Steve Score, Leicester Socialist Party
“Does the Labour Party hate disabled people?” This was a question asked by one young person.
As part of a double whammy hitting disabled people, Leicester City Council is now cutting the council tax support for people on low incomes. It is now treating Personal Independence Payments (PIP), meant to support those who need it for mobility for care and the extra cost of trying to live independently, as income!
This has meant a huge hike in council tax for many people. Yet again, a heartless Labour Party penalises the most vulnerable. This is of course on top of announcing the ending of travel support for 16-plus-year-olds with special needs to get to school.
Leicester’s Labour council says that since 2011, as result of government cuts and the rise in the cost of social care, now privatised of course, (which is a legal duty), spending on all other services has halved. This has resulted in the loss of a huge number of services: youth services, adventure playgrounds, family centres, community centres, welfare advice… etc. 2,000 jobs have been lost so far.
No-cuts needs budgets
The Socialist Party has consistently argued that the Labour council should have fought government cuts. It could have used the hundreds of millions it had in the bank held as reserves to set no-cuts budgets, then gone to the workforce, the trade unions and the people of Leicester who need these services, to build a massive campaign to force the government to come up with the cash needed. Of course, using reserves can only last so long and would be a temporary step to buy time to build that campaign.
Instead, blaming the Tories, the Labour mayor and council passed on those cuts. Who are they going to blame now it’s a Labour government?
Another £20 million in cuts are now being made after the most recent council budget. Ironically, all the things they told us were impossible – using reserves, transferring capital budget surplus over to current spending, borrowing etc – are now being done by the city council, not to build a campaign against cuts, but to balance the budget while still making cuts.
They say they want to “buy time” (they must have read that much in our material!) in the hope the government may decide from the goodness of its heart to give them more cash later. Good luck with that!
