Party Support Mailing April 2012 NATIONAL NEWS Please find below the latest news from Parliament, our national campaigns, the Co-operative Councils Network and more. Please circulate to your members or include this in your local newsletters. You can find all the latest news and opinions from the Co-operative Party at www.party.coop. A Co-operative vision for South London’s libraries Labour & Co-operative councillor Timothy Godfrey, Secretary of the London Co-operative Party, contrasts the possibilities for library services offered by co-operative solutions and the cuts and closures threatened by Croydon’s Conservatives In Croydon, local Labour & Co-operative Councillors have proposed to the ruling Conservative Council that instead of privatising the library service to a large scale private provider or another local authority under contract, the Council exploits an example of efficiency and popularity on its doorstep. The Upper Norwood Joint Library, is an independent library authority funded and run by two South London Councils, Croydon Council and Lambeth Council. Croydon Council spends £8million running one central library and 12 branch libraries. If you allow a generous £1.2million to run the central library, and its £200,000 contribution to the Upper Norwood Library (Lambeth and Croydon both contribute half the budget), that leaves a cost per branch library in Croydon at a staggering £550,000 per year. That might be acceptable, if the branch libraries in Croydon were well staffed, open long hours and in large buildings. They are not. They are small, often only open 4 days a week. To add insult to injury, the Conservative run council cut half of all qualified librarians last year in a ‘cost cutting’ drive. The solution to reducing budgets isn’t to do so on the backs of de-skilling the workforce. A newly qualified Librarian starts on just over £21,000: an investment that pays dividends in service and professionalism. The solution is to look at the back office and the huge costs loaded onto the humble local library. Upper Norwood Library is fully transparent, its budget includes all the costs to run it. So within the envelope of £400,000 it provides the books, staff, computers, catalogue system, insurance, payroll etc. It employs 77 Weston Street Robert Owen House Transport House London SE1 1ED 87 Bath Street 1 Cathedral Road 020 7367 4150 Glasgow G2 2EE Cardiff CF11 9HA www.party.coop 0141 304 5550 020 7367 4178 Party Support Mailing – Issue 47 – April 2012 - Page 1 of 7 Party Support Mailing April 2012 more staff than any Croydon branch library and has a huge local following, including its own long standing campaign group: the appropriately named Upper Norwood Library Campaign. • Croydon branch libraries 12 x £400,000 = £4.8million • Croydon Central Library and home book service = £1.2million • Upper Norwood Library Contribution = £200,000 • Total budget requirement = £6.2million • Budget surplus: £1.8million The savings could be so much more than this, because many branch libraries are tiny in comparison with the Upper Norwood library example shown above. The problem with Croydon’s hard Right Council is that they are also control freaks. They want one provider to contract with. They are unwilling to engage with local communities and have been spending the last year undermining the Upper Norwood Joint Library, so much so that they are now consulting on closing it and selling the lovely old building (it has amazing views over central London). Yet a council with any nous would harness the huge public support for libraries – demonstrated in Croydon last year when the Tories proposed closing 6 libraries – by bringing local campaigners onto simple ‘stakeholder’ panels followed by a process of devolving budgets and responsibilities to those panels, just like how Local Management of Schools transformed the running of education. Over time, those panels could become proper Co-operative Trusts made up of local people, library users and staff. They could set priorities, assist in developing services to meet very local needs, provide valuable marketing support and help strengthen their local communities. At Upper Norwood Library, you already have the independent, self sufficient structure in place. Adding a Co-operative element would be so easy and so beneficial to the local community. So what are the barriers to doing this? Lots of it comes down to existing council officers, wedded to the existing hierarchy of control. They brief councillors and often have the upper hand. Ironically, they see privatisation less of a threat than community control. Contrast Croydon’s Tory Council with that of neighbouring Lambeth Council where you see one of London’s Leading Labour & Co-operative councillors, Councillor Florence Nosegbe, asking the difficult questions and pushing these very same issues to deliver a modernised library service, at lower cost, but involving local people in their own libraries. The contrast is striking: privatisation and closure plans from Croydon Tories and a community centred approach under the ‘Co-operative Council’ banner in Labour Lambeth. Saving millions of pounds and engaging the community? That’s the Co-operative approach that could make all the difference in your local community too. Party Support Mailing – April 2012 - Page 2 of 7 Party Support Mailing April 2012 Team announced for London Assembly elections The London Co-operative Party has announced its candidates for the elections of 3 May for the London Assembly. Three new candidates will be joining the five existing Labour & Co-operative Assembly Members of the Assembly. The new candidates include former Member of Parliament Andrew Dismore, fighting the key Tory-held battleground of Barnet & Camden. In South London, the Co-operative Party has backed Councillor Leonie Cooper in key marginal Merton & Wandsworth; Leonie is Chair of the Wandsworth Co- operative Party as well as SERA – the Labour Environment Campaign. And along the river Councillor Lisa Homan will be the Labour & Co-operative candidate for London South West. Andrew, Leonie and Lisa join the five existing Labour & Co-operative Members of the Assembly: • Val Shawcross CBE, AM for Lambeth & Southwark and Labour’s candidate for Deputy Mayor • Len Duvall, AM for Greenwich & Lewisham and Leader of the Labour Group • Jennette Arnold OBE, AM for North East London and Chair of the London Assembly • John Biggs, AM for the City & East London • Joanne McCartney, AM for Enfield & Haringey In addition, list members and active co-operators Nicky Gavron and Murad Qureshi will be invited to join the Assembly Co-operative Group once re-elected. They join other Co-operative Party members and activists on the list, including Cllr Florence Nosegbe, Fiona Twycross, Christine Quigley and Tom Copley. In recent weeks, Ken Livingstone has announced support for co-operative policies, particularly in energy and housing, whilst Jennette Arnold AM has pointed out the failure of Boris Johnson to deliver for co-operatives in his term as Mayor and in this International Year of Co-operatives in her recent article for Progress. Valerie Shawcross AM said, “I’m pleased to see the London Co-operative Party endorse new Labour & Co- operative candidates for the coming election and look forward to Andrew, Leonie and Lisa joining us in City Hall after May. All the Labour & Co-operative Assembly Members are grateful for the financial support and new ideas from the co-operative movement and we will be working with Ken Livingstone to deliver a co- operative London and implement the Co-operative Party’s manifesto in the years to come.” Party Support Mailing – April 2012 - Page 3 of 7 Party Support Mailing April 2012 Chris Evans MP: How the banks can tackle financial exclusion Co-operative Member of Parliament Chris Evans MP outlines the background to his Banking Disclosure and Responsibility Bill in Parliament. It has been in vogue of late by all political parties to bash the banks. While nearly everyone has been quick to blame the banks for the financial collapse, very few have asked where do we go from here? The economic conditions that have come around as a result of the collapse have caused hardship for families meaning more people are driven into financial exclusion. At the same time banks have become more reluctant to lend and give credit. The impact of financial exclusion, affecting almost two million people in the UK, means that essential services become more expensive. This can take the form of paying for utilities without direct debit, or a house repair that can cause temporary financial difficulty meaning people have to use the services of predatory and very expensive credit companies. As the Shadow Chancellor said at the 2nd reading of the Financial Services Bill Debate: ‘The Opposition are worried that the Government are allowing the banks to go backwards on financial exclusion, with charges for basic bank accounts being increased in the case of Barclays, and with new charges on basic bank account holders using automated teller machines in RBS and Lloyds. We want to strengthen the obligation on the banks to produce a universal service for all retail banks.’ At present there are nine million people in the UK who do not have access to credit from banks, so the time is now right to ensure that our financial institutions recognise their obligation to wider society. The financial sector must understand the responsibility they have to the people whose jobs and way of life they put at risk by the reckless practices they pursued prior to the financial crash of 2008. My co-operative values and principles greatly influence my views and work in Westminster. It is important to me that, regardless of their background, have equal access to routine affordable financial services and credit.