Kevan Lim

When ever we have a local election campaign there is one issue that I can guarantee will come up in discussion with electors. Its the highly likely prospect of residents not understanding the difference between the county council and the borough council.. For most people its the council and they have almost no idea of the difference between the two councils. And why should they.

A typical example was a letter from a resident supporting improvements around Clifford Road School for children’s safety, but blaming me for allowing a planning application in the area which will increase traffic even though its the borough council who made the planning decision.

There is absolutely no reason why we should have two councils. Its a reason why I have always supported having a single unitary council for an area. It means voters have a clear line of accountability, one council to deal with and one councillor with responsibility for decisions in their area and we avoid the kind of duplication of services and costs the current system give us.

One issue which I hope will come out of the current public anger about national politics is greater power for local councils. But if councils are to have any impact then government has to simplify the system. That should mean that all public services including health and economic development in an area should be the responsibility of one council. It seems so obvious.

The problem is that successive governments have made it more complicated. Its no wonder voters get confused.

Crazy 24 hours.

Firstly an interview for Radio Cambridgeshire in my role as Chair of the Europe panel of the regional assembly. They wanted someone to explain why European issues were important.

Then, Suffolk Colleges “any questions”. Run like the real thing with the media students running the studio. Facing Jeremy Pembroke, Mike Baxter from Ipswich town and a representative from federation of small business. Interesting. Of course first question of the night was to me about MP’s expenses. However my views that the whole situation is disgraceful and damaging to democracy seem to be shared by most of the audience.

Most interesting session was when we got onto UK debt, an issue I will return to.

This morning Cambridge for further discussions about the future of regional arrangements in the east. A complete mess because of the governments insistence on some regional grouping that can only contain leaders of councils. we have made some progress but my problem is convincing government ministers to leave the best arrangements to people in the region rather than imposing from London.

And then back to ipswich for the Labour Party regional launch of the European campaign with cabinet minister Liam Byrne. Probably a complete waste of time especially as nobody talked about Europe. However I did manage to grab Liam Byrne and pressed the need for the PM to do something decisive about MP’s expense.

Which brings me back to the debate at Suffolk College on debt. Whilst David Cameron seems to be projecting a voter friendly image, a bit like Tony Blair and claiming that the conservatives have changed, on the ground in Suffolk we still seem to have the old style Tories in action. One of Jeremy’s key responses on national debt was to say, that it is essential that we dramatically reduce the size of the public sector.
Which means in Suffolk more and more reductions in social care, higher charges and probably drastic cuts in staff.

Of course we will have to make choices and even if we win the county council I do not expect the choices to be easy. But its clear I could never be a Tory because Jeremy and his colleagues don’t seem to understand that what the public sector is about first and foremost is protecting the weak, the poor and the disadvantaged. In the brave new world of new Tories the Tories of Suffolk seem to be locked into the age of thatcher.

welcome to the blog of Kevan Lim, County Councillor for Ipswich St Helens