Communities secretary Eric Pickles has caused a storm by telling Manchester to ‘get over’ swingeing cuts – and claimed ‘you’re not being picked on’.
Council chiefs have been at loggerheads with ministers since the scale of funding cuts to England’s town halls were revealed at the end of last year.
Manchester politicians have slammed their deal as ‘disproportionate’ and ‘unfair’, claiming the town hall will lose 21 per cent of its government grant by 2013. Leafy shires like Surrey, Dorset and Buckinghamshire are facing cuts of less than 8pc.
But the government says the cut to Manchester’s funding is 15pc, claiming the reduction in overall spending power to the city – which takes into account other funding streams such as cash to freeze council tax – will not be as steep as town hall bosses say.
Mr Pickles, secretary of state for local government, today fuelled the row further, telling the M.E.N: “You’ve got to look elsewhere in the country. Manchester has got to get over the idea it’s being picked on. It isn’t.
“It’s not possible for me to nor would I have any desire to. Manchester is a very important city in the UK. I want to see it prosper and succeed but the way politicians have responded has been less than impressive.”
Mr Pickles insisted he was mindful of places like Manchester when looking at spending formulas, ensuring they did not get a lesser cut.
He said: “The truth is whether it be me or the Labour party we would have been facing reductions of roughly the same amount but at least I’ve tried to ameliorate that problem.
“Manchester has to recognise there are other parts of the country with similar cuts, dealing with the cuts slightly better than Manchester are. To an extent they (residents) are feeling cuts imposed by the politicians in Manchester not the government. I’m sorry to be so blunt. I want Manchester to succeed but it has to play its part.”
He pointed to the city’s poor record on uncollected council tax and said the town hall could do more to share services with neighbouring authorities.
The council has blamed having to make huge service cutbacks and job cuts worth £109m this year, rising to £170m next year, on its government settlement. Libraries, youth centres, public toilets and free Sunday parking will all be hit.
Manchester council leader Sir Richard Leese responded to Mr Pickles’ comments, saying: “I think its regrettable that the minister is still denying responsibility for the scale, the depth and the unfairness of the cuts. It’s all very well saying ‘get over it’ but why can’t it be fair?
“I’ve always acknowledged there are other areas that are being just as badly treated as we have been and actually we are doing our best to manage the cuts to cause minimum damage to this city.”
Mr Pickles also spoke about this week’s budget, delivered by chancellor and Tatton MP George Osborne, saying a new rail link between Piccadilly and Victoria stations and the rise in personal tax allowance were good news for people in Manchester, despite wider public spending cuts.
He said: “Under the circumstances, an average taxpayer in the north west will be £326 better off (as a result of the income tax changes). It’s not an awful lot of money but its better than being £326 worse off.
“In terms of the cuts package, I’m afraid they are a reflection of the circumstances we inherited when we came to power.”
He said he was delighted by thechancellor’s announcement that local authorities across England would freeze council tax this year, adding: “Council tax has doubled over the last ten years or so, so this is a good rest.”
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A good bit of straight talking. A rare quality in a politician.
Pickles: - “Under the circumstances, an average taxpayer in the north west will be £326 better off (as a result of the income tax changes). It’s not an awful lot of money but its better than being £326 worse off.
Cue: 'You've never had it so good.'
And what a fine figure of a man, Pickles is - more cake/pies/lard sarnies, anyone?
If you could design a living metaphor for Tory greed and self-regard then Mr Pickles is that living embodiment of all the things that make them despised by ordinary people.
There's fundamentally something "culturally weak & politically apathetic" about a city, that has the "same" council leader for 15 years and the "same" party running the place for 36 years!
But if only Mr Pickles had the "imagination & guts" (pardon the pun) to really reform local government, then we could get rid of Leese & his "self-pitying" like!
(Well if London can have a Greater London Authority & elected mayor, why not Greater Manchester too Mr Pickles?)
This little line that Leese and co keep trotting out is getting really tiresome and the lies is really tedious. If you want to research the truth, Google for "local government formula per head" and you'll find a spreadsheet as a result which tells you EXACTLY what each Council is getting.
Manchester - £714.36 per head
Surrey - £135.61 per head
Dorset - £52.37 per head (average of 6 Councils)
Buckinghamshire - £14.10 per head
How is Manchester hard done by? They have been granted between 5 and 50 times more than the leafy suburbs they complain about!!!
Is it simply that they had over £1,000 per head pre cuts, and have now had that cut back. They are still by far better off than many other areas.
In fact out of 586 Councils and authorities listed in that spreadsheet, only 18 have a higher grant than Manchester, meaning that Manchester City Council has a higher grant than 96% of other authorities. It's also notable that of those other 18 authorities only ONE is NOT Labour.
Manchester, you've still got a better settlement than most, so stop whining.
While we are straight talking why dont we cut/stop foreign aid .and put the money saved back into our ecconomy?
I would give Pickles a cut....his wages and his job!!
I agree with Eric. I live in Manchester and I'm worse off with regards to the recent budget, and going to be worse off with the planned cuts - like many others and I personally am prepared to go through some financial pain IF all this reduces the huge debt burdens created by the last Labour government!
He doesn't actually say "Get over it". The headline makes him sound like a character from Hollyoaks - "Manchester has got to get over the idea it's being picked on" has a totally different tone.
Is he friends with Norman?
The folk of Northwest England were offered the change of a regional government, as for example in the Federal Republic of Germany, or Switzerland, or the Netherlands, so they could rule themselves. They said No thanks! We like being ruled politicians and civil servants in London who have no accountability and no interest in the millions who live in the "provinces".
The country is in dire financial state and we now need to spend millions on a large review to work out where it went wrong or just fill in the missing word "Labou_ spent more and more on the countries credit card"
I just love Pickles!
I find it hard to take Eric Pickles serious when he talks about cuts and waste.
This is a man who lives 37 miles from Westminster yet decided he needed to have a second home nearer to work.
How did he justify the tax payer giving him tax free payments to fund his second home?
By using the following argument on Question Time (link at bottom of comment)
"I’ll explain why. Because the House of Commons works on clockwork: you have to be there, if you’re on a committee, you have to be there precisely. Particularly for someone like me, I was a number two, Let me explain, let me explain, please just let me explain for a moment. I had to be there -”
David Dimbleby asks “Like a job, in other words?”
“Yes exactly like a job. If you’re number two in the opposition, you’re essentially running the committee. So I needed to be there at 930 to move those amendments. It doesn’t matter if a Liberal Democrat isn’t there, but it matters if I’m there -”
I wonder what he feels he is entitled to now that he is actually in government and not just in opposition, whether all jobs should provide such tax free perks to staff who need to get to work on time, and whether he still feels that it doesn't matter if Libdems are there or not.
A straight talker - no, a bloated hypocrit - yes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/7967561.stm
I wonder what his annual food bill comes to?
Billy, if I went out and bought a house on a high interest mortgage, a car I would never own on HP, loads of stuff that loses value, to the poitn where I was up to my eyeballs in debt, would you consider that to be 'investment' because that is what the last government did.
Health centres that the NHS will never own, rented over 25 years off private developers for 6 times their construction cost, schools where we pay £30 for a private contractor to change a light bulb. Selling off the gold.
Oh yes, the last government made great 'investments'.
Open your eyes.