Only Wirral Greens offer fairer, greener solutions to the cost of living crises

Councillor Jo Bird said: Unfortunately, Labour projections don’t really add up. It doesn’t seem like Labour understand the difference between a budget pressure and a net budget gap.  

We are looking at budget pressures of £49 million, so we are told.

But Wirral’s Finance Director said that the gap would be bridged by a government settlement to be announced in December, by £13m of savings (not cuts to services) already proposed, £3.5m of reserves and £14m tranche 2 savings to be identified. He confirmed, this was last Wednesday at Policy and Resources committee, that the remaining net budget gap is £14 million.

And things change. Things are changing all the time. The government settlement might be different to what is expected. Inflation is going up and reducing our reserves.

We need to be realistic and honest with people who live and work on Wirral. We shouldn’t be giving them partial or out of date information. It should be as accurate and as up to date as it can be.

For example, we need to know how much budget Wirral Council would need to deliver only statutory services. We don’t know that yet. But we deserve to know it.  

The thing is, only Wirral Greens offer fairer, greener solutions to cost of living crises.

Firstly, we offer a Retrofit Revolution, which Councillor Naomi Graham will be proposing later today.

Secondly, we offer Warm Hubs in every community.

Thirdly, renewable energy investment, as Councillor Cleary said, that we needed decades ago.

Fourthly, real terms rises to wages, pensions and benefits – not something I’ve ever heard a Conservative councillor promote.

And fifthly, at least the Real Living Wage for everybody who works for Wirral Council and its contractors.

Its very disappointing to see Wirral Council advertising for School Crossing Patrols at only £9.86 per hour. That’s less than the Real Living Wage was. The Real Living Wage now of course is £10.90 an hour.

Six, information on your rights - directly delivered to thousands of Wirral households.

As well as helping people now who live and work in Wirral, we also need to help Wirral Council.

Wirral Greens are the only ones here protecting public services.

Yes, we should be lobbying the government for fair funding, which is why we are supporting this motion and the information that comes with it.

But only Wirral Greens offer short and long term solutions.

We should use Community Asset Transfers to put much-loved assets, like Bromborough library and civic centre, into community ownership.  

We should be pursuing long term policies to reduce not worsen inequalities that affect life expectancy and well-being. Policies that provide sustainable incomes, good housing, solid education and proper health care. Thank you.

Councillor Pat Cleary said: Firstly, I'd just like to begin with responding to what Councillor Anderson said. He kicked off by referring to our economic difficulties and citing COVID and the war in Ukraine.

What he didn't refer to was the impact that this new government has had almost immediately with their, mini budget. I was particularly struck by what happened just a few days afterwards, when the Bank of England had to print to buy £65 billion worth of government debt.

Had the bank not intervened with that, then funds managing money on behalf (this is the bank's own words), funds managing money on behalf of pensioners across the country would have been left with negative net asset value and cash demands that could not have been met. As a result at the Bank of England, it was likely that these funds would have have to begin the process of winding up the following morning.

Mr. Mayor, the Bank of England printing £65 billion of money to buy up government debt to stop pension funds worth over a trillion pounds from collapsing the next day. That's the economic mess that we're in today. But the failure of government policy goes back a long way.

Why are we why are we struggling so much with the energy situation at the moment? It's because of policy failures over many, many years. The failure to insulate homes across this country, the leakiest homes in Western Europe. We've known that for decades. And what are we done about it? Virtually nothing.

Now we have all these people suffering in fuel poverty and fuel prices going through the roof. Renewable energy, the cheapest source of energy, we have  - onshore wind. What have we had over the last 12 years? a ban on onshore wind. How much extra energy could we have been investing in over the last decade and more that would have saved us so much energy, and now we're paying for it in the billions and billions and billions of pounds of public money.

So it's an absolute scandal, the way the government over many, many years has failed on energy on cost of living. It's not just in the last few months. But obviously, the new government is making things much worse.

So here on Wirral we have to pull out all the stops, we have to do everything we can to avert this cost of living crisis. Officers have already acknowledged we will need to use some of our reserves to get us through that. That's a big change from just a few months ago, when we were told we couldn't use any of those reserves to keep places like Bromborough library and civic centre open.

But I do have an issue with the way the Labour Party approaches this. I'm not keen on the use of bankruptcy and closing all of our non-statutory services. What does that say to people who rely on those services, and people who work in those services in those libraries in those leisure centres?

I think that's a real issue about the message we're sending out and how we're running Wirral down. And I don't like that. I will be supporting the motion, but I would encourage the Labour Party to think about those impacts going forward. Thank you.