EASE THE CUTS PAIN... LET THE RICH PAY MORE
Professor Richard Wilkinson's startling idea to keep under-threat services running
Published: 5th November, 2010
by TERRY MESSENGER
ISLINGTON could become one of the first places in the country to introduce a pay-more-if-you-can style voluntary charge on top of its council tax bills.
The council may appeal to the kind hearts of the borough’s wealthier residents, asking them to dig deeper into their pockets to help keep under-threat services afloat, if a radical idea proposed by a critically acclaimed author gets the go-ahead.
Professor Richard Wilkinson, co-author of The Spirit Level, has been brought in to head Islington’s Fairness Commission, charged with mapping out a response to the harsh economic conditions and a way to meet government-ordered spending cuts head on.
He says one answer to Islington’s cash crisis could be to ask everyone in the top tax band – generally people earning more than £150,000 a year – to pay extra on top of their council tax contributions.
Professor Wilkinson also urged residents of wealthy streets to twin with poorer addresses and to collaborate on community projects so they do not fold during the squeeze.
Islington’s Labour-run council needs extra cash to bridge an expected £100million budget shortfall – with services such as Highbury’s Sotheby Mews day centre for the elderly and police help for primary schools already lined up for the chop.
Professor Wilkinson told a meeting of the Fairness Commission in Islington on Tuesday: “Perhaps we should be inviting people when they get their council tax bill to support specific local projects – maybe ones which are having to be cut. They will know that this service is going to be lost unless people in the top tax band are willing to support it.”
He added: “I find myself wondering whether there would be any mileage in twinning rich and poor streets and actually thinking of ways in which we can get them to interact and perhaps do things with each other.”
The council set up the Fairness Commission to generate ideas to help the borough cope with threatened 40 per cent budget reductions.
Prof Wilkinson’s book The Spirit Level claims that economic growth does not make societies happier unless it is accompanied by greater equality.
He accepted the council’s invitation to chair the commission – the only one of its kind in the country – after being invited by Town Hall Labour leader Councillor Catherine West.
She said requests for donations to the charity Islington Giving could accompany council tax bills as a way of levering in more money.
The council works closely with Islington Giving, which could fund replacements for services axed in budget cuts, she believes.
“The message needs to be: if you can afford it, yes please give to Islington Giving,” she said. The meeting, attended by business representatives and community activists, was staged in the plush offices of top law firm Slaughter and May in Bunhill Row on Islington’s border with the City – specifically to discuss how the rich could help out.
Speakers at the meeting repeatedly referred to the enormous wealth of the borough’s renowned squares and terraces and its main business area on the City fringe. This was contrasted with the lives of 25,000 “economically inactive people stuck on benefits”.
A report to the meeting revealed that only 30 per cent of jobs in the borough went to residents of Islington.
Council chief executive John Foster told the meeting: “Only 11 per cent of the people we employ actually live in the borough.”
Labour councillor Faye Whaley, who represents Canonbury, got the evening’s biggest cheer when she said: “We need to speak to the richest people in the borough and say: OK, it may not directly affect you if we help these people but there is going to be a knock-on effect. If you donate and contribute, crime would go down because there are some people who think there is nothing else they can do other than something illegal.
“We need to say to poorer people: OK, you don’t live in that £2million house opposite but you should have the confidence and self-respect to do something with yourself, wake up in the morning and have something to do. Just because you’re not the most academic person in the world, so what? You can still contribute.”