at the end of the coming week, we will freeze council tax for the third successive year from 1st April next year.
DM: But at a time of continuing inflation, the rising demand in particular I would guess for social services, how can this circle be squared?
PC: Well that’s why I’ve said the tank is now running on empty and I think we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t send local government over the brink. I have a business background, I work in the construction industry, you can demand so much of your workforce but if it gets to ridiculous lengths you end up in chaos and local government is in danger of doing that if we’re to take more than the 30% cuts against rising demand in the way that you’ve described and not all of the functions that we carry out are statutory, we have non-statutory functions, many of those would be around economic development and promoting job creation which we’ve had enormous success on in Kent. So my message would be, don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. There are so many good things going on in local government, the fifty …
DM: We’ll get on to that in a moment but I wanted to ask you, and I’m going to put this to Joe Anderson in a moment if he’s there, I’m not sure he’s there yet, I need that confirmed to me if he turns up, but Mr Carter, the issue of reserves, Eric Pickles again says for some reason that a lot of county councils and local authorities seem to be building up their reserves so you can dip into some of them. How are you placed?
PC: I think some of the reserves that are published in local government are over-egged. We get tranches of money at different times during the year, the Audit Commission used to publish best guidance on the percentage of your revenue budget that you should keep as reserves for when things may have atypical occurrences and I think local government has done it but we in Kent have had to dip into our reserves in the current year and will dip into our reserves next year but you’ve always got to maintain a prudent level and I think we’re again at those sort of levels and it’s back to the tank being empty so therefore we’ve been doing that.
DM: It’s often said with this, and previous governments have done this in tough economic times, do you think it’s a way of trying to deflect criticism from central government in that so many of the cuts and so many of the services that people use at the front line are actually delivered in the end by local authorities and therefore it is trying to deflect blame from activities and decisions taken at the central level?
PC: Well I hope without sounding arrogant, I think central government could learn an enormous amount from local government and we very much welcome being involved in the health provision from April next year, where in partnership with adult social care and primary care delivered through GPs surgeries and the new clinical commissioning groups, we can make a lot of savings. We would like to be able to do more in delivering, much of the innovation that has come from local government, not necessarily in the last three or four years but over the last twenty years, I think local government has transformed itself and should be complemented on the innovation that it’s delivered to be able to manage those extraordinary levels of cuts in grant.
DM: Okay, I’m glad to say we are now joined by the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, the first elected mayor of that city, a very good morning to you Mr Anderson. I don't know if you heard Mr Pickles, if you were close to a TV screen a few minutes earlier when he said you’ve got £146 million in reserves, you should use that rather than whinge about the cuts.
JOE ANDERSON: I think one of the things, I just listened to your conversation with the leader of the Kent County Council there and I think there is very little that I would disagree with him. What I can say, really honestly, is that government tell lies and governments are telling lies and trying to fiddle the figures to portray councils like ours, like Kent, in a bad light. It has just been explained to you that the reserves, for instance we are forced to hold and government rules force us to do that. Look, we have a fraction of our reserves held and it’s a one-off if we used it anyway, it doesn’t help us in the long-term but let me just say this, the issue for Eric Pickles is about the fairness of the formula that distributes the grant, that’s the issue. 52% of our budget has been taken away from us in Liverpool and in Liverpool every single person in the city of Liverpool is facing a cut of £252 per person and yet beyond the M25 in some areas, not all, but in some, in most, are receiving a fraction of that cut and it can’t be fair. I’m not a deficit denier, I believe that there should be austerity, but I also believe that there should be fairness and instead of creating fifty ways to leave your lover, he should do that with his Liberal Democrat partners not with local government which, as has just been pointed out to you, is one of the most successful forms of government in the country.
DM: Okay, I just want to ask you then about what you believe to be the social consequences of these cuts, these cuts in your book which are … ?
JA: They’re devastating. Look, the media here has exaggerated my comments, I’ve just written to the Prime Minister and said to him, in the City of Liverpool we have a conference on the 18th January, it’s called Austerity with Fairness, why is it that, as I said, the average cut is £61 per person in the country and Liverpool is suffering £252? I’m highlighting that, there are 4000 people in the last six months joined the queues for food banks here, registered for food banks. The benefit cuts are going to impact on 40,000 people and what I’m saying is you cannot call that the big society and treat people in the way you do without people standing up and being counted. Now whatever form that takes, whether it’s Occupy Liverpool, Occupy Manchester, whether it’s more demonstrations, I believe there will be unrest because it’s totally unfair and that’s my point. Austerity but with fairness and you can’t treat cities like Liverpool and Manchester, Birmingham and the big cities in the north, where we have huge pockets of deprivation and unemployment and people on benefits, in the same way as you can do some of the leafier parts of the country. It is about fairness, that’s all I’m asking, that’s all my letter to the Prime Minister asked for and I think it’s a big disingenuous that Eric Pickles talks about forcing Liverpool to make cuts when we’ve saved £66 million in cutting the management costs, we’ve lost 1600 jobs here in the City of Liverpool and we’ve got more to do and we will do more.
DM: Okay, Mr Anderson, we must end it there, thank you very much indeed, the Mayor of Liverpool there, Joe Anderson and also thanks to the Leader of Kent County Council, Paul Carter, here with me in the studio.
