Cllr Iain Lindley’s Diary

The meeting date for the call-in of Labour’s decision to massively increase spending on the LIFE in Salford magazine has been announced. The scrutiny meeting will be at 1pm on Monday 3rd November, probably in one of the committee rooms at the Civic Centre.

Scrutiny meetings are held in public and local residents are welcome to attend if they wish to do so.

The Liberal Democrat MP for Cheadle, Mark Hunter, has been hauled over hot coals by the House of Commons’ Committee on Standards and Privileges for misusing his communications allowance. Hunter joins Bolton West Labour MP Ruth Kelly in the Greater Manchester misuse of allowances hall of shame.

Whilst both Kelly and Hunter have rightly been punished for stepping over the line and breaking the rules, the very nature of the communications allowance means that MPs skirt as close to that legal line as possible. Party colours and data collection are not against the rules but both are clearly against the spirit of taxpayer funded communication, and yet they are used widely by local Labour MPs like our own Worsley MP Barbara Keeley (see here and here - oh and also here for how to screw it up).

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it again now - these allowances lead to pseudo-party political campaigning and are nothing more than propaganda on the rates. If Labour MPs want to spend £10000 to deliver bright red and yellow newsletters to their constituents then they ought to pay for it themselves or fund it through their local parties. The Communications Allowance must be scrapped - pronto.

I’m delighted that my Conservative colleagues have decided to “call in” the decision to massively increase spending on the Council’s glossy LIFE in Salford magazine. This is a bad decision and a huge waste of taxpayers money, and to top it all off done at a time when the Council can least afford it and when many local residents are really stuggling to pay thier Council Tax and other bills.

The “call in” process means that the decision will now be looked at by a special meeting of the relevent Scrutiny Committee (in this case, Strategy & Regeneration) within the next fortnight. This means that Councillor Merry will have to justify to Councillors (and any members of the press or public present, for that matter) why he has made this decision. The Scrutiny Committee can then refer the decision back to Cabinet for a rethink, although they do not have the power to actually reverse the decision.

You can read more about previous call-ins on the Council website here.

You’d expect that in these times of economic difficulty - and with the Council’s budget extremely tight - that the last thing you’d expect the Council to be doing is increasing the spend on generic marketing. Alas a decision notice has just dropped into my e-mail inbox and this is what it says:

I, Councillor John Merry, Leader of the Council , in exercise of the powers conferred on me by Paragraph J (1) of Section 2, of the Scheme of Delegation of the Council do hereby Authorise that the council publication LIFE IN Salford increases its frequency to monthly, its size to 24 pages and extends its distribution to include business premises

LIFE in Salford is the Council’s in-house magazine. The total cost of the magazine to local residents will now be £174,804.

It beggars belief that at a time when local residents are struggling with their bills and the Council itself is struggling with huge commitments that the Labour leadership are proposing a significant increase in spending on glossy magazines. I’m appalled.

Residents are paying far too much already for the Council’s marketing department, and the Council should be cutting the marketing spend to give greater value-for-money for taxpayers - something that has been proposed in every recent Conservative alternative budget.