Posted on 2014-09-25 | 12:02

Roger has condemned the Coalition’s proposed cuts to Birmingham Council’s 2015 funding, which will see staff numbers decline to less than a third of their previous level, as “utterly outrageous and very damaging to our city”.

He commented: “I am absolutely furious that the Conservatives have decided to seriously threaten—if not completely destroy—Birmingham council’s ability to offer the city’s residents, including my constituents, the basic services they rely on. Since the Coalition government came in in 2010, they have already cut funding to councils in the most deprived areas by £782 per household, and in richest areas by just £48. This is just more of the same—punishing the poorest for a crisis that they did not cause, while allowing the wealthy to avoid contributing anything like their fair share.

“If the Government are really so short of cash that they have to cut our city’s local government to shreds, why are they not cracking down on corporate tax avoidance or the use of tax havens? Why are the cuts not evenly distributed between UK councils? As the council Leader has pointed out, Birmingham will receive a cut equivalent to £147 per next year, compared to the national average of just £45. Birmingham citizens pay the same rates of tax as the rest of the UK—why should we accept a cut which is three times that suffered by the rest of the country? Some county councils, such as the Conservative-controlled Buckinghamshire or Hampshire, will actually receive a spending increase next year.

“It is outrageously unfair and corrupt that the Conservatives are pouring funding into areas where their voters live, while expecting poorer parts of the UK to take all the pain of spending cuts. I do not see why the citizens of Birmingham should be expected to sacrifice their essential local services, while people in other parts of the UK receive a budget increase.”

Roger has tabled Written Parliamentary Questions to ask the Secretary of State for Community and Local Government, Eric Pickles, why Birmingham’s funding is being cut by three times the national average; why some councils receive an increase in spending and others a decrease; why all councils’ budgets were not decreased by the same percentage; and whether he has bothered to carry out an assessment of whether the cuts will increase deprivation in the city.