Because Surrey doesn’t need more money. We do.
The government’s latest plans for local councils are nothing short of breathtaking.
After five years of cuts consistently weighted in favour of wealthier counties that have more council tax income – Surrey, I’m looking at you – it now turns out those places are to get even MORE cash.
As Manchester prepares to wipe another £13m from its budget from April, Surrey is reportedly to be GIVEN £24m from a new ‘emergency relief fund’.
Other Tory shires, including David Cameron’s local council of West Oxfordshire, are also getting some tidy sums running well into the millions.
Many of them have actually seen their grant funding go up in recent years as ours has plummeted.
So how much are Manchester, Tameside, Rochdale, Oldham and so on getting from this new fund?
Nothing. In fact the only town hall in Greater Manchester to get more is Tory Trafford.
Governments have always done this sort of thing, of course. Tony Blair used to shower poorer Labour areas with money – while not always achieving the kind of results he was seeking.
But for a government that trumpets its commitment to the north, you have to wonder if ‘northern powerhouse’ will soon lie alongside ‘big society’ in the scrapheap of redundant political catchphrases.
Because the northern powerhouse ministry is actually CUTTING jobs in the north (yes, really)
Another mind-blowing move from the government.
The Department of Business and Skills – one of two government departments heavily involved in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ project – last month admitted it was shifting nearly 250 jobs to London and closing its Sheffield office.
It may not end there, either.
The futures of its centres in Manchester and other northern cities are also in doubt.
A few weeks ago business minister Anna Soubry gave a list of six possible locations for the remodelled department, only one of which was in the north – Darlington.
Manchester, which currently has a BIS office, was not mentioned.
Government has enough on its plate trying to create jobs in the north, attract investors and instil confidence in local business leaders to run with its northern powerhouse brand.
The one thing it can do to make its life a bit easier is not move the relatively few people it already employs here to the capital.
That, you would think, would be an easy win for the spinners.
Because it’s about more than just building stuff
When George Osborne talks about a northern powerhouse, you get the sense he means building actual things, possibly out of bricks.
Almost like he actually has a picture of Arkwright’s Mill in his head.
And we do, certainly, need better roads, better train lines, more big businesses to open their doors.
But we also have some of the worst figures in the country for mental health problems, alcoholism and homelessness.
All three of those are driven further into the abyss by continuously unfair council and public health funding. Manchester town hall is busy outsourcing drug and alcohol provision, saving nearly £900,000 a year, while slashing smoking services in a city with the third highest smoking rate in the country.
Or take the government’s quiet decision a couple of weeks ago to get rid of the gang funding it announced after the 2011 riots.
Presumably whatever led to those has been fixed now.
Devo Manc has given us more control over skills, to train people for the right employers. That has to be a positive. It has also given us money to build stuff.
But the really ingrained poverty, the ingrained social problems, the never-ending cuts to social services? Other than knocking down a few council estates, those problems do not seem to be high on the government’s agenda for the north.
Because of this...
When the government threatened to slash police budgets last year, uproar in the wake of the Paris attacks saw George Osborne perform a swift reverse ferret.
Yet even after the Boxing Day floods deluged much of the north, it seems to have little interest in extending the same courtesy to the police’s blue-light partners in the fire service.
Greater Manchester’s fire brigade, like its councils, just keeps getting hammered by ministers.
This time around it is facing a 3.7pc cut, twice the national average, which bosses say could lead to the loss of nine more fire engines and up to 300 more firefighters.
It won’t let the service put up council tax by £5 a year, either, although that was afforded to the police.
Admittedly brigades across the country are facing cuts.
But yet again northern urban regions are being hit hardest.
Which seems to make little sense. This is a densely populated area – therefore relying more heavily on the brigade – and is also more likely to see a major disaster such as a big motorway or air crash, or even a terror attack.
The service was stretched to its limit on Boxing Day and bosses say that had the River Mersey breached it banks, firefighters would not have been able to cope.
Fingers crossed the northern powerhouse, when built, will be water and flame retardant. And has its own smoke detector.
Because we are being cut into a crisis
This may sound melodramatic.
But there is a common thread running through all the often heavily unfair cuts being made to the north’s frontline services.
Prevention, despite supposedly being better than cure, is being carved out of the system, meaning people increasingly reach crisis point before they are helped.
Mental health services are cutting their community-based prevention work, which means people hit crisis and end up adding to the queues at A&E. Where the NHS picks up the bill.
Or people end up left on the streets, because there are no beds – so the police pick up the bill.
Fire services are being hacked back, so they have to then cut prevention work, the very thing that cut household fires so much in the first place. Meaning houses are more likely to burn down.
Which will cost far more.
Youth centres are being closed – Oldham now has none – meaning kids are more likely to end up in trouble, costing social services, police, probation and the prison service more.
(In fact one council leader has also pointed to youth centre closures in the fight against terror: they have traditionally been one of the key ways that the authorities pick up intelligence on radicalisation.)
In fact figures in 2013 showed that as local authority funding across Greater Manchester had fallen, the NHS and welfare systems had simply plugged the gap.
As plans go, it isn’t very long term. Or very economical.
