Ministers move to ‘shift blame for funding cuts to local councils’

Last Updated: February 6, 2017By

Jim McMahon, a former leader of Oldham Borough Council, said the public would face ‘a council-tax bombshell’ in 2020 [Image: Christopher Thomond for the Observer].

The government is being accused of trying to bypass parliament with legislation giving the communities secretary executive power to allocate local government funding for services without a vote in the Commons.

The move would make councils, rather than the government, directly accountable for a £5.8bn shortfall that threatens to plunge social-care services into total crisis.

Labour MP Jim McMahon, the shadow local government minister, said he believed the changes were an attempt by the government to avoid scrutiny of funding shortfalls and to make councils take ownership of unpopular cuts to services such as the crisis-stricken social-care system.

Source: Ministers move to ‘shift blame for funding cuts to local councils’ | Society | The Guardian

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7 Comments

  1. jeffrey davies February 6, 2017 at 12:12 pm - Reply
  2. Justin February 6, 2017 at 1:08 pm - Reply

    The Usual then, it’s not our fault and we can’t address the problem ourselves because this shows what everybody know’s, the tory is incompetent and incapable,quite good at picking on vunerable adults, even better at hiding money offshore and when it comes to tax deals don’t get to google eyed, you’ll need your eyes testing, mind you that will cost you the way they are going on.

    so What’s the story Lying Tory

    we need a list of everything they done that is untruthfull (that will be long), might even be able to get it to rhyme then we can see some real poetic licence!!!

    and let’s be fair let’s have a honest list so we are shown to be non discrimantory, though my view is that will be a waste of a sentence as this will just be a blank page.

    I will start the ball rolling:-

    350 Million into the NHS as advertised by the pretty red bus!!!

    • Barry Davies February 6, 2017 at 8:56 pm - Reply

      You mean the £350 million that is still being wasted as it is still going to the eu, it’s beyond me why the people who keep complaining are the ones who actually voted for it to keep going. How are the councils going to raise the money when they are being told their budgets are to be controlled and they can’t raise the local tax at the time they are supposed to offer more services?

      • Mike Sivier February 6, 2017 at 9:49 pm - Reply

        The sum in question never amounted to £350 million, though. Most of it came back to the UK in grant funding or rebates.

  3. Simon February 6, 2017 at 5:28 pm - Reply

    This was the reason the Tories and latterly Labour wanted a mad dash towards localism. Want to make cuts but not shoulder all the blame? Transfer council tax and spending decisions to local authorities, cut their grant from central government, and then blame them for all that goes wrong.

  4. Christine Bergin February 7, 2017 at 11:01 am - Reply

    Of course we all know that ‘they’ are so good with budgets that they have tried hard to reduce the deficit, so hard that it has increased and continues to do so. Have you not noticed it is always someone else’s fault that their cunning plan to balance the books doesnt work (and never will while money is handed to tax avoiders and filthyrich buddies.

    • Mike Sivier February 7, 2017 at 1:50 pm - Reply

      The deficit has come down, in fairness.
      It’s the debt that has nearly tripled.

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