Surrey County Conservatives

County Lib-Dems at odds with Coalition (22nd July)

We cannot spend monies that we do not have.

Surrey County Council’s Deputy Leader, David Hodge, has today expressed his dismay at the continual inability of the County’s Liberal Democrats to come to terms with the present economic reality as the Coalition Government seeks to sort out the country’s finances;

“At the July Council Meeting Tim Hall, our Cabinet Member for Change & Efficiency, tabled a motion that sought to recognise the current economic climate whilst restating our views on working with the government to freeze next year’s Council Tax and to lobby for fair funding for Surrey, and acknowledging that there will be no extra monies.

I was shocked that the Lib-Dems deemed the national situation irrelevant and suggested that we should not be talking about national issues. It is simply not possible for Surrey County Council to ignore the national economy when looking at our own finances and our future spending. We do not exist in isolation and we are not a self-contained economic unit.

Labour spent monies that they did not have and borrowed what they could not afford: the Coalition are cleaning up their mess and they are doing a very good job of it. Yes it is painful, but no-one has attempted to pretend otherwise – except for Surrey’s Lib-Dems.

They have talked of ‘Tory’ cuts, but they should heed the words of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Danny Alexander who said ‘We have a choice, we can act fairly, responsibly and decisively now, or follow the approach of the previous government - deny and delay, which would only end in greater cuts being forced upon us’. I couldn’t have put it better. We need to act now to avoid more pain later”.

Cllr. Hall added; “No-one in local government is happy with the current situation, but we are where we are. The country has less money, we have less money and our residents and businesses have less money. We therefore have to look at our spending to ensure we are getting value for money and we have to make savings. The inability of the all County’s Liberal Democrats to grasp this simple reality would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious.

I tabled what I felt to be a perfectly serious motion and was accused of ‘laying heffalump traps’. Frankly I think that a debate on Surrey County Council’s finances, and those of the country in general, deserves a better response than quotes from Winnie-the-Poo”.

Michael Sydney, who represents the Lingfield Division also added his voice; “It is more clear than ever that the Lib-Dems don’t get it. There isn’t any more money – In fact there is less. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, ‘the last Government committed to spend money it simply did not have. It made commitments it knew the next Government could not fulfil and in doing so cynically played politics with the hopes of our communities’. The problem for the local Lib-Dems is that they appear to be doing exactly the same thing. They are opposing our efforts to deal with the deficit without being at all constructive. If they cannot accept the new reality and accept that their party is now, in government, part of the team trying to address Labour’s legacy they should consider following the example of their ex-Colleague in Tandridge, Lisa Bangs, and leave the Lib-Dems. That, at least, would be honest. For members of the Lib-Dems at local level to oppose the actions of the Lib-Dems in the Treasury and in Government by refusing to accept reality is simply not at all a credible position”.