Surrey County Conservatives

County Lib-Dems are all spin and no substance (11th February)

“At this week’s meeting of the Full Council the Lib-Dems yet again failed to produce any of their own budget proposals and merely resorted to the ill directed wining and whingeing that has come to characterise their approach to County Council budgets,” says David Hodge, Deputy Leader of Surrey County Council. “At every budget Council I can remember the Lib-Dems, who have access to the same financial information and data that we do, have come to the chamber and gone missing when it matters. Complaining and saying ‘we would do it better’ might sound good to them but to the rest of us it simply sounds like a broken record. This year was a case in point: no alternative proposals, no proposed amendments to our budget, nothing of any substance. They are a complete shambles when it comes to matters of finance and all I can say is thank goodness they do not run Surrey County Council”.

Denise Saliagopoulos, Cabinet Member for Community Services and the 2012 Games, added, “I cannot understand how the opposition can agree the Council Tax rise yet then claim not to support the budget that goes hand in hand with it and not put any other proposals forwards. Surrey County Council is, alongside all other local authorities, facing a number of financial constraints as a result of Gordon Brown’s recession, and in this climate the best the opposition can do is to stand up and waffle.

I was, however, far more troubled by the actions of Surrey’s one remaining Labour councillor who suggested that the 2.5% increase in Council Tax was TOO LOW. It just goes to show that he is as economically illiterate as his colleagues in Westminster”.

Sally Marks, Member for Caterham Valley, also attacked the opposition, “one thing we keep hearing from the Lib-Dems is a call to cut the number of agency staff. Do they not realise that a very significant proportion of our agency staff are working as social workers? We can’t simply refuse to use agency workers out of some misplaced principle – our vulnerable children and adults would not be well served by Surrey County Council going down this route and I would hope that the Lib-Dems will be more responsible with their statements in the future. Dr. Povey has taken steps to try to address the problem that Surrey, alongside a number of other local authorities, have with the recruitment and retention of Social Workers and I would rather the Lib-Dems recognise this than make statements more concerned with attempting to grab headlines than deal with some of the serious problems facing this Council and our residents”.