Guarantees?

Published: 15 July, 2010

• WHEN Councillor Tulip Siddiq, executive member for culture, states that she is unable to promise to keep open libraries in Belsize and Chalk Farm, she is howled down by Conservative councillor Jonny Bucknell, cheered on by his ConDem colleagues.

The ConDem government have just announced that unprotected services such as local government can expect cuts of a minimum of 25 per cent by 2015, leaving Camden with a budget gap of £60million to £80million over the next three years.

It would be irresponsible for any councillor to promise that any service in Camden can be guaranteed until the impact of these cuts can be assessed.

Indeed a radical review of how all services are delivered seems an inevitable response to the most savage spending squeeze in any advanced economy in living memory.

The government promised fairness.

Yet the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that the additional measures announced last month will condemn the poorest 10 per cent of the population to pay 7.5 per cent more, while the richest 10 per cent will pay just 0.5 per cent. Women will bear the brunt of the cuts.

Most regressive of all is a 2.5 per cent increase in VAT.

During the election campaign, the Conservatives consistently denied that they had plans for this.

Now that the ConDems have returned to their traditional seats on the opposition benches in Camden Town Hall, they must accept responsibility for what their government is doing to vital public services in the borough.

Cllr Bucknell would do well to visit his local library and remind himself of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four. One final truth.

“2015” will be far worse than five years of Thatcherism.

The ConDems propose cuts in the public sector of a magnitude that not even Mrs Thatcher ever dared to contemplate.

ROBERT LATHAM
Mornington Terrace, NW1