Labour's fightback starts here...

By Liam Murphy on May 27, 10 02:12 PM

AS Wirral's Tories prepare for the first cabinet in 24 years led by Conservatives on Wirral Council, Labour has started to defend their own record while in power - and attack those who have taken over from them.

Labour group leader Steve Foulkes has hit out at Tory claims that the council was left massively in debt by its previous administration(s). What is not in doubt is that in this "Age of Austerity" cuts will be coming, and the arguments will rage about whose fault it is, and over the priorities about what should be protected when those cuts come.

Anyway, we've heard from the Conservatives and Lib Dems as they took power with their "Progressive Partnership", now read the full text of Labour's press release, below:

Local Coalition's "new politics" is a total sham.

Leader of the Labour Group, Cllr Steve Foulkes, responded to a statement from the new Leader of the Council, Cllr Jeff Green, which stated that Labour had left the Council with massive debts:

"I'm outraged by this statement and Councillor Green knows full well that it is untrue. If this is an indication of what is to come, then all this talk about "new" politics and fresh beginnings is a total sham. This is very much old Tory politics. Cllr Green knows his coalition government is going to produce some very unpalatable cuts in local government and he is hunting desperately for ways to blame Labour for what is to come.

For the record, the assets owned by the Council far exceed any debt and the Council is in a very healthy financial state.

This is very different from the position we inherited from the last Tory budget set locally when they recklessly used Â£13m of Council money to hide the true impact of the poll tax, leaving the Council in difficulties for the future which were so serious the Council's finances took decades to recover. I can only hope they don't go for the "quick fix" again, knowing they are not going to be in power long, and leave Labour to inherit another impossible situation."

Note to Editors.

What Cllr Green has actually done is take the amount of money the Council has borrowed, like all other councils, in the last two decades to fund any capital projects, like building new schools, or roads, or care facilities for the elderly, or leisure centres and swimming pools, which is part of the bread and butter of local council provision for the people of Wirral, and declared this as a massive debt. What he has failed to do is take any account of the value of any of those items as assets owned by the Council. It's like saying you are massively in debt because you have a mortgage on a house which is worth far more than the mortgage you have taken out.