Speech by Councillor Mary Baldwin, leader of Lib Dem group on Bucks County Council

8.42.00pm GMT Mon 3rd Mar 2008

This the speech by Councillor Mary Baldwin, leader of Lib Dem group on Bucks County Council , addressing the council on the BCC Budget, Feb 2008

Madam Chairman, I must start by congratulating the administration for its belated conversion to

listening to good advice, and reinstating the Performance and Resources Scrutiny Committee that we

Liberal Democrats had long called for since the short-sighted abolition of its predecessor, which

performed such valuable work, particularly around the public scrutiny of the annual Budget.

Regrettably, we cannot go beyond congratulating Mr Shakespeare and his colleagues for bowing to

pressure and doing this, because the lack of publicity given to this about-turn - whilst understandable

given the potential for embarrassment - meant that few beyond this Council knew about the public

hearings and that, consequently, there was a distinct lack of public attendance.

This lack of publicity - and public involvement - reveals the farcical nature of this Council's attitude to

public consultation. The budget consultation and its very poor, demographically-biased response, has

skewed our priorities to such an extent that the administration is proposing to put a significant amount

of money into the budget to fill in pot-holes whilst cutting - again- the school improvement budget,

which effects our most vulnerable children and continues to perpetuate the inequalities that we see in our

schools. We did try and help the administration by putting forward a Notice of Motion around this

Council's need to have greater engagement with the public. Because the idea came from the Liberal

Democrats, however, it was spurned. Consequently, once again, we have a budget of questionable

relevance to the real needs of the majority of residents of this county.

We are not saying, Madam Chairman, that the state of our roads is not important, but given that the

settlement from Government was better than expected, and that there was headroom in the budget of

over £9million, surely more should have been done to fulfil this Council's corporate aims in a

considered fashion that most serves the long-term needs of our community, rather than perform a knee-

jerk reaction in a pre-election year to a flawed budget consultation.

Last year we said that the Budget we then had in front of us was a structure lacking in substance, which

usually implies a house of straw, liable to blow over in the wind. Again, this Budget has a similar feel

to it. Again, it neglects several grave issues, and once more exposes this Council and our community to

the real risk of service failure. Once again, we ask, what of tomorrow? To paraphrase Churchill -

that great Liberal - "a people that has forgotten its past can have no future" and, again, we see the

wisdom of his words as we see the short-sightedness of this administration and its refusal to learn from

past failings. The cuts in the School Improvement budget - following the cash freeze of last year - will

have a major impact on our children's tomorrows for years to come. The continued scrimping on the

maintenance of the Council's property portfolio help balance the books today, but, again, will contribute

to a poor legacy of future, higher, costs; a Pandora's box of troubles that will haunt us and the Council

tax-payer. The cuts to the IT Budget, whilst deferring pain today, will restrict this Council's ability to

deliver services and manage our efficiency and budgets. The troubles that this store up for us begs again

the question, What of tomorrow? Last year we warned that School Transport, with a £2m overspend

hangover due to be repaid within two years, raised major questions of cost-control and the sanctity of

current entitlements. We asked, what of tomorrow? And answer came there none from Mr

Shakespeare. Now, of course, you have given up trying to cope with the problem you have allowed to

fester and grow, and have contracted out the management of school transport - you have made it

somebody else's problem and abdicated responsibility for what happens next.

The question on School Transport is whether, when this Council met to discuss last year's budget,

whether Mr Shakespeare knew he was going to pass the buck on School Transport. If he did, then it

makes a mockery of transparency and ownership of the budget process by this council's non-Cabinet

members. If he did not, then it speaks volumes for the failure to understand the seriousness of the

problem and the need for last-gasp solutions.

The demographics that continue to strain the Adult Social Care budget and will strain the Schools

budget in the days ahead will not go away, and nor will any of the other problems, but, with no real

consideration of the impact of future growth in Bucks within the Council's planning, we - and the public

- once again do not know if this budget is the start of an attempt to address these problems or is

effectively an irrelevance. Because we continue to remain in the dark and ill-informed on so much

we cannot support this budget.