A campaign that was based on deceit

 The main thrust of the Tory campaign to win County Council seats in Ipswich was based on deceit - even the Tory MP for the town took time off from attaching footballers, to join in - their message was for the Tories as Labour County Council councillor's  had failed to spend their budget given to them for local highway issues. 

The Tory Group in Ipswich, had researched very carefully to come up with the figure for unspent budgets, they used social media to say that they would have no problem spending the money if they were elected.

But this is the real deceit, if they had requested the figures from the County Council ( and one of the Ipswich Group is in the County Cabinet, so you would have thought he would have known anyway)  and done the research they said they had they would have known that in fact of 75 Suffolk County Councillors (majority  of whom are Tory) only only three had been able to spend all of their Local Highways Budget by 31 March 2021. My Labour colleague, Martin Cook has uncovered the deceit. 

In total £2.1m was unspent across Suffolk on 31 March 2021 and even after forward commitments into 2021-2022 were considered there was £1.3m left in the kitty. People will struggle to understand how this could be the case when there is clearly so much work to be done.

Those who failed to spend their budget included Former Tory cabinet members for Highways Mary Evans and Guy McGregor They were in good company with former Tory cabinet member for Highways and Thedwastre North councillor, Jane Storey who returned £49,880.18 unspent.

Even former Tory Council leaders were not immune, Mark Bee had money left over as did Colin Noble who offered £48,460.53 cashback. The top spot however was reserved for Conservative Councillor Peter Beer (Great Cornard) who returned a whopping £66,825.64, more than any other Councillor.

The fact that Suffolk’s Local Highways Budget scheme is dysfunctional shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Tory-run Suffolk County Council fails us on highways projects large and small. From potholes that take six months to repair even after the work has been ordered to large projects like the Ipswich Northern Bypass, abandoned with £1m spent or the scrapped Upper Orwell Crossing (£8m wasted) the signs of failure are everywhere.

When even experienced, senior county councillors are unable to spend their Local Highways Budget it points to a systemic failure of governance.

We can rightfully blame the Tory County Council for failing us on highways however when it comes to deceit in election campaigning, the local Ipswich Tory group should take full responsibility and they were ably assisted in that deceit by our Tory MP, Tom Hunt.

I am sure they knew most Tory County Councillors had also failed to spend their budget they might have even known that it was a Tory who handed back the most - but they kept those facts from the electorate - deceit helped the Tories to win County Council seats.

My week ahead 16 - 22 June 2014

Monday – 16 June, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meting,
6pm –Labour Group campaigning session

Tuesday – 17 June, 6pm – Ipswich Borough Council – Executive Meeting, Grafton House

Wednesday – 18 June, 10am - Ipswich ‘Angle’ Board meeting, Grafton House

Saturday - 21 June, 10am, Labour campaigning, South East Ipswich
2pm – Suffolk Pride Festival

Tuesday may give her us an early warning on how the opposition are going to go about council business over the next 12 months. The Tory Leader, Cllr Cenci will be attending her first Executive meeting as an opposition member.

We have offered the Tory group a place on the Executive since we took back control of the council but up to this point they have always refused. We only thought it was right to offer them a place as we had attempted to have our leader elected as a member of the executive when we were in opposition and even when we were the largest group the Tories and Lib Dems still refused to allow us to be represented.

When it comes to Scrutiny committees, ‘Best Practice’ is to allow the opposition to chair the committee, again the Tories and Lib Dems refused probably leading to the disastrous way such topics as the Kiln Meadow were handled. Once we were in power we have had both the Tories and Lib Dems chair Scrutiny, both have not (in my opinion) been the best chairs we have ever seen but we still believe it should be an opposition member who is chair and I am sure Cllr Harsant will make a far better chair than the last two holders of the post.

Tory run Suffolk County Council do not seem to wish to have any opposition when it comes to Scrutiny, they do not offer to opposition the chair on any of their scrutiny bodies, and their leader Mark Bee seems now to not wish to have any Tories chair Scrutiny if they are not 100% loyal to him.

The latest Suffolk Cabinet meeting indicated again that Mark Bee is now spending most of his time attempting to hold onto power and crush his own rebels. Time that should be better spent trying to sort out the mess that the Tories have made of education in the county.

Suffolk Tories fail again to raise education standards in the County

Yesterday saw the publication of at least the third report on education this week and again it did not make good reading for Tory run Suffolk County Council.

The first report this week was by the National Audit Office, concerning the setting up of Free Schools in the UK and in the main the report was mainly negative and this afternoon we have just been informed that the DfE have ordered a Free school to close in April after failing to reach the required standard of teaching.

Though I believe the setting up of ‘Free Schools’ (well not actually free as the Tax payer has had to heavily subsidise their creation) has not helped raise education standards in Suffolk it is the two later reports this week that have shown what a mess Tory run Suffolk is making of education in this county.

What was no surprise to me was the silence of leading Suffolk and Ipswich Tories once the two reports were published, I mentioned this via twiiter and Mr Gummer did then send me a link to show he had commented on the report. The link led to a Star website report that indicated Mr Gummer was critical of teaching but no mention of the failure by Tory run Suffolk to help improve education in the county.
The Ipswich Star and the EADT today both featured the report on Primary School education which highlighted the fact that Suffolk again has been named as one of the worst performing authorities in England. The Star did not include in their report the comments from Mr Gummer but the EADT did. Again they repeated Mr Gummers comment about the need for better teachers but it did also include his criticism of Tory run Suffolk – ‘We need a sense of urgency which the County Council has not yet shown’.

I would like to thank Mr Gummer for once at least putting some of the blame at the feet of the Tory run County but it seems his words have fell on deaf ears, the county according to their leader, Mr Bee and lead on education, Lisa Chambers are just going to continue with their ‘Raising the Bar’ project but Mr Bee warns us that it is going to take time. All good news for parents of pupils who are currently in Primary education in Suffolk then?

So what is the real plan for Education in Suffolk? Even Mr Gummer seems slightly critical of their progress though it is still silence from the other Tory MP’s, Tory Cabinet members and Ipswich Tory Cllrs. I have written to Mr Gummer about what I believed to be the bullying approach the DfE have taken in forcing schools to become academies. One local Tory, wondered why I was criticising academies when they produce better results, not sure that is actually proven in Primary Schools yet but I do agree with him, academies are probably the best way forward but only because there is just a choice between becoming an academy or being left under the control of a Tory council who has no interest in education and just wishes to get rid of their responsibility as soon as possible.

Mr Gummer has passed on my concerns to Lord Nash and I am still awaiting his views on the process that seems to have become normal in that schools are not only being forced down the academy path but also sworn to secrecy whilst doing so.

One of our Labour County Councillor colleagues has written to the County Council after finding out via a resident that one of the Primary Schools in her Division is being forced into becoming an academy, she wanted to know why she had not been informed.

The reply from the County consisted of a number of interesting points, but one in particular I felt gave away more than it should of: The comment was “There is also an expectation that over time all school will become academies. This process is beyond the control of the LA” Now I for one can’t remember that being in either the Tory manifesto at the last General Election or in the Tory County Manifesto last year, can you?

So as many of us thought, this is not about parental choice but it is being forced on us for ideological reasons.
One Tory County Cabinet member did use his blog this week but not to talk about education but how he was proud that they had not raised council tax and how he wished he could lower it – true Council tax has not risen over the last few years but at the same time funding to the School Improvement Team has been slashed and we now hear from the County that their plan is just to get rid of education completely from their remit.

‘Raising the Bar’ has just become ‘let’s just stand at the bar and wait for all schools to leave the authority’
Not for the first time, Tories in Suffolk have let down our children.

My week ahead, 9 - 15 December 2013

Monday – 9 December, 6pm – Labour Group meeting

Tuesday – 10 December, 1pm – Labour Friends of the Forces, meeting at the Shadow Cabinet room, Houses of Parliament

Wednesday 11 December, 5pm – Briefing by the Cabinet Office on electoral registration reforms

Thursday 12 December, 6pm – Area Committee Chairs meeting

Friday 13 December, 7pm – Labour Christmas Party, Roundwood Bowls Club

Saturday 14 December, 10am – Labour campaigning, South West Ipswich

There has been plenty written on the blogosphere and in the local paper about the cancellation of the Full Council meeting in Ipswich this week. Both Ipswich Spy and the local paper were critical of the cancellation, with ‘Spy’ giving it as yet another example of the real deficit in democracy in Ipswich and Suffolk.

But within a day the criticism turned on the weak opposition in Ipswich, the administration were right to cancel the meeting as there was no urgent business, as you can see from above there is still plenty for councillors to do and though the council meeting is cancelled we still have an important meeting the same day for all councillors about electoral registration. That for me is the real concern about democracy, that changes to electoral registration that are proposed to help reduce electoral fraud may also lead to even more residents not being able to vote,making them feel even further away from the democratic system in this country.

Whilst on the Suffolk County Council, the Labour opposition are well organised, highly motivated as so are holding the Tory Council to account in Ipswich the Tories (and their former Lib Dem partners) are just an embarrassment at times, group discipline is certainly not something they know about and there seems to be as many factions as there are Tory councillors. The Lib Dems just seem to spend all their time attempting to erase from history that they used to help run the council and agreed to building on the Northern Fringe. This week we had a Lib Dem complaining that they no longer have a group room. Forgetting to mention that she was on the executive when they came up with the plan to get rid of group rooms!
We would welcome not only a strong opposition but councillors who would like to get involved in working groups, task and finish groups, but the Tories seem to think being in opposition just gives them an excuse to turn up for Full council and that is about it. This week a Housing Working Group was marked again by the absence of Tory members.

Where we would welcome strong opposition, the Suffolk Tories fear it and more decision will be taken by the executive as they fear that their own County Councillors may fail to turn up to vote in the meeting. A recent Tory Cabinet meeting saw almost the whole Labour Group in attendance- striking more fear into Mr Bee.

But there are examples of councils being scared of democracy beyond Suffolk, this week in Kent the Tory Council published a report on the effects that welfare changes are having on Kent residents. The Tory leader, Cllr Carter had signed the report but obviously had not read it till it was on line. The report stated that welfare changes were leading to more homelessness, more crime and more people using foodbanks.

No wonder the Tories quickly ordered the report to be removed; unfortunately a local Kent Paper made a copy before they took it down. Maybe Kent County Council should be with Tory run Suffolk. Read details on the report here.

Another sign of the dis-unity in the Suffolk Tory Party?

Yesterday Len Jacklin achieved a great win in Oulton Ward in Waveney (Lowestoft). Winning the seat with a majority of over a 100 from the Tories and UKIP coming a distant third.

I was able to get up to Oulton last week with the Suffolk Labour leader, Sandy Martin and was very impressed with the campaigning – most days they had three sessions and must have spoken to the majority of Oulton. At the time of my visit they had seen little of the Tory team but a number of UKIP leaflets had appeared. They did not even have the legal imprint on them so does make me wonder about their electoral ability, especially when after they lost in Thetford they said it was because Oulton was their target seat!

The day we were in Oulton, the Tory leaflet was also distributed and showed the Tory candidate talking to local residents in two pictures - well not really local residents, one was a picture of her talking to her husband and the other to her agent!

Yesterday, leading Suffolk Tory Colin Noble was tweeting that he was out campaigning; getting the Tory vote out and I also heard that a number of other Suffolk County Councillors were drafted in. This last minute effort was probably helped by the fact that their leader, Mark Bee was also the Tory agent.

But it seems that help was to no avail and was probably swamped by the help Len gained from Labour teams from all over the region. Sandy Martin made a number of trips up the A12 to help and Rushmere Councillor Sandra Gage was there on Election Day which brings me to the thrust of the post – did Mark Bee manage to get any help from the Ipswich Tories?

Alan Murray the only Tory County Councillor (and a Cabinet member) may have visited but I am sure that no Borough councillor or Tory activist managed to get past Kesgrave!

It shows one of the fundamental differences between the local Labour Party in Ipswich and the Tory Party. We are not only united in Ipswich behind David Ellesmere but also believe it is only right that we go out and help our Labour colleagues in Suffolk, from Lowestoft to Cornard, Hadleigh to Sudbury and even beyond the county borders to Thetford and Colchester.

This lack of unity in Suffolk Tory circles does affect the way the the County treat Ipswich and its residents, the PR disaster that the Bishops Hill lights scheme is, just one example. So we have County Tories not interested in what happens in Ipswich- policy wise and Ipswich Tories not willing to go beyond Copdock or Kesgrave to help their Tory friends.

No wonder a leading Essex Tory MP warns that their party is haemorrhaging members, only this week I bumped into a former senior Ipswich Tory councillor who informed me that they had left the party after all the in-fighting – and hinted that if Judy Terry has stayed on as the Chair of the local Tories they would have probably seen membership go down to their lowest ever total!

So low that they may even have to ask Kevin Algar to be a candidate again?

My week ahead 28 January - 3 February 2013

Monday 28 January, 4pm, Culture Portfolio meeting,
5pm – Electoral Services Working Group
6pm - Labour Group meeting

Wednesday 30 January, 6pm – Full Council Meeting, Ipswich Borough Council,

Thursday 31 January, 7pm – North East Ipswich Area Committee meeting

Saturday 2 February, 10.30am – Labour campaigning in North West Ipswich

Full Council week and the issue of ‘Council tax’ will be discussed by many, the Tory Police and Crime Commissioner has set a 0% rise but only thanks to using his reserves and the County Council have also decided on 0%, but many will wonder what they will do next year when there is nothing left to get rid of/sell off – will the collapse of the deal to allow Balfour Beatty to take over Suffolk roads put a dent into their budget proposals?

With the cuts in grants being made to local authorities by the coalition government plus the uncertainty of how councils will receive housing benefit money it is hard for councils to not have to make cuts to their services, The bribes of extra grants and then the threats of having to use an expensive referendums to put council tax up leaves council with little room for movement.

Tories in opposition including in Ipswich are quick to call for 0% rise or even a cut but at the same time we had Nadia Cenci asking for the council to spend money by cancelling the contract (agreed to by the Tory/Lib Dem council) with a wind turbine firm. This would have cost every resident in Ipswich money but it seems they are happy to ask us to spend money but do not understand that this will mean having to put tax up or cut another service to pay for it!

The abysmal way the Tories and Eric Pickles are treating local authorities has even led to a number of Tory authorities to write to David Cameron and complain, counties like Essex leading the way in this protest but with Suffolk being led by the likes of Pickles ‘clone’ Colin Noble there is not much chance of Suffolk County Council rocking the boat.

The Suffolk Tory leadership – Cllrs Bee, Terry and Noble were quick to tell the public what a great job they have done and are doing and they still managed to set a 0% Council Tax but last week you would have thought the same three Cllrs must have been out of the country as they left Graham Newman to take all the flak for a second set of terrible educational results for the County.

I will leave the finals words to a Tory Suffolk MP when describing the Tory run County education service – “It is a mess”.

Scrutiny call - in - Locality budgets

Ever since I was elected to be Rushmere Ward councillor, I have sat on Overview and Scrutiny. The first three years were as a member of the opposition. The first two years were wasted as the chair of Scrutiny used the committee for his own personal reasons. Then along with most of the Tory/Lib Dem Executive failed to turn up for training. Scrutiny improved in 2010 under the chair of Gavin Maclure. We saw the use of task and finish groups and we managed to achieve results and even undertook joint scrutiny with the County Council.Gavin even seemed as critical of the Tory executive as we were at times.

But much of scrutiny was taken up with call-ins. We, the Ipswich Labour Party Group found the call-in procedure the only way to get our message over as we were refused a seat on the executive (even though we were the largest party).

This week we had our first taste of a call-in by the Tory opposition, some may say time we learnt how it felt to have a decision called in, the difference of course is that the Tories were offered a seat on the executive but refused to take it up.

There is also another difference with Scrutiny under Labour, as is recognised 'best practice', we have given the chair of scrutiny to the opposition.

This call-in was about the Labour decision to stop the implementation of locality budgets for Borough councillors.

Tory councillor Nadia Cenci called in the decision and gave her reasons on her blog. Though they may no longer be in a coalition in Ipswich, she seemed to be supported by the Ipswich Lib Dems - here.

There main argument seems to be now they feel Libraries in Ipswich are safe and that we have also been told that we will retain all our school crossing patrols, the money Ipswich Labour put aside is not needed. They even got Tory County Leader Mark Bee and Ben Gummer to meet the press at Rosehill Library and plead for the locality money to be introduced as they never meant to close any libraries.

Well first off Mark Bee would have been better off using his talk with the press to call on his fellow Waveney Tory councillor Andrew Draper to resign after assaulting a police officer. But we still wait to hear him mention that but what Cllr Bee also forgot to mention is that we are still waiting for the re-introduction of school crossing patrols at Alan Road and also near Sprites School.

We will also not even know till November, when the Tory County Cabinet sits that the libraries have been saved.

But let's say that they are safe, of the £240,000 saved by not introducing locality budgets, £186,000 was to go into IBC reserves. That money is still needed as we have found gaps in the last Tory budget including not receiving as much money from the Tory Government in the form of the 'New Homes Bonus' as the Tory budget had us down to receive. So it is only sensible to keep that money in reserve.

Cllr Cenci gives her view of the meeting here, not so much a report on the meeting but just her opening statement. After she and Cllr David Ellesmere had given their views it was then a question and answer session. Big difference to Tory run scrutiny is that the questions came from both sides. Under the Tories only Cllr Debman used to ask questions with the remainder of the Tories sitting still then voting against Labour at the end.

Paul Geater from the Evening Star was at the meeting so Tories, Liz Harsant and Kim Stroet decided instead of asking questions to make prepared political statements. We did eventually get down to some serious questioning with Cllr Cenci creating some laughter with her answers about council reserves and Labour propaganda.

Then when that part of the meeting was over, and the press had left. We should have then debated the decision and there is a debate needed. For example, should even County Councillors still have locality budgets when the County is about to shut care homes and close Youth clubs?

But there was no debate, the Tories put it straight to a vote- with Liz Harsant stating, 'now the press has gone let's just get on with it'.

This statement more than any showed that the whole meeting had been a charade, they had no interest in debating the decision. The vote was lost and locality budgets will not be introduced this financial year.

There was also a sub plot - big hitting Tory, Judy Terry is a member of scrutiny but a sub replaced her. Instead we expected to see Judy Terry be called to give evidence as a County Cabinet member with the responsibility for libraries. But she never turned up - I asked Cllr Cenci, why? The answer given was that she had been advised not to turn up. 'By whom?' I asked. Cllr Cenci said she did not know who by.

So Ipswich Conservative group, two questions:

1. Who advised Cllr Terry not to turn up?

2. Why did she take that advice, has she something to hide?

Same old Judy Terry, same old Tory County Council, same old NSD

So Mark Bee the new Leader of the Tories on Suffolk County Council declared 'New Strategic Direction' as dead.

The name maybe dead but the rest of NSD lives on, here is a quote from the non aligned Suffolk blog- Wordblog:

'One concern among campaigners is that Judy Terry, the cabinet member responsible for libraries sometimes gives the impression that she wants to get through a policy as close as it can be to the old New Strategic Direction idea.

It seems that we are still no closer to getting an answer to what exactly is going to happen to our libraries than we were when Mark Bee took power, it also seems to me that even though Mark Bee has stated that the new administration (but same leaders) will start to listen to the public, they are not - it is all a sham, even after the Tory chair of scrutiny remarked that: “We [the council] have got ourselves in a hole. Will you help us get out of it?”

Waveney- sold down the river

For that last few years, Labour in Ipswich have at times felt hard done by, the largest party, the most councillors but still the council was run by the Tory and Lib Dem coalition.
If we felt hard done by, how do you think both the residents and the Labour members in Waveney feel tonight?
After the election at the start of the month, it finished Labour 23 seats, Tories 23, 1 x Green and an independent. Tonight the vote for both Chairman and Leader ended up 24-24. On the vote for Chair the casting vote went to a Tory, the outgoing chairman who was now not even a councilor. He decided on a new Tory Chairman, and the new Chair used his casting vote to keep Waveney under control of the Tories.
Some may say, they are the rules, live with them. But it is hard when the majority of people in Waveney voted Labour or Green.

What does that mean for us? Well the outgoing Waveney Leader Mark Bee is now the Leader of Suffolk County Council, but he will have to make sure he does not take his eye off Waveney, he may need to spend many hours on the road- never daring to miss a Waveney Council meeting - even if he is needed at Suffolk County Council HQ to sort out another mess they have got themselves into. More pressure on Cllr Bee, will he manage?

Will Bee save the Tories?

This week Mark Bee took over as Leader of the Tory group on Suffolk County Council, his appointment has led to a number of posts in the local politics blogosphere and a number of pages in both the East Anglian Daily Times and the Evening Star.
Most seem happy that Bee got the nod over Colin Noble - that is all but Ipswich Spy who must have a mole in the County Tory ranks, many of us thought Noble would happily continue with NSD and work alongside/under Ms Hill but it seems that Noble dedicated much of his speech on how Ms Hill's days would be numbered under his leadership, where Mark Bee just said Ms Hill was an HR matter.
Now I am not a fan of Ms Hill, but feel she has become an easy target when it should be the County Tories (the whole group) who employed her, paid her and then let her lead on NSD that should take the brunt of the criticism. Unlike two certain Tory blogs, I do not just print rumours, but in this case I feel it is relevant, some Tories believe the recently called inquiry into the suicide of one of the County Officers will lead to the acting leader to be able to get rid of Ms Hill before Cllr Bee takes over as leader of Suffolk County Council.

But will Cllr Bee and his handling of NSD, save the Tories? Maybe too late for them in Ipswich and Waveney and the Labour vote will increase on most rural parts of the County but most Tories will hold onto their seats, but for all the good press Cllr Bee is currently getting on halting/thinking about NSD, the County still needs to make cuts, but any time they come under pressure (waste sites, school crossing patrols) they just delay it. I hope that Cllr Bee will force a change in the direction the County was going but I feel though many School Crossing Patrols will be saved, the threat to Suffolk libraries is still very real and for that reason I think Cllr Bee will have to pull quite a few hot coals out of the fire to stop the Tories losing a number of seats in 2013 when we vote in the next County Council.

Nationally the Tory vote is holding quite well but it is their coalition bed mates, the Lib Dems who seem to be suffering the most, it will be interesting to see how they fare on May 5th. In Ipswich it might be the start of the road to nowhere for the Lib Dems, 7 councillors at the moment by almost certain that they will not have that many come May 6th.