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| Under the policy of Localism - who is responsible for these? |
Party Conference season has come and gone. All the parties
attempt to walk the line between pleasing their members, who hold strong and often
politically inconvenient views, and the wider public. Sadly the result of this seemingly
unsquarable circle is often superficial populism. All parties do it but it particularly
unedifying when public spending commitments are unveiled in an attempt to feed
populist demands.
The introduction of the principle of localism was intended to
mean councils had responsibility for spending their budgets, and take both the
credit and the blame for those decisions. In a time of reducing budgets there
is a great deal more blame than credit to be had. But last week ministers
announced £1billion of spending by local government. The intention is to say
that ministers of the governing parties - and not your council - are
responsible for the frequency of your bin collections and the size of your
council tax bill.
This week sees Eric Pickles find a quarter of a billion
pounds to get the English weekly bin collections. I walked round a deprived
estate in Bradford recently where the council was cutting community transport,
youth training, back to work schemes etc, etc. At no point did I think “what
these people need is weekly bin collections”. My feeling is that if Bradford Council were
given the choice how to spend their share of this money that might be their
view too. But there is a group in society for whom this is an obsession and a
quarter of a billion pounds was found to please them.
There were rumours that the Chancellor wanted to announce an
end to the top rate of income tax, but was thwarted. Instead he announced that councils
will be given £805 million to freeze council tax. Strictly this is a matter for
Eric Pickles’ department but presentation means the popular policies must be
divvied out. As Council Tax is regressive we should welcome the fact it is
frozen. We also need to remember the people who have been hit the hardest by
housing benefit and other cuts do not pay Council Tax – so this freeze is good especially
for households in the lower middle, but the poorest won’t see any of the
£800million. The policy will be popular – but possibly not because of its
effect on the injustice of the poor paying more tax than the rich.
This post sounds a bit world weary – because it is. The
headline popular policy is always revealed with a flourish come Conference
time. The eye catching policies will get enthusiasts talking endlessly about
positioning, the fate of different factions within the parties, how this will
play in opinion polls..... Journalists will produce many stories about how
these policies will affect their idea of a worthy family, or how it will help
the economy.....I think the rest will be pleased or annoyed depending on their
point of view but be united in losing another little bit of respect for a
process which make decisions based on populism and cheering party faithful.
My - perhaps naive - view is that populism is transient but
respect is more important, longer term and built from things more substantial
than giving away tit-bits at Conference time.
Statistics note (I
refuse to do a blog post without some): a common trick is to announce money
twice. So the £805million announced by the Chancellor may include the
£250million announced by Pickles or it may not - the detail won’t be announced
until well after the news story has faded away.
