Realism and Denial at the Guildhall

I don't think much of the way the Lib Dems run Cambridge City Council; their approach to growth, planning and transport are wrecking the city and their fortnightly bin collections, relentlessly-increasing council tax and approach to 'affordable' housing are not helpful.

But the realistic attitude towards the need to rationalise public spending they have adopted since the formation of the coalition is commendable. It's certainly a refreshing change from the fantasy economics of just a penny on income tax to solve all ills that we are used to from the Liberal Democrats.

The mantle of denial about public finances is taken up by Cambridge Labour, whose budget amendments have often attracted Conservative approval in the past. Sadly today's debate on the Medium Term Strategy descended into national party political point scoring by Coleridge's new Labour councillor and other Labour councillors.

Labour councillors presented no alternatives and made no constructive suggestions for improvements to the strategy, except possibly on homelessness, but that sounded more like a scaremongering dig about changes to housing benefit.

We really do need better debate than this at the city council, and I urge Cambridge residents to support Conservative candidates at the next local elections to ensure a centre-right common sense voice on the council.

So I support the plans in the main, but would entreat the council to look afresh at all parts of spending, making sure we are only doing what benefits residents - start by dismantling apparatus focused on satisfying former government targets.

Spending review and the city council

Next Monday there will be a special full meeting of the city council to agree the council's annual revision of its four-year rolling medium term (financial) strategy.

Normally the MTS would be approved at a normal meeting of the council but the meeting on the 21st October was presumably deemed to be too soon (one day) after the HM Treasury's spending review. Also given how many politicking motions were introduced at that meeting it's probably a good thing that this important consideration wasn't dwarfed.

The council operated on cautious assumptions when devising the strategy so overall there are, fortunately, no nasty surprises for the city.

One notable assumption was that there would be no compensation for the council tax freeze, but as I expected, the original promise is being kept and the funding will be to match what would have been a 2.5% council tax increase. It would therefore be scandalous for the city council not to take advantage of that multiplier; it does seem that the Lib Dems have at last listened to sense on this one.

The budget for next year won't be set until the spring; I hope councillors can be relied upon to follow through on the council tax freeze. Of course I hope they go further and fund a reduction through councillor allowances.

On the debit side it seems that 'front-loading' of reductions to the formula grant will create a corresponding vaccuum at the beginning of the spending review period, which in the case of an indebted government and a debt-free council is probably the right way round.

Overall this review is undoubtedly the right thing for the country. If we stayed in denial of the need to eliminate the structural deficit we would just be adding more and more to the final cost of fixing the public finances. Some things will be difficult but in the long term welfare reform will be good for our society and a slimmed-down public sector will help the private sector grow.

In Cambridge I urge the ruling group to concentrate on providing good value for money. We are being freed from swathes of government targets and ring-fenced budgets and should be able to afford high quality basic services if we take a good look at what we should and shouldn't be doing. It's time for zero-based budgeting!

Freedom of Information Victory

You could say that last Thursday's Full Council meeting was slightly less predictable than usual...

Motions to Full Council are usually just a way of setting out a party line - opposition Councillors put down a motion to try shifting the Council's opinion, the ruling Lib Dems then amend the motion by getting rid of it and replacing it with some meaningless guff about how wonderfully the Council is already responding to said problem. Occassionally the Lib Dems don't bother about waiting for the opposition motion, and go straight to the self-congratulation.

An example of the latter was the Lib Dems motion designed to set out how they are going to improve the availability of information to the public, particularly in the area of Freedom of Information requests and Councillor expenses.

Personally, I have long been calling for complete openness at the Council - the default should be that all information is publicly available (unless there is a good reason not to, such as publishing would put the Council at a commercially disadvantageous situation, or for classes of information like personal emails that would require so much editing for data protection, they should only be available through a specific Freedom of information request). But in the areas the motion dealt with specifically, I think the Council should certainly be publishing (almost) all Freedom of Information requests, and all of the Council's responses, as well as detailed information about all allowances, expenses and benefits to Councillors. Apart from the fact that allowances are generally too high in local government - we don't want to create a new class of professional or semi-professional politicians locally - I don't think the expenses claimed in Cambridge City would be a cause for great controversy, but we should publish everything and let the public decide.

You would have thought the Lib Dems would also be in favour of this, but a few of them were decidedly luke warm (I had one Lib Dem criticise me privately for supporting calls to publish Councillors usage of car park passes...), the original motion was far too woolly, and didn't commit the Council to enough action.

I did have an amendment prepared, but unfortunately you need a seconder, and there is only one of me. As Labour had a similar amendment, we combined the text and Labour presented it as their amendment. Remarkably, the Lib Dems agreed with the amendment, and then setout making minor changes to the amendment to allow it to go forward. Full Council doesn't pass motions requiring significant financial resources - they would need to be accompanied by budget amendments, so the output of motions is usually to get a report brough back to committee outlining how the principles can be implemented. In this case however, I think we may have gone much further than usual, and could have come up with something that genuinely changes the way the Council operates. As I see it, the amendment I helped draft in the final agreed motion commits the Council to:

• Aspire to make information available online by default.
• The Council will publish all Freedom of Information requests and responses online (unless there is reason not to like a request being libellous etc) (similar to www.whatdotheyknow.com)
• The Council will publish details of all Councillor's allowances, expenses, benefits in kind etc

I think when the officers sit down to work out how they are going to implement all this, they may have kittens, but overall I think last Thursday will go down as a good day for Freedom of Information at the City Council.

Full Council Meeting Tonight

Tonight is a meeting of 'Full Council', one of about 6 occasions each year when all Councillors get together to decide on the important issues facing the Council.

Except it doesn't really work like that, as the Liberal Democrat's have a clear majority, decide everything in their group meeting beforehand, and most of their backbenchers just sit there and stick their hand up at the right time to pass their group policies. I can't remember last time I heard any element of scrutiny or dissent from the Lib Dems in one of these meetings - if a Lib Dem disagrees with the ruling executive Councillors, it tends to end up with them leaving the Council (like former City Cllrs Schofield, Adigun-Harris, Griffiths and of course there is also former Lib Dem Cllr Hipkin, now an independent).

Whilst this can make the meeting a bit of a pantomime, it does allow opposition groups to participate in debate on key issues facing the Council. Topics for discussion tonight include:

The Council's medium term (financial) strategy - including the impact of Gordon Brown's £1.3m 'Cambridge Tax', and how the Lib Dems plan to put up Council Tax by 4.5% each year regardless of the effect on hard pressed household budgets.

The Council's Climate change strategy and action plan

A discussion of how much allowances Councillors are going to pay themselves.

A request by Labour for a review of scrutiny arrangements (or rather the lack of scrutiny arrangements) at the City Council.

An attack by the Lib Dems on my stance on planning decisions at area committees.

The full agenda for tonights meeting is here - members of the public are welcome to turn up at the Guildhall and see their elected representatives in action, the meeting starts at 6pm, and will go on for hours...