When City Hall originally bid for unitary status, a lot of Conservatives out there in the yonder didn’t take the threat seriously – generally because it was, and still is, simply ridiculous that the areas worst performing council should apply more more powers. A lot of such Tories thus stuck their heads in the sand and hoped that the treasury / boundary commission / government would do their jobs for them and kill the unitary bird stone dead. I have to say that I believe the stalled start for the anti-unitary campaigners is one of the reasons why this has got as far as it has. Anyway …
Today I read in the local press that David Cameron has declared that if unitary has not passed before a general election then the party will scrap it altogether. (Read , and note that the comments are attributed to Shadow Local Government Minister Bob Neill rather than Cameron himself, but hey-ho). This is significant because it is the first time that the party has come out specifically against the plans in this way. At heart I’m sure a lot of Tories are pro-unitary, but most of us don’t want to pay £100m for the priviledge.
This move by Cameron / Neill will worry Labour – they know their only chance of stopping the “One County” bid is via flame-haired Communities Secretary Hazel Blears blocking it, but many Tories now know the only chance to block unitary full stop is by winning that general election.
I hope that all these anti-unitary Tory Councillors sitting on their big fat majorities remember this and get campaigning in key Norfolk marginals to ensure we win those seats then – wouldn’t it be ironic if they won by a country mile in their own seats only for us not to win the key seats and for Labour’s bonkers plans to progress.
So given all this, the continued spending of taxpayers cash makes my blood boil. Too much has been wasted by all sides on this now; Labour will be praying for this to move quickly, the Tories will try and block and then pray for that election. All this time, we all know who the biggest losers are.
I am not going to go into automatic gloating mode; I don’t think this decision is the end and a lot could change – oddly enough the same warning I gave Labour after the previous unitary announcement, so I’m going to take my own advice.
But on the face of it, thinks look very bad for Morphew and his Green / LibDem allies on this, as the Boundary Commission says its preferred option is a full county unitary (including Lowestoft) that effectivly abolishes Norwich City Council.
City Hall have invested a lot of time and money into this; often in the face of strong opposition from us Tories, the wider public, parish councils and fellow authorities. If it all falls by the wayside – or worse, produces a result that is the opposite to the original unitary theory of an urban focus – then heads will roll at the council and rightly so. Already tonight what is clear is that Councillors from all parties are at each other’s throats – again. But whilst the Tory split on the issue has been clear for some time, the vicious manner in which Labour and the LibDems have turned on each other has surprised even me.
The media have also taken a hit; the EDP has been running a pretty consistent anti-unitary line (it sells well in the county) but the Evening News will have to choose its editorial line pretty carefully tomorrow to avoid looking rather outdated and simplistic. It has been running an almost minute-by-minute response today and the EEN should be congratulated for their depth of coverage.
Also the question being asked is if City Hall can stop the leakage of support; Cllr Ramsay pointed out tonight that the Chamber of Commerce have backed away from supporting a greater Norwich and now believes that “bigger is better” and we ought to have a “Norfolk wide lobby”. Many groups will back the winning side; City Hall have I think just days to stop this leakage.
We had a Councillor briefing tonight and the feelings amongst my colleagues in other parties was still utter surprise; I think that the searching for a reason “why” will start tomorrow. One source said to me that they don’t know how Norwich managed to throw it away from this position; I think that when we re-read the BC report in the light of tomorrow morning, we may once again be left with more questions than answers.
Margaret Hodge, a Culture Minister, has found herself in the middle of a most bizarre row over free entry into Norwich museums. The MP was drafted into the City in order to support Labour’s re-election bid and they used the chance to announce a headline-grabbing pledge to make entry into museums free. However, there is always a catch …
… The pledge is only if Norwich gets unitary. And even then, only if Labour gets control (increasingly unlikely – the Council will be Tory is the boundaries are wide enough). So, Norwich Labour are now writing the budget and service plans for a council that doesn’t yet exist. And poor Cllr Ferris says that the unitary council won’t need the funding from the museums. How on earth does she know this?
And despite these rather obvious flaws in the plans – obvious enough for most people – the Minister insisted on welcoming the ideas, despite knowing they can’t fulfill the pledge.
Typical Labour, but it says a lot about one Labour Councillor who’ll do anything to be re-elected and one Labour Minister who’ll say anything she’s told.
Norwich Conservatives will today launch our alternative budget ahead of Tuesday’s crunch council meeting. The budget will see more investment into key areas such as recycling but will trim the unitary spending of the council to deliver an overall freeze on council tax.
Taxpayers in Norwich have been hammered by Labour year after year. Once again we are looking again at inflation busting rises that will see senior citizens and low income families suffer.
That’s why, as Conservatives, we believe in keeping council tax low. Conservative run South Norfolk Council has led the way in setting a freeze on council tax and now we hope to do the same in Norwich.
Clearly much of the spending is good, but unitary stands alone as being Labour’s great white elephant in the City. We’re picking up the bill for Labour’s political vanity.
It is ridiculous that when services are in need of extra investment and people across Norwich are being told there is no money available, we are planning to spend £800,000 of taxpayers money on Unitary. This brings the bill for Unitary well into the millions for the people of Norwich.
Clearly the council needs to do some preparation work so we are suggesting a compromise – that £300,000 be taken out of the unitary budget and be used to cut tax for thousands of hard working people across the City.
However, we would go further than that – trimming another £250,000 off Labour’s unitary bill and putting that money directly into future community projects, making the lives of people around our City better.
The unitary debacle has gone on long enough and cost more than enough. It’s time people knew that at least one party is willing to put them, their families and their services first in all this. The Conservatives are willing to take tough decisions and say that tax is too high and must now come down.
Residents can also use the elections this May to send Labour and the LibDems a message – if you want to pay less tax, spend more on services and less on political bureaucracy you have to vote Conservative.
Yesterday morning I was out in Eaton with local candidate Niall Baxter to help knock on doors. Interestingly the unitary issue was way down the list of concerns – it was beaten by the state of the roads, council tax levels, AWC, the fate of the ex-England manager and the driving test not being tough enough.
In fact the only person who mentioned it without prompting was a LibDem voter is massively opposed to the plans – and, yes, she will be switching to the Tories next year.
Not a single person in favour of Unitary, just one person against. Why isn’t this more of an issue? Or is it just us and the EDP that care?
For those who believe that parliament is all about the punch ‘n’ judy of PMQs, please watch this film about the debates in Wesminster Hall. 90 minutes through the film you get to see an excellent section on the unitary debate in Norfolk.
Led by Mid Norfolk’s Tory MP Keith Simpson, it engages Charles Clarke (Norwich S), Norman Lamb (N Norfolk), Henry Bellingham (NW Norfolk), Richard Bacon (S Norfolk) and also the Minister, John Healy, and Shadow Minister, Alastair Burt.
Overall unitary is given a good thrashing by the LibDems and Tories, but the real winner here is the quality of parliamentary debate.
I have read today in the Evening News (not online) that the first district councillor has quit over the possible unitary future for the county. One of the Conservatives on Great Yarmouth District Council says that the whole issue has been a Labour stitch-up and Unitary would be a disaster.
Now I’m not quite sure how resigning helps this situation but I do feel, cynic that I am, that somewhere in a Westminster bunker some Labour strategist is smuggly grinning to himself because this unitary move might be seen as a way of destroying the strong Conservative activist base in Norfolk. One down, how many more to go? Why, by quitting, are we allowing Labour to get away with this? We as a party must stick together and fight this all the way.
There were furious scenes at tonight’s council meeting in Norwich after Labour and LibDem Councillors voted down plans for a democratic referendum on the controversial unitary issue – and then proceeded to stop Conservative councillors and rebels from their own ranks taking part in the debate.
After just 4 speeches on the motion, Labour Councillor Alan Waters moved a motion to vote on the issue straight away – backed by Labour and the LibDems – which blocked two Conservative Councillors and breakaway Green and LibDems from speaking.
This is clearly a “double attack on democracy” and it was an attempt to suppress anti-unitary feeling in the council chamber and in their own parties. Catton Grove Conservative Councillor Eve Collishaw and Lib Dem Mile Cross Councillor Carl Mayhew both attempted to log that their efforts to speak had been denied in the minutes but were refused by council chiefs.
This is an unbelievable attack on democracy. The people of Bowthorpe, Catton Grove and Mile Cross should all know that their voices were silenced by an oppressive Labour and LibDem majority on the council.
First they say that government, not the people, should decide on the future of our local government, and now they say that anti-unitary councillors shouldn’t be able to speak in the debate.
We know that Labour treat Norwich like their own fiefdom and don’t want Conservatives to raise the issue of the amount of money they are wasting on this issue or the idea that people should vote on the future on the council but we are democratically elected and will continue to speak up for our constituents.
Councillors are, quite rightly, fuming about this tonight. What is the point of being elected if Labour and the LibDems won’t let free speech rule?
LibDem Councillor Carl Mayhew stormed out of the meeting just seconds after being denied the right to speak on the issue. We all know how Carl Mayhew felt on this issue, but we stayed to oppose more wasteful spending by the LibDems in the next motion. The question now remains – do Norwich City Council believe in democracy at all?
This issue won’t go away now … its open season in City Hall.
In trying to explain away the confusion over his stance on the Norwich Unitary bid in the Evening News, Dr Gibson concludes by saying that “I await to see if a referendum is called.”
As it was the Conservatives who first put down a motion to call a public vote on Unitary, opposed by Labour and the LibDems, I welcome his tacit support for a referendum. However, I might have thought that one of our City MPs might be a bit more up to date because the government has specifically ruled out a vote on the issue. In the same way that Gordon Brown refuses the people of the UK a vote on the proposed EU Constitution, his government refuses us a vote on how we should be governed locally.
The refusal of the Labour Government to allow local people a say before their local Council is considered for abolition is a denial of democracy. On the 5th July, the Conservatives in the House of Lords put down an amendment to require a binding referendum before any new Unitary Councils are created. The Government said, “where a democratically elected Council takes a decision it should be validated in the normal way through a local election, the most significant referendum of all. In our representative democracy, it is surely up to a democratically elected Council to make a decision that the electorate can always contradict at the ballot box.”
So local people are to be denied a voice again by Dr Gibson’s government, although I am sure that they will take the government’s advice and take the opportunity at any future general election to elect an MP who has consistently opposed Unitary for Norwich.
I was at the of senior Norfolk Conservatives yesterday discussing a response to the failed City Council unitary bid. The government has let it be known that they now favour a series of unitary councils across Norfolk and an enlarged Norwich unitary would solve the twin problems of value-for-money and affordability in the original bid. Such obvious politicing makes rational debate very difficult but we have been assured that Ministers haven’t made up their minds and that the Treasury is still very worried about the Norwich bid, even when enlarged. Now the Greens have gone against an enlarged unitary and I understand the LibDems are a bit limp too (no change there then!)
The meeting was totally united behind fighting for the status quo which has given us a 4* county council and some superb Conservative controlled districts. I still feel that Norwich should start by putitng its own house in order before trying this power grab.
Not only are there still the financial concerns – with a Unitary you pay more and get less – but now we understand that Labour’s own advisor has said that unitary’s never pay form themselves. Plus this 3 unitary solution does seem a rather naive plan to undermine the county of Norfolk. We are stronger together than we are apart.
I am from Norwich and I live in Norwich City Council. I am from Norfolk and I live in Norfolk County Council. Each council offers me the services appropriate to its size and functions. Easy. I am not part of some unitary blob that may or may not run from Taverham to Trowse or even Horsford to Long Stratton. How do these random coloured lines on a map compare to our historic counties? No wonder some people are calling this a campaign to .
The Conservatives are now clear and united on this – unlike Labour and the LibDems. We must harness the people power in Norfolk to stop this plan to split our county.
Given the unitary fight is now between the Labour and LibDems politicos at City Hall versus the people of Norfolk, I know who’d I would put money on.
This bid isn’t inevitable or a fait accompli. It’s far from that – the people will make sure of it.
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