By Faryal Velmi
Despite the biggest demonstration seen in Lambeth for a decade, savage cuts to Adult Social Services in Lambeth were voted through on Wednesday 28 February.
The Labour run Lambeth Council voted to cut £736,000 from the ASS budget and the results will be felt harshly by local frail and isolated older and disabled people, adults with learning difficulties, people with mental ill-health and carers.
Charges for vital services like homecare are to rise by a huge 132%– from £7.55 to £17.50 an hour in May 2007 and to £20 in April 2008. This will mean Lambeth’s charges are the highest in London and pensioners on low incomes will be hit the most.
Vulnerable adults who may need care provided for by the council, including personal and domestic help will only get it if they are deemed to have ‘critical’ needs. Previously those deemed with ‘substantial’ need also qualified, and the change over will mean Lambeth will be one of the tiny number of councils in the entire country to do this. It is estimated that the result of this will mean 700 people, 500 of them frail and older people – and those assessed as being in “substantial risk of abuse or neglect” will loose their services.
Other cuts will be to Lambeth’s voluntary and Community sector that provide vital front line services like breaks for carers, lunch clubs, drop-ins for elderly people and activities for disabled people. Many organisations face cuts of up to 50% and will have to cut services.
Around 500 people, organised by various local voluntary sector organisations, marched to the Town Hall to voice their protest as the Councillors voted in the new budget. But despite angry denunciations and even an attempt to storm the council chamber, the cuts went through with the shameful support of Lambeth’s Labour Councillors.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat group tactically voted against the cuts, with the Lib Dems proposing a slightly watered down ‘alternative’ budget. This was voted down along with a request that the vote be recorded. The Labour administration says that the cuts are due to a very low settlement from central government – but protestors were left asking why the most vulnerable in our society must pay.
Speakers at an impromptu rally asked why the government had £75 billion pounds for Trident but no money to support local services for older and disabled people. They also asked why the council had chosen to cut the vital social services budget to make up for the shortfall.
The decision of the Labour run Lambeth Council to go ahead with the cuts despite such fierce opposition is a definite sign of the times. From being branded a ‘looney left’ council in the 80s, its seems the transformation to an anti-working class Blarite regime is complete.
One banner on the demonstration summarised this, it read ‘Labour cuts in Lambeth – Thatcher would be proud’. Indeed, despite the mailbags of Labour councillors over-flowing with protest letters, not one single councillor spoke out publicly against the cuts or voted against them. Three councillors failed to show up for the vote and one councillor did not registering a vote at all – however this hardly constitutes a principled position.
Along with the decision by Patrica Hewitt to close down the specialist A&E of the Mental health Maudsely hospital, the local community has been left reeling. It seems that we are at the sharp end of New Labour’s project to dismantle the welfare state. But the fight back needs to continue and every section of the community including trade unionists, students and service users need to get involved in the Lambeth SOS campaign.
The Lambeth Council Cabinet meets in the next few months – and could potentially overturn some of the harsher cuts – but it is evident only a militant campaign will force these Blarite apparatchics to reverse these cuts.
