Its the Council's main Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee meeting next Tuesday, the 16th April ... all the papers are now out and
available here ... you'll see that there are several reports on Welfare Reform.
As regular blog readers will know, the main Welfare Reform changes (especially the Bedroom Tax) have featured heavily in recent debates in-and-around the City Chambers ... I'll provide just a few, relevant links:
- Council help and general information is here
- I referred to much of this myself last week - here
- the Edinburgh Labour site ran an update on our joint Labour/SNP position, on the Bedroom Tax, which can be seen here
- there was some coverage yesterday, in the Evening News, on next week's Committee Reports - you can see that here
- on the back of this formal Council News Release - here
- I was subsequently asked to do a piece for The Scotsman contrasting our
local Labour/SNP solution with the Holyrood stalemate ... the newspaper has run that article this morning, and I'll simply re-produce it below - and, as ever, would welcome any constructive feedback:
Is
there not more to unite, than divide us?
Take just one topical subject – the Bedroom
Tax.
Here in the Edinburgh Council Chambers, the
local Labour Party and Scottish National Party have managed to forge a
joint-position which will mean a ‘No Eviction’ policy for the
Council tenants affected, as long as they are constructively engaging with the
local authority. Many other Councils, with a variety of local coalitions, have
managed to arrive at more or less the same position.
Specifically, we are ensuring that those tenants who are
subject to the under occupancy charge and build up arrears because their
housing benefit no longer covers their rent, are not going to be evicted. They
will have to show that they have done all that could reasonably be expected of
them to avoid falling into arrears and we will pursue the collection of arrears
... but will not evict in those circumstances. Frankly, the last thing we want
is to make people homeless and then have to pick up the even more costly pieces
of destroyed lives.
Yet, glance at Holyrood and you’d be forgiven
for thinking that such a joint SNP/Labour agreement on the Bedroom Tax was a
simple, human impossibility. This attack on the poor and vulnerable should
certainly enable us to unite at both a local and a national level. But, the
level of tribal antagonism … and it does come across as near-hatred … between
our respective parties’ activists, particularly on social-media, is pernicious.
It’s enough to switch the most interested individual off politics altogether.
Most political commentators, and certainly
many researchers, would acknowledge that trust has broken down badly between
the electorate and politicians at all levels of government and I believe that this kind of unnecessary tribalism certainly
does not help. For me, we’ll never successfully re-invigorate our democracy if
we can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge that there’s a problem to solve and to
change the way we do things politically. Business as usual just cannot,
sensibly be an option.
It was doing things differently that enabled
historically bitter enemies to create a Labour / Scottish National Party coalition
in Edinburgh’s City Chambers after last May’s council elections. Most thought
that Steve Cardownie and I were not natural bedfellows and they were right. And
on the face of it neither are Alex Salmond and Johan Lamont. But, learning to
put one’s ego aside and take a pragmatic approach to make a much bigger impact
together, than you would apart, is surely a prize worth striving for.
Out of Scotland’s 32 Local Councils, Edinburgh was the only one to form
such a two-party Labour/SNP Coalition. And, I think it’s fair to say that the
arrangement came as a bit of a surprise to many who did
not believe the two parties could ever work together – at any level. Coalition
politics by its nature means acknowledging differences as well as developing
relationships built on trust and mutual respect and I’m not claiming this was
without its difficulties.
It just doesn’t stop at forming a coalition
though. In a few weeks’ time, Edinburgh’s Capital Coalition will have been
running Scotland’s capital city for a full year. Our joint programme to radically
transform the way that services are planned, managed and delivered, and move Edinburgh
towards being a truly co-operative council will ultimately be what matters. We
want council services to be transformed by
shifting power; so that the council is working much more ‘in partnership’
with the local people it is ultimately here to serve.
And we have embarked on a new approach to what
we do. This has included some very radical actions including establishing the
first Council Petitions Committee in Edinburgh to enable local residents to
have an additional channel to raise issues of concern, with their elected
representatives, and directly with the Council.
We have completely revised our budgetary
processes, to be much more open and interactive across the political divide, as
well as with the public, by publishing an early draft budget thus allowing
months of debate and discussion before any final decisions were made.
And yes, our electorate and city stakeholders
can only interact positively with us if they know what we stand for and have
the ability to judge us on delivering it.
That is why our Capital Coalition
published a new ‘Contract with the Capital’ which set out over
fifty clear service and policy commitments in some detail and the ‘monitoring against delivery’ of those
promises is live and very visible via the front-page of the main Council
website: www.edinburgh.gov.uk
I’d be so
bold as to contest that even our local, political opponents – whilst not
agreeing with everything we’ve done – would acknowledge that we’re certainly
doing politics differently. If we’re to
stand any chance of rejuvenating our political culture at a Scottish level, and
regaining the trust and respect of the electorate, we surely must not allow
party interests to get in the way of good policies and a refreshed approach to
doing business, yet I see little evidence of this.
Here locally, we have managed to agree on
every significant issue facing the capital city of Scotland for nearly a year
now and whilst it would be silly to deny that we have not had our moments of tension
– as I watch our respective Holyrood colleagues, Johann Lamont and Alex
Salmond, slog it out every Thursday at FMQs, I can’t help but think we’re not
doing too badly.
Okay, the raging constitutional debate in
Scotland may not affect us Councillors as directly as MSPs – but are you really
telling me that there are simply no issues on which our MSPs can cooperate for
the next 18-months as we await the referendum?
All that
said, I completely understand the importance of the decision we’ll all have to
make on Thursday 18th September 2014. I understand the reality that
the constitutional debate, in the run-up to that decision, is going to dominate
Scottish politics for the next 18-months.
But do we
really need to suspend all political cooperation, on all issues, during that
period?
Frankly,
especially against the backdrop of current UK-politics, I happen to think
Labour and the SNP fundamentally agree on a huge swathe of domestic issues. Issues
that really have nothing to do with the constitutional debate, on which I
acknowledge we are obviously divided.
Here
in the City Chambers of Edinburgh, we’re not going to suspend all cooperation
on local political issues because of that constitutional divide.
Councillor Andrew Burns
Leader of the City of Edinburgh
Council
