In the December Report
Introduction
The Mayor’s progress
Budgets & Cuts
The Police Commissioner
Disturbances
EDL
Unemployment
Olympic Stadium and costs
Cycle Safety
Get In Touch With Me!
Introduction
Seasonal greetings to you all! It’s been an age since my last report - there are several reasons for this but I think I am now, back to my old (semi-) reliable self. It has been a busy time. Budgets, police matters (including the resignation of another Commissioner), pre-election skirmishes, riots, against a backdrop of Government spending cuts, worsening unemployment and an economy bumping along without significant growth. With a growing population London needs growth to stand still. So pretty tough times and surprising I had time to do anything, although I did move house, which was fun!
The Mayor, meanwhile, has been cranking up his campaign machine, with a few attention-grabbing announcements and his traditional approach of attacking the Government while pretending to praise it, (or is it the other way around?), flirting with the Tory faithful while pretending that he has no ambitions beyond the leadership of London, and pretending to offer leadership to London while clearly focusing much of his attention elsewhere. The British public haven’t rumbled him yet. They will one day!
The Mayor’s progress
There are now five months until the next Mayoral election, a rematch between the candidates of the 3 main parties. Given the voting system, it will probably come down to second preferences and so all candidates need to reach towards the ‘centre’ and the Tory Mayor is no exception. Viewed from a spaceship (admittedly it would have to be a spaceship filled with people who are interested in politics, which is unlikely – they probably became astronauts to escape from politicians) he is almost a Social Democrat in his policies, albeit with this strange tendency to be very right wing when talking to his own Party. More important, he has charisma, and makes people feel good, which is a particular strength at a pretty grotty time for the economy - we know things are bad but don’t quite want to believe it.
Between now and next May everything is with an eye to the ballot box. While this is predictable, it may mean that a number of tough decisions – about cuts, in particular - will be shoved to one side until the election is past. This will doubtless store up some problems, particularly with whoever is Mayor having to make hard decisions after the election. But a number of events have occurred which cannot be shoved into a box to be dealt with later. These include the riots, the fares rise, the early stages of budget making, the loss of a Police Commissioner and appointment of a new one, and the growing problems of unemployment.
Budgets & Cuts
We are now heading into the budget-making time of year. This will be the final budget of the Mayoral term, and, fairly or otherwise, will be used as a measure of his 4 years. It will also be the budget inherited by his successor, or to start his second term. The news is that the cuts announced by the Coalition Government are inevitably affecting us, and are ratcheting upwards in their second year. Different bits of the ‘GLA family’ are different but generally it is bad news. A brief summary follows:
Transport for London is, relatively, immune from Government cuts as it raises much of its budget through loans and fares, and a multi-year funding agreement with Government. The bad news though is the Mayor’s policy of increasing fares, year on year, by RPI+2%, (which this year is about 7%). The Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the (partial) rescue of this in his Autumn Statement, announcing an additional grant allowing the increase to be kept down to RPI + 1%. Although this might be viewed as good news for the mayor, it probably wasn’t, because having led Londoners through the pain of a 7% rise, he has now had to withdraw it and announce….. a 6% rise. A bit like being robbed, and then having 1/7th of it returned. Don’t expect gratitude.
There is a further twist to the transport budget arguments, which is that a lot of us believed that, even without a gift from the Chancellor, the Mayor didn’t need to follow his RPI+2% policy this year, because transport revenues are healthier than predicted. He insisted that he would not break the formula just because it as an election year, which he accused his predecessor of doing. I am not sure Londoners will appreciate this, if the fare rise wasn’t necessary.
Unlike TfL, the Met Police are dependent almost totally on Government grants, but also of course policing is (and police numbers in particular are) one of the more politically contentious areas. The Mayor insists that he will maintain police officer numbers close to 32,000 but it is hard to see how this can continue beyond the election. A number of budgeting wheezes, and delayed decisions, are being used to get through the next few months, until the Olympics, and coincidentally the elections, are passed. There has been a big cut in police staff (employees who are not police officers), of a degree that is already pushing police officers into desk jobs and off the streets. There is a body of evidence, although the Mayor argues otherwise, that cuts in police strength are merely being delayed. Roughly 1 in 5 police officers, about 6,000, are now funded through agreements by other organisations – some Boroughs but mainly Transport for London, who fund Safer Transport Teams. Will this be possible into the future?
The Fire Service is relatively safe this year and is helping, for a second year, to support the police budget, cutting its reserves by 60% and giving £30million to the Met. Because the cuts to the Fire Service budget are ‘back-loaded’ (i.e. worse to come) there is a looming problem, in my view, in future years.
The remainder of the GLA faces savings in a range of admin and policy areas. The demise of the London Development Agency, which is now replaced by a unit in City Hall for which there is very little funding is, in my view, a particular problem at a time of economic difficulty, as it should be precisely at this time that public agencies should be investing in skills, training and projects to lift the economy up again. The Mayor is also taking on a housing funding role, but for the next year the money for this is outside of his budget making.
The above is an outline of where we are. I will update you in my next report.
The Police Commissioner
As we moved into the summer, a crisis erupted over ‘phone hacking’ and alleged inappropriate relationships between journalists and the police. This became a massive national story into the summer and the Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, plus a number of other senior police officers and staff, left. We now have a new Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, who comes with a very strong record from his performance in Merseyside. However, compared to London, Merseyside is a far smaller police force. He will, like all before him, be severely tested in London. He initially showed himself to be a bit clumsy with the media. He must ensure he doesn’t become the story - we can’t afford to lose another Police Commissioner.
The phone hacking story then went quiet because so much else happened, but I think it will erupt again - it is rumbling away with the Leveson Inquiry. Will it touch the (currently) Teflon Mayor? Time will tell. He has a couple of questions to answer on this matter but like T S Eliot’s cat, he has successfully avoided, so far, any serious trouble. The two areas are that, first; he had previously described the allegations of phone hacking and inappropriate police behaviour as ‘codswallop’. For a man who sits at the political head of London’s policing, this was foolish and shows poor judgement. Second, this is the second commissioner he has lost in 18 months. Arguably, Paul Stephenson did not need to resign and what tipped him over the edge was a statement by the Mayor that he had lost his confidence. In my view this showed an ignorance or disregard by the Mayor of the impact of his words.
While the above is important, the most important concerns about policing for Londoners are about recorded crime levels, which after years of falls are in some areas, including burglary, and knife crimes involving young people, rising again, and about cuts in police officer numbers, which are inevitable under the present Mayor’s and Government’s cuts, and will impact on recorded crime and public confidence. Already we have seen the first cuts in the neighbourhood policing model established under the previous mayoralty. Crime, and fear of crime, has been replaced by the economy as Londoners number one concern, but it still runs a close second. The Mayor is in my view vulnerable on his record. But the background of departures and controversies is corrosive of public confidence in policing.
Disturbances
One reason the phone hacking story went out of the news was the summer rioting. East London was not spared, although the damage was far less than in other parts of London. People will be analysing those events for years but a number of interim conclusions have emerged. These include that the police lost control of the streets in Tottenham, and this then gave a signal to those inclined to try their luck in other areas too. And that an awful lot of mainly young, mainly low-skilled, Londoners were involved. The power of CCTV evidence means that many who perhaps thought they would not be identified have been. It was interesting also that the following days there was a massive reaction against the disorder and the threat it clearly posed to our city. Although people must be held responsible for their actions, there was a clear correlation between joblessness, low skills, weak family and support structures and areas in which these are concentrated, and those who have so far been charged or convicted for offences. The old expression ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes…’ comes to mind but I am not sure it will happen.
EDL
Almost forgotten now in the light of the disturbances and other events, was the activity earlier in the summer of the English Defence League. After much lobbying, a range of community and political voices, including mine, persuaded the Met Police and the Home Secretary to ban a proposed march through Tower Hamlets. In our view this was deliberately designed to provoke unrest. I think there are very limited grounds on which you should ban demonstrations but that this was one. A massive amount of work went into calming the communities in East London, predominately led by community leaders themselves, because our greatest fear was that many, and younger people in particular, would see it as their duty to defend their community. In the end, there was a massive police presence and a series of ‘static demonstrations’ (not covered by the ban) took place, with few incidents.
Unemployment
Unemployment has reached 13% in City & East London (The worst unemployment levels in London are in East London) and approaching 25% for those under 24, as joblessness in London has reached its worst level for almost fifteen years. This is a catastrophe across London but particularly in the East End, and for the young, and risks scarring another generation of young people. It is always the case that when clever and well-paid people make mistakes that lead to recessions it is the low-skilled and the young who suffer most. I have called for an urgent series of interventions but the Mayor has not acted, and has disbanded or stopped a number of the initiatives that should be helping, such as the task force created in his first year.
LOCAL ISSUES
I will be sending a further report, with more local items soon.
Olympic Stadium and costs
As is widely known, the deal to dispose of the Olympic Stadium to West Ham football club, in a partnership with Newham Council and others, fell apart in the late autumn. A new plan is now proposed in which the stadium will remain in public ownership but with a tenant, quite probably West Ham. I supported the original proposal but am less convinced of this new idea. I am inclined to the view that while this may be an option the wider public interest – by which I mean best public value for money - would be served by trying again to hold a competition for legacy uses, perhaps including an improved athletics centre elsewhere in London. In any event there needs to be a strong community use and benefit but I am concerned about how a combined football and athletics use will in practice work in the stadium after the games. I have a hunch this story has some way to run.
Cycle Safety
There have recently been a number of cyclist fatalities, and critical injuries, particularly in East London. Two have died at the Bow Roundabout, within two weeks of each other, the safety concerns at which I had been trying to get TfL to take notice of for over two years. It seems as if there needs to be a serious or fatal injury before anything is done. In my view if a junction feels dangerous it probably is and it shouldn’t take a collision and an injury to prove this. I am arguing that the assessment of risk needs to be more proactive than it is. There was widespread horror at the Bow fatalities, and a demand for action. In my view the Mayor is still not acting urgently enough. At least two problems exist – dangerous junctions, and the particular vulnerability of cyclists to lorries. These will be a priority for me in the coming months.
Contact Me!
John Biggs AM
Member for City & East London
City Hall
The Queens Walk
London SE1 2AA
Email: john.biggs(at)london.gov.uk
Tel: 020 7983 4350/6
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