A war of words has broken out after a group of Liverpool Labour councillors who defied the whip to vote against the city’s annual budget hit back at comments made by City Mayor Joanne Anderson.
Earlier this month, seven members of Liverpool Council ’s controlling Labour group broke with party lines to oppose the budget set by Mayor Anderson and her cabinet. The so-called rebels, Alan Gibbons, Lindsay Melia, Rona Heron, Alfie Hincks, Joanne Calvert, George Knibb and Alison Clarke, opted to go against the plans that included a new £40 annual charge for green waste collections, a maximum Council Tax increase of 2.99% and cuts to the social care budget.
The councillors were also unhappy at a move to increase the council's reserves by £10m at a time when they said so many in the city are struggling. In a revealing interview, Mayor Anderson said she doubted why those councillors had broken the whip, claiming “some of the things they (the rebels) were talking about just weren't true.”
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She added: “They did what they wanted to do for their own reasons, I doubt they were all about the budget." Now members of the rebel group of councillors have hit back at the Mayor’s suggestion and said they could not support “cuts to social care, for a green bin charge that runs counter to its environmental agenda or for a review which would subject four non-council run libraries in north Liverpool to a precarious future of annual bids for funds.”
Warbreck councillor Alan Gibbons said: “It is disappointing that the Mayor thinks we took our decision for any other reason than unhappiness with the budget. We voted according to our consciences.”
Cllr Alison Clarke, who along with Cllr Gibbons and four others were suspended by the Labour party for breaking ranks, said the members were not “being rebellious for the sake of it.” She said: “People might think the term ‘rebel’ refers to trouble-makers but rebels challenge the status quo and question what many consider to be the natural order of things.
“This can create an environment for new ideas, innovative ways of approaching things and to create better solutions. The opposite of a rebel is a follower, conformist, conventionalist and conservative.
“We weren’t being rebellious just for the sake of it. We acted in a way that aligns with our socialist values.
“We’ve been accused of grandstanding and feeding our egos but the complete opposite is true. We were motivated by empathy and compassion for the people and communities we represent because they will suffer as a result of the budget cuts.
Cllr Clarke questioned why Mayor Anderson said she was proud of the budget setting process when in her view, it equated to passing cuts onto city residents.
Everton councillor Alfie Hincks queried the city’s direction. He said: “Development in the city has not slowed down; it’s stopped. Developers are now investing in Manchester rather than Liverpool because the council stopped talking to them.
Defending some of the measures taken by the cabinet in setting the budget, Mayor Anderson said that charges such as the one implemented over green waste bins, the council “had to make massive savings and cuts in the least painful way possible."
Cllr Gibbons added that members who broke away “want to see a balanced budget that works in the interests of Liverpool people, that is based on social investment and does not resort to wholesale cuts in spending” and a debate needed to begin now to “draw up a much better budget next year.”
