FOR a decade England’s big-city Labour authorities have been under a merciless financial attack by successive Tory governments in Westminster.

Initially supported by their Liberal-Democrat collaborators in the 2010 coalition government, the Tories have pursued a slash-and-burn approach to Labour-run cities such as Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, Liverpool and more.

The people threatened most by the cuts are those struggling at the bottom of the social pile, dependent on services provided by local authorities — disabled people, struggling families, people unable to work.

The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problems faced by the big Labour-run authorities whose services support the most vulnerable in their cities.

The Tories in Westminster instructed local authorities to introduce special measures to cope with the pandemic at local level.

They include increased social care to help vulnerable people with long-term medical conditions such as respiratory and cardiac diseases, support for people forced to self-isolate after showing symptoms of Covid-19 and provision of extra staff for care homes.

The government pledged to fund the extra measures, to provide “whatever it takes” to deal with problems caused by the pandemic.

Now — surprise, surprise — the government is refusing to foot the whole of that bill, leaving councils with millions of pounds in extra costs, exacerbating the problems they already faced as the Tories’ austerity programme continues, with millions of pounds more lopped off council budgets each year.

Covid-19 suffering has not sated the Tories’ thirst for cuts in public spending.

The virus has also reduced councils’ income from operations such as leisure and sports centres and car parking.

Far from being incidental to council finances, councils have come to rely on such sources of income to maintain basic services.

Leeds, with a population of around 700,000, is one of England’s largest local-authority areas. Since 2010 it has lost £2 billion in funding.

The results can be seen in the closure of care homes and public libraries, fewer council-funded beds in private-sector care homes, household waste collections reduced to once a fortnight instead of weekly.

The council runs Sure Start centres for inner-city families who need help. The help is now limited to those in the most dire need. 

The council has worked with a joint committee of unions including Unite, Unison and GMB to mitigate the worst effects of the cuts on the city’s most vulnerable people and on council workers. 

Council leader Judith Blake said: “The impact of coronavirus has had an enormous impact on our financial position, not only in terms of the costs to tackle Covid-19, but on many of our revenue streams that help provide the funding we need to fund vital front-line services.”

She said the amount of money given by central government towards the extra costs caused by Covid-19 “simply does not go far enough when you also consider the significant cuts made to our central grant funding since 2010.”

Tomorrow the council’s executive board meets to decide how to meet a projected budget shortfall of more than £160 million in the next financial year, 2021/22.

The main proposal is to make 528 workers redundant. This comes on top of 3,200 jobs axed since 2010.

So far, thanks to the work of the joint committee involving the council and unions, compulsory redundancies have been avoided. 

Jobs have been shed through early retirement, ill-health retirement, transfer of workers from redundant jobs to other departments, and volunteers.

But now it’s crunch time.

Leeds Trade Union Council opposes any compulsory redundancies among the city’s council workforce.

It believes that instead the council and unions should “initiate a campaign to win the additional funding they requested from the government in May to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.”

It believes there is an opportunity to present a united front involving other Labour authorities, and a common strategy “to defend, jobs, services pay and conditions.”

Leeds TUC publicity officer Iain Dalton said: “Leeds has seen funding cuts to the level of £266m a year and 3,200 full-time equivalent jobs over the last decade. 

“Leeds TUC has worked with campaign groups to successfully reverse cuts proposed by Leeds City Council, such as cuts to 16-to-18-year-old special educational needs students’ school transport, and will continue to do so.

“But we would much prefer to be fighting alongside the council to win the funding necessary from the government to defend jobs and services.”

Such a campaign could be launched, but it is difficult to see how the implementation of more cuts can be avoided — other than by declaring an illegal budget and eventually becoming bankrupt.

In such a case the government would dismiss the council and appoint its own administrator to run the city. It’s not a tempting prospect.

In the 1980s the big Labour-run city councils had an opportunity — a brief one — to join forces and resist the attacks on them by the Thatcher government by pursuing such a course. They opted not to do so.

So today Leeds City Council will decide whether or not to sack 538 workers to avoid a budget deficit of more than £160m in the next financial year.

Stacey Booth was appointed earlier this year as full-time GMB officer representing Leeds City Council workers.

“As an ex-Leeds City Council worker, and having recently returned in the new year as officer of the GMB union representing council workers in Leeds, it is a very sad day when we are faced with around 500 compulsory redundancies. 

“For over 10 years we have endured austerity measures imposed by this Tory government and seen the budget diminish cumulatively by £1.7 billion, which in turn has seen a shrinking of the workforce down to its bare bones. 

“That very workforce has given everything throughout those years but nobody could have predicted the enormity of what this pandemic has brought to the front line, the care workers, refuse workers, school support staff, housing officers, social workers and many more who have delivered services to the Leeds communities in extremely difficult circumstances putting their lives at risk.”

She said that government funding to help measures to cope with the effects of Covid-19 “barely scratches the surface” and added: “There is nothing left to cut other than from those who have given the most.”

“The stark reality is that the local-government workforce is way past the point of being able to safely deliver more for less, and the GMB members I represent are overworked, undervalued and demoralised.”

What motivates successive Tory governments to implement measures that cause suffering among working-class communities?

Leeds Council deputy leader James Lewis said: “They seem to be blind to the needs of the poor, people who are in work but who are not paid enough to feed their families, people who cannot work.

“They do not care for poor people in cities like Leeds. We have 150,000 people in Leeds living in poverty.

“The Tories do not care. We are being assaulted on all fronts.”

One side-effect of Labour councils implementing Tory cuts is that the councils are perceived to be carrying out the Tories’ dirty work for them — no matter how hard the councils try to mitigate the effects of the cuts.

Bill Adams, secretary of Yorkshire and the Humber Region of the TUC, expresses anger at such misconceptions.

“Leeds City Council and its trade unions have skilfully worked out together ways to protect vital services and minimise staff redundancies.

“There should be no misunderstandings over where the blame lies for what is happening — and for a potential catastrophe for our most vulnerable people. It lies firmly at the door of this austerity-driven government.”

Mark Harrison is the full-time Unison officer representing Leeds City Council workers.

“Tory policy has robbed local government of funding long before Covid-19 arrived and now they won’t even fund the costs of the Covid-19 provision that they insist is provided,” he said.

“It is national government that needs to rethink their approach to funding local government — not just in Leeds — to ensure that our communities have the local services that are desperately needed and deserved.”

Dick Banks of Unite is convener of the joint union committee which has worked with Leeds Council on finding ways to mitigate the effects of cuts on jobs and services.

He raises another aspect of the attacks on Labour authorities.

“It has been proved that funding to Labour-controlled authorities is considerably lower than funding for Tory-controlled authorities,” he said.                                                                 

“And this whole situation has been manufactured. They have done it knowing that Labour councils would get the flak from the public.”