Medway Budget Council 2012

I returned from this year's Budget Council meeting a couple of hours or so ago, which was well tweeted throughout (apart from a couple of comfort breaks) by Alan W Collins. This is a recent innovation and is very welcome.

I can report that the meeting was a little different this time, in several respects...

Traditionally, these events have had just the Capital and Revenue Budgets on the agenda as one item, and related items might appear separately, such as prudential limits, treasury management strategy, and one year (2008) we even had a review of the council's senior management structure. In 2009 the Council Plan came into being and this has been included on the Budget Council agenda these past four years.

New this year was a Pay Policy Statement, which is a new requirement placed upon councils, and a "fairer contributions" item. I shan't go into detail on these, as they were somewhat overshadowed by the fact of this being Labour councillor Vince Maple's first go at responding to the Budget being proposed by the Conservative administration of the Council, since becoming the Labour group's second-in-command. That post holds the responsibility for finance matters – it goes with the territory, as the saying puts it..

Now, I like Vince, and was immensely pleased at his promotion within the Labour group on the Council; but finance is not his strong suit – and it showed here. I was reminded of Alan Johnson when he was (briefly) shadow chancellor and really struggled to cope with responding to George Osborne's budget.

Vince handled himself well, though, as he always does, with his warm and relaxed style; but in his speech it took him more than ten minutes to get anywhere near talking about Medway, let alone the budget itself. Until then it had been a purely party political rant about the national situation, and not even as context-setting for the Medway business. It was all just as negative as his predecessors' efforts had always been, but this time it was largely off-topic as well!

He was responding to Alan Jarrett's by now well-established comprehensive and very open style of speaking at this time each year – this was his twelfth go at it, so it is hardly a surprise that he handles it in a polished and professional manner. Bearing in mind that this was Medway Unitary Authority's most difficult budget in its entire history, it was remarkable but consistent with previous years that services were maintained just about completely, despite actions by other parties' members threatening such services as the free swimming initiative.

To be honest, poor Vince was left very little room to manoevre as Alan Jarrett had covered so much ground so comprehensively. It was thus perhaps not surprising that his response was essentially just a party political rant (or "broadcast" as one member described it, "aimed at the wrong audience" as another said, "more like a Labour party selection speech" suggested a third). The fellow had nothing else to offer, though, so what else could he do?

As I have mentioned on earlier such occasions, there was a time when the Labour opposition would make an effort on behalf of the people of Medway by coming up with at least a semblance of an alternative budget. That was when they earned their Special Responsibility Allowances, and I well remember those occasions. Okay, their efforts were not all that great, and were invariably voted down – but at least they had tried.

For many years, though, they simply haven't bothered; so when they vote against the proposed Budget (as they do every year) it is valid for the Conservatives to claim that Labour members voted against anything and everything contained within that Budget, as they have proposed no (fully costed) alternative to anything.

At least the Liberal Democrats abstained rather than voting against...

Anyway, the "bottom line" is that Council Tax remains unchanged from last year (again) and effectively all front-line services are being maintained, even in cases where of necessity the provider of a particular service is changing. That is what the quarter of a million residents of Medway will have wished for, and if that can be achieved even in these supremely difficult times I think they'll be well content.