Over the next three years the Labour Government is cutting Wokingham’s funding by £43 million. This is unprecedented.
The previous Conservative Government increased our funding by £2.3 million for 2024 – 25. Yet, less than 6 months after the General Election, Labour cut it by £1 million. Now Labour are slashing Wokingham Borough’s funding further. This is the only time we have seen government funding actually reduced in a finance settlement.
This funding bombshell coincides with the first time we have had a Labour MP, representing almost half of the Borough. Both she and the Liberal Democrat MP said they lobbied for better funding for Wokingham. Instead, the funding Wokingham Borough has received shows how ineffective they were. Residents can now see clearly the disastrous effect of voting for Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs – a spectacular betrayal.
You might wonder what Labour councillors are saying about all this. Shockingly the Leader of the Labour Group claimed the £43 million was a figure residents could not relate to or understand.
The Council’s budget may not be very relatable to Council Taxpayers. I imagine not many residents read them in any detail. That’s understandable: you’re busy! But dismissing a massive cut to our funding from the Government on the grounds that it’s too big a number for residents to wrap their heads around, is patronising at best and a deflection from the bigger issue at worst.
Local Labour councillors seem to have got their role backwards. They spend a lot of their time acting as Starmer’s representatives in Wokingham Borough, when they should be channelling the voices of residents and concerns back to the Labour Party. It is not the job of Labour councillors to be defending the latest damaging policy from Westminster.
Yet, it’s not just by cutting our funding Labour is making it harder for WBC. Like all employers the Council is having to pay more to the Government in Employers National Insurance making more expensive to employ staff.
We can see this extra cost being reflected in the wider economy. Unemployment has been creeping up. We see business after business shuttering across the Borough.
Most worrying of all is youth unemployment. At the end of last month official estimates suggested nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 were not in employment, education, or training. These are dreams and aspirations stunted. The Bank of England have pointed to the increases in the minimum wage and Employers National insurance contributions as having had “a particular effect on young people.”
Just last week the Chancellor delivered her Spring Statement claiming Labour have the “right economic plan”, despite economic growth halved for the year, unemployment forecast to be highest since the pandemic, welfare spending up, living standards expected to be down and taxes at a historic high. That was before we’d seen how events in the Middle East would unfold.
Labour have not provided the change people thought they were getting. Things are different but in a bad way, not better.
Conservative councillors won’t patronise you by assuming you don’t understand and we will always stick up for our residents no matter the party in Government.
By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
