As councils across the country prepare their 2014-15 budgets and are confronted by the need to make savage cuts that will drastically affect the quality of their poorest residents' lives, Green Left has issued the following statement:
The Green party of England and Wales
fought the 2010 general election in opposition to the savage public
service cuts supported by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat
parties. The Green party offered a different approach to reducing the
country’s debts, which included making the wealthy (people and
corporations) pay their fair share of tax, investing in the economy to
produce sustainable growth through the Green New Deal, some cuts for
example to Trident and pledging to protect public services particularly
for the most vulnerable in our society.
Unfortunately, we did not win the
general election and so are unable to put these policies into practice,
although Caroline Lucas has almost single handedly taken the opposition
to the Coalition government cuts agenda. The ideologically driven shrink
the state policies of the Coalition government aim to reduce public
spending and turn most of the public services over to private
corporations. Our elected representatives in local government are on the
front line in the assault on public spending, with local authorities
having their funding from central government cut by around a third since
2010.
Councils of all political stripes are hurting and they worry
about whether they will even be able to fund their statutory duties in
the future. Local government is under serious threat and everyone
involved in it knows this to be true, despite the blithe statements
about local authorities making efficiency savings and encouraging local
business growth to pay for services, trumpeted by the Coalition central
government. All the easy savings and many not so easy have been made
now, and a future of even more of the same is daunting.
We in Green Left say enough is enough, and call on all of our existing elected Green party local councillors and any that are elected in the 2014 local elections, to firmly refuse to implement these Coalition government cuts to essential public services. If the government sends civil servants to carry out their dirty work then the responsibility for the cuts will be firmly in the public view, and our elected representatives can be in the forefront of a popular campaign against them. The time has surely come to make a stand, in solidarity with our communities that depend so heavily on the services provided and with the local authority workforce who have endured cuts in wages if not redundancy.
