Author: Phil

I figured I had barely heard from Ealing Southall Labour MP, Virendra Sharma, recently so when I saw that the local Labour types had wheeled him out for a rare trip across the River Brent today I thought I might check up on him.

The theyworkforyou.com website keep track of what MPs do. According to them Sharma has only spoken in 9 debates in the last year which is well below average amongst MPs.

If you look at the list of things he has spoken in three of the nine topics were Kashmir, Tamils and the Golden Temple. So a third of his paltry output was a bit specialist for most people.

The equivalent numbers for the other two Ealing MPs are 27 for Angie Bray and 37 for Stephen Pound. The difference between these two is accounted for by Pound’s role as Shadow Minister, Northern Ireland, compared to Bray being a back bencher. Bray managed to speak 3 times more than Sharma and Pound 4 times more.

It is perhaps unfair to call out Labour candidate for Ealing Central and Acton, Rupa Huq, on this issue as this is endemic in Ealing Labour’s bent politics.

On Friday Huq looked characteristically ill-at-ease as she stood beside East Acton councillor Hitesh Tailor and head of East Acton Primary School, Helen Williams. The latter is paid the best part of £100K of public money to run this school and she is wasting her time doing photocalls with election candidates. At least Tailor is elected and represents the ward in which her school is located. Huq has no locus and I really can’t see why she is on the premises. If the head wants to run an event alongside the Unison funded Stars in our schools campaign to thank her support staff I am not sure why she thinks it is appropriate to invite only Labour politicians, and an un-elected one at that.

None of this is new. In January this year, in the run up the local elections, Labour produced a press release (that wasn’t taken up by anyone as I recall) with this picture.

It shows the head of Selbourne Primary School, Barbara Anne Smith, and a senior council education officer, Opal Brown, posing with the three Labour candidates (none were actual councillors at the time) for the Perivale ward. I complained to the council and the press release disappeared from Labour’s website. The officer in charge told me that Brown didn’t know who she was being photographed with! A reminder was issued “on expectations in relation to this” apparently.

It happened again in April when Steven Twigg pulled Huq along to a visit to West Twyford Children’s Centre.

The head Rachel Martin seems to think it is appropriate to broadcast her Labour affiliations but she is not entitled to do it in working hours.

Again I complained to the council and Twigg deleted his tweet. The officer in charge told me “The school has been reminded of the guidance in relation to conduct in the run-up to elections” and he arranged for legal guidance to be re-circulated to all schools as a reminder.

It isn’t just head teachers that are supporting Labour’s political campaigning. The council often does it too. Labour’s Onkar Sahota abused public resources mercilessly in his camapaign for the GLA in 2012. For instance, council leader Julian Bell used his Parliamentary e-mail account to promote Sahota, Labour councillor for Elthorne, Yoel Gordon, used his council e-mail address when he was campaigning for Sahota and Sahota repeatedly got himself in official photographs before he was elected.

Having been caught out misbehaving previously in April Huq should know she is cheating and abusing public funds. It seems she doesn’t care though. Huq is Bell’s preferred candidate as Sahota was. The culture of cheating infects them all.

I decided to name names above after having politely and discretely taken this matter up with council officers twice before. If this embarrasses teachers then my response is they should stop.

Letter to @Jeremy_Hunt to stop NW London A&E closures due on 10 September with @RupaHuq @Hitesh_T @DrAyshaRaza pic.twitter.com/M6wNhB2khh

— Onkar Sahota (@DrOnkarSahota) September 1, 2014

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The local Labour party was keeping up its mendacious NHS campaign yesterday by staging the delivery of a letter to Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt. They haven’t published their letter and much more importantly they refuse to say what they would do if they were in charge.

The two A&E closures that come into force on 10th September will be a worry for people but I suspect that the NHS will navigate around them safely. It is after all the NHS’s own plan and they will have to pay the legal bills if things go wrong. The original plan was that four A&Es should close to bring the area into line with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s guidance that sustainable A&Es require a catchment area of 500,000. It is quite right that Conservative Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt ordered that Ealing and Charing Cross A&Es should remain in some form. For all the noise coming out of the local Labour crowd on this subject the only actor in this drama who has done anything for us is Hunt. The courts said the consultation was sound and turned down the council’s judicial review request. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel said that the whole programme was sound.

Bell, Sahota and the rest of the Labour crowd know they are being venal. They know that this programme is the local roll out of Labour’s own £20 billion Nicholson Challenge programme kicked off by Andy Burnham in 2009. They know it wouldn’t have been any different under a Labour government. This programme was on page 4:3 of their 2010 manifesto.

Indeed it might have been worse under Labour. Whatever you think of the Tories they have honoured their pledge to maintain NHS spending in real terms (as even Alistair Darling kept repeating in the recent Scottish debate). Labour made no such pledge and it is unlikely a Labour government would have been able to increase health spending.

Local Labour types have been painfully careful not to make any promises on the NHS. It is only 8 months to go before a general election when Labour might win power. Ed Balls has said there will be no new NHS cash from increased National Insurance or a new social care charge on death. The current programme will most likely roll on in its current form whatever government comes in in 2015. No government is going to find £20 billion (a year!) to undo Nicholson.

Local Labour politicians think they can blame their own policy on the Tories and get away with not making any promises of their own. Maybe they are right.

To repeat myself the only person who has done anything for Ealing so far is Jeremy Hunt who ordered that only two A&Es would close of 10th September not four. Labour sullenly refuses to make any promises.

Yesterday the online version of the Gazette published the latest opinion piece from Labour council leader Julian Bell. He rightly points up the opporitunities facing Ealing but makes too much of the dreaded cuts. He says:

Over the last four years we have already cut our budgets by £87m and things have been tough.
To have to find another £96m of cuts over the next four years is near on impossible.

Bell’s claims about cuts are exaggerated to say the least. He says that: “we have already cut our budgets by £87m”. This is a very misleading statement and forward looking statements by Labour and the council officers can be discounted as being equally misleading.

The reality is that total spending by the core of Ealing council increased by about £10 million in cash terms in the 2010-2014 period of the last council. If the council hadn’t been packing away underspends into reserves or using them to pay for capital projects spending would probably have been maintained in real terms in the core of Ealing council.

I asked Question 41 at the end of the last financial year:

Please state the council’s revenue spending for the following financial years: 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14.

If figures for the last financial year are not available please use the latest forecast out turn figures. Please separate out education spending and housing benefit spending. Everything else can be lumped together unless there are other large items that distort the figures.

The council, typically, did not answer my question as straightforwardly as I might like, in a way that is easily comprehensible by the public. That is because they are embarrassed by the gulf between the story they have been telling and the truth.

In the four year period education spending increased from £203.3 million to £259.7 million, a rise of £56.4 million or 28%. Generous indeed and well above inflation.

In the four year period housing benefit spending increased from £236.8 million to £271.3 million, a rise of £34.5 million or 15%. Certainly a real increase after inflation.

The council received a totally new public health grant to take on responsibilities from the NHS. It was much more generous than they were expecting at £21.4 million and council officers are convinced they will be able to manage this money much more effectively than the NHS and make it go further.

Spending on council housing rose from £65.1 million to £69.0 million, a modest rise of £3.9 million or 6%. Maybe a slight fall in real terms but more or less flat.

Finally, we get the everything else column which is a net figure for the core of Ealing Council. In other words they have taken total spending and already subtracted that part of it which is covered by income from fees and charges so the actual spend is many £10 millions larger than this. They don’t want you to see the whole picture because it makes the “cuts” look rather more manageable.

As it happens £10 million of the “cuts” Bell talks about are increases in charges for everything from parking to paying for carers. So the bit you can’t see got £10 million larger but they are not admitting to it. No wonder they say local government finance is opaque.

The figure for “All other spend net of fees & charges” was level rising from £337.2 million in 2009/10 to £337.3 million in 2013/14. This is a real terms drop but it is not so bad due to the extra £10 million from increased charges which is hidden in this presentation of the sums.

This picture doesn’t even tell the whole story as the council packed money away into reserves by underspending over the last four years. If the council had wanted to maintain spending in real terms it could have done by not underspending. The modest real terms cut has only arisen because the council chose to underspend on the current account.

Overall the council has seen flat or growing spending in some areas and only suffered a real terms cut to its core because of underspends. Julian Bell, and the council officers who maintain the fiction of cuts, really should be ashamed of the way they misrepresent the facts.