Surrey County Conservatives

At today’s Full Council Meeting Surrey Lib-Dems demonstrated more clearly than at any other time in recent memory their lack of regard for Council Services. At a time when Surrey’s Conservatives are dealing with ever reducing central government grants and are lobbying Westminster for increased funding for vital services the Liberal Democrat opposition instead seem to be suggesting that we should keep quiet any simply make do with what we have.

“At the moment we are having to borrow £145m to cover the costs of educating 6000 school children, we are being given new responsibilities for social care provision without any guarantee of receiving the necessary funding in the future that should accompany them and we are also inheriting a mess left by the botched financial promised of the Learning & Skills Council” says David Hodge. “At issue today was a motion calling for increased funding for our roads network. It has been estimated that it would take around £200m to bring our roads up to the standard that our residents would expect; yet we are only getting £14m for 2010/2011. This is an iniquitous situation and it needs addressing. Surrey Conservatives recognise this, and we are doing what we can to manage Surrey’s highway network at a time when we are facing budget squeezes caused by Gordon Brown’s recession. Surrey’s potholes are Gordon Brown’s potholes and it is time that the Lib-Dems realised that this rather than pretending otherwise”.

Mike Bennison, who is vice-Chairman of the Transportation Select Committee, also attacked the Lib-Dems; “if they don’t want to get extra monies from central government but want to spend more monies on highways where would they get the money from? Would they cut support for the vulnerable, would they refuse to spend monies on extra school places, would they be happy to reduce funding for waste disposal or would they prefer that we simply used up all our reserves and were not in a position to cope with unexpected events? The Lib-Dems would either leave the vulnerable worse off or leave Surrey unable to cope with unexpected events, like the snow and ice we have just experienced. Of course we would all like to be able to spend more in a number of vital areas, but we can’t spend what we don’t have”.

Dr. Povey, Leader of Surrey County Council, added, “We will lobby any government of any hue to fix the damage to Surrey’s roads, and to Surrey’s finances, by Gordon Brown and his Labour colleagues, and I am staggered that the Liberal Democrats appear to be siding with Labour rather than the Surrey taxpayer. Truly, only the Conservatives represent hope and change, whereas the Liberal Democrats wish to be a continuation of Labour by other means”.

David Hodge also reminded Members that at the February budget Council the Lib-Dems didn’t propose any amendments to the budget: “the Lib-Dems have the same access to officers that we do, yet they couldn’t propose a single amendment to the budget and now, a month after he event, they complain that they would have done things differently – yet when they have the chance they ducked the big decision. They are all spin and no substance”.