CLG shadow secretary, Caroline Flint, this week warns ministers to stop ‘holding a gun to the head’ of local government by demanding front-loaded spending cuts in return for newly-devolved powers.
Writing exclusively for The MJ, Ms Flint claims that despite measures taken to ease the impact of front-loading in last month’s finance settlement, the immediacy of many councils’ required cuts will still leave ‘potholes that will go unfixed, streets left unswept… youth clubs and libraries that will shut down’.
In a frank analysis of the coalition’s Localism Bill and finance settlement, both delivered late in 2010, Ms Flint says Labour is committed to localism – although she argues for the retention of a ‘reasonably-set national minimum standard’ for key services – and will not oppose all aspects of the Government’s Bill. But, she warns there is ‘no guarantee’ that ministers’ plan to let local residents ‘pick up the slack vacated by the state’, once councils have implemented deep spending cuts, will lead to better, or more efficient, local services.
In doing so, Labour’s former housing minister effectively dismisses prime minister David Cameron’s Big Society initiative, under which he plans to draw on an army of volunteers to deliver key frontline services, such as library services, to ease council costs.
Amid fears over the returning influence of the sharp-elbowed middle classes in areas such as education and planning, she also warns that plans to bypass town halls and empower neighbourhoods through the Bill could simply hand advantages to the ‘most vocal’ elements of society.
‘Power must always rest in the hands of the many, not the few,’ Ms Flint concludes.
