During the height of the pandemic, while the Tory government was partying, handing out lucrative PPE contracts to their chums and bypassing local public health professionals to spend £37bn outsourcing test and trace, local authorities were there, working with their local community groups to provide support for residents in the form of food parcels, help with shopping, and caring phone calls to check on the physical and mental health of the most vulnerable. Now, yet again, they are bearing the brunt of Tory cuts, providing a shield not to protect their services but to protect the government from being blamed for the dire state of local services (Budget plans risk ‘second lost decade’ of living standards, Jeremy Hunt told, 4 March).
In the sixth richest country in the world, we have a right to expect not just the bread of bin collections, but the roses of libraries and orchestras. And not just cultural roses. I am involved in providing children’s school holiday food and activities, and a warm space and free lunch for older residents, in our local community centre, nourishing minds as well as bodies. Both services are funded by the local authority, neither are luxuries, and both have uncertain futures. Cuts such as those to the household support fund will have a devastating effect on the poorest in our society.
For the past 14 years, local councils have tried to manage austerity. Those of us who fought Tory cuts to local services in the 80s well understand why this strategy was adopted. But it has run its course. The Tories are determined to keep wielding the axe until there is nothing left. We know that the Tories’ scorched earth approach could make life impossible for the incoming Labour government. But, along with the NHS, local authority funding must be a priority if Labour is to restore any semblance of the quality of life we all have a right to expect.
Joan Twelves
Leader, Lambeth council, 1989-91
• Jeremy Hunt’s fanciful proposal that public services can be saved not by investing in them but by creating a new, mythical version of increased productivity begs more than one question. Do we need a new definition when it comes to public services as opposed to commercial transactions? For instance, one way of increasing productivity in schools is to worsen the pupil-teacher ratio and to create much larger class sizes. There is, of course, an argument for a radical rethink of how we teach, and what part developing technology and artificial intelligence will play in the future. But simply assuming that those in the state sector will get less contact with a teacher or teaching assistant, but those in private schools will continue to benefit from small class sizes, is a predictor of a greater educational divide in years to come.
In the health service, productivity would undoubtedly be increased if bed-blocking was tackled seriously, but that involves genuine investment – not in robotics, but in supporting people as they return to their home. We often talk about the increasing divide in this country, but it appears that the biggest divide of all is between those who live in fantasyland, and everyone else who has to survive in the here and now.
David Blunkett
Labour, House of Lords
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