Cutts cuts as Cameron and Clegg visit Nottingham
It was a day of political drama in Nottingham yesterday, with David Cameron and Nick Clegg making a surprise visit to two city schools. More than 400 people also protested outside County Hall as Nottinghamshire County Council met to vote on its controversial budget cuts.
Clegg spoke to a specially selected audience – including business leader Toby Reid, of the Growth Investment Network - at the Welbeck School in the Meadows area of the city. He said they should “have a little bit of perspective” when it came to the cuts announced in the spending review on Wednesday.
He added: “The cuts are more balanced than people are saying,” while in a packed Q&A session, Cameron insisted that the richest will pay more as a proportion of their income.
Meanwhile, just around the corner at County Hall, protestors from a myriad of pressure groups along with union members were gathering before councillors met to vote on controversial budget cuts, as it looked to save £150m over the next three years.
The crowd repeatedly chanted for council leader Kay Cutts to step down, with Unison branch secretary Martin Sleath saying: "We are fighting for public services and giving the message to this Tory council that we will not put up with a single job cut and privatisation."
The chair of the Local Government Association, Baroness Eaton has said that up to 100,000 jobs could go in local government, with around 14,500 in Nottinghamshire alone.
She added: “This spending review will hit councils and the residents they serve very hard and will inevitably lead to cuts at the front line.
“These are some of the biggest cuts in the public sector and we have to be honest about their impact.
“There are also important moves towards much simpler funding mechanisms that will help councils do their job. The government has eased burdens on local government, given us much greater freedoms and flexibilities over our budgets and taken a first step towards wider reform with councils in the vanguard of reforming the way the public sector operates.
“Town halls want to join up local public services to ensure we deliver the services residents demand and expect, but we can't do it alone. Councils want to work with other areas of the public and voluntary sector to break down wasteful bureaucratic barriers.
“Ministers must move much faster to redraw the way public services are delivered so the people we serve come before the interests of the Whitehall machine.”
Nottinghamshire County Council was unavailable for comment as Insider went to press this morning.
