BAG Assistant Secretary, George Heron, reports back from last night's (30th March) council meeting to discuss the Transformation Strategy. A shortened letter also appeared in the Independent on the 2nd April.
In this week’s ‘Tuesday Essay’ Paul Vallely drew attention to the North Korean sounding ‘strong leader model’ of Council leadership in place in Bury and elsewhere. Councillor Leader Bob Bibby unexpectedly picked up the same theme during the Council Meeting the following day. In the midst of an outburst of self-justification whilst replying to the debate on his ‘Transformation Strategy’, he told colleagues that, as a ‘strong leader’ under the system brought in by a Labour government, he had no obligation to seek their approval for his plans. He was only inviting them to comment and vote on his ‘transformation strategy’ because of his personal commitment to ‘transparency’.
Paul Vallely noted that Councillor Bibby has gone ‘coy’ about his commitment to outsourcing and this was evident in the debate. References to wholesale privatisation, he said, were press misrepresentation. The review of each department at the heart of his strategy would be unbiased and concerned only with best value for money. If in-house provision was the cheapest, then so be it. For the Lib Dems Tim Pickstone welcomed the change of tone. A rational review was preferable to piecemeal, year-by-year cuts. Wholesale privatisation was not acceptable, but greater community involvement was highly desirable and the Lib Dems would promote this.
Labour saw the changes as a smokescreen hiding the continuing intention to privatise. The Tories were not to be trusted. In a telling contribution, Councillor Boden pointed out the inflexibility inherent in outsourcing. Contracts of up to 25 years could be signed with other providers but service needs could change often within that period. In-house provision was much more flexible. When the vote was taken it followed a pattern familiar to Bury Council watchers over the last year: Lib Dem abstentions ensured a Tory victory. Councillor Bibby had the endorsement he sought.
Events earlier during public questions suggested severe limits on Councillor Bibby’s commitment to ‘transparency’. His revised strategy report appeared only after the deadline for public questions had passed, making it impossible to ask meaningful questions about it. It included a commitment to further ‘involvement and consultation’ of the public as individual departments come up for review over the next few months. In a question submitted on Friday 25th, more than two full working days before the council meeting, we asked for more information about this but our question was out of order and was ignored. Similarly, it doesn’t seem to extend to council employees. Widespread rumours of gagging instructions to them from their managers forbidding public discussion of cuts and reorganisation were again mentioned in passing by the Labour Group.
We in Bury Action Group are just discovering to our horror the extent to which technical sounding changes in council structures have already undermined local democracy. I am sure others elsewhere are having the same experience. Individual councillors have given away so much power they may now be redefined as ‘community champions’ begging favours for their neighbourhood from the ‘strong leader’. Now cuts in national grants to local authorities are beginning to bite, fear of surcharges of individuals and possible prison prevents councillors all parties from confronting the government settlement and setting an illegal budget to protect services.
Another part of Councillor Bibby’s ‘summing up’ outburst throws those fears into sharp relief. Councillor Bibby was keen to tell us of his role in the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA). Here Labour and Conservative Leaders are co-operating to find ways to implement government cuts across the region. Odd that. Here we have a region in which most authorities claim that this year’s government settlement is particularly unfair to them. They have good cause to unite against the severity of cuts imposed without any national political mandate and crucially they have the critical mass to succeed. No government is going to face down all ten local authorities – but to make assurance doubly sure they could readily make common cause with other metropolitan areas. It seems such an idea has never been considered. The whole body of local councillors is so browbeaten and cowed that they prefer to assist in the demise of their own status and function.
In Bury we face a further marked deterioration in local democracy. The strategy our wise leader has adopted opens the possibility that hidden bureaucratic reviews of each service will lead over the next few months to the outsourcing of many council services. These will be managed under long-term contracts and totally removed from any form of democratic scrutiny. All that can prevent this happening is our honourable leader’s commitment to transparency – and perhaps our campaigns to remind him of this and to work vigorously and persistently to keep the issue in the public eye.
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