Here’s the Conservative government’s 12 #LevellingDown actions.👇🏻
🔹closed 800 libraries
🔹closed 1,300 children’s centres
🔹closed 600 police stations
🔹+600,000 more children in poverty
🔹NHS waiting list hit record 6 million
cont/…👇🏻
🔹cut local government funding by more than 50%
🔹food-bank use + 1000%
🔹most deprived fifth of secondary schools hit hardest by real terms cuts
🔹highest tax burden in 70 years
🔹12,000 fewer police officers
cont/… 👇🏻
🔹increase in number of people sleeping rough
🔹ambulance response times at record high
Judge the Conservatives on their record, not their rhetoric.
THREAD🧵: 1,000 word piece by newly-elected Momentum co-chairs. Not one mention of words Tory, Conservative, Government or Boris Johnson, no criticism of Tory councils but a targeted attack on Labour councils & Keir Starmer. SLOW.HAND.CLAP. Doing the Tories' dirty work for them.
A decade of devastating Tory austerity was created in Tory-led Whitehall not Labour-led Town Halls. 60p in every pound stripped from local government was masterminded by Tory Prime Ministers in Downing Street and facilitated by the Lib Dems between 2010 & 2015.
Labour councils have been the first & last line of defence for communities against the devastation caused by a decade of lost opportunity and savage Tory cuts. We've also led the way with our trade union colleagues in campaigning against this failed Tory policy.
THREAD: Councils & our staff are the UK's 4th emergency service fighting #COVID19. Govt told us to spend what it takes to help beat the virus & they'd reimburse us. Recent ministerial rhetoric suggests a backtrack on this promise. This would be unforgivable. Letter to PM below.⬇️
#COVID19 crisis has already cost @GedlingBC over £960k in one month alone - £128k additional expenditure & £832k in loss of income, equivalent to 8.2% of our net revenue budget for this year. Loss of income figure is likely to be repeated each month for the foreseeable future.
Our heroic staff have kept communities & this country going in the face of unprecented challenge - it would be a shameful betrayal if Govt broke their promise & forced councils into crippling financial crisis, left with no option but to cut services & issue p45s to these heroes.