So having voted down our motion on changing the way the council is run (see last post from me), we moved on to a motion about Health funding in County Durham which the government is providing to the County Council.

Here is the story in lib Dem councillor Owen Temple’s words from his blog:

Today the Labour Party voted down my motion, even though I’d changed the wording to meet their objections.

Read it and work out for yourselves what there was to oppose in this motion:

Durham County Council welcomes the Government’s protection of its public health grant for two years, with grants totalling £44.5 million for 2013-4 and  £45.8 million  for 2014-5, some of the most generous grants per head in England.

This council supports both its own officers and the Association of North East Councils in their efforts to explore with the independent committee advising government a more evidence based formula for calculating the Public Health Grant. This formula should both reflect the underlying health issues which councils have to tackle and support and reward councils which tackle the gap between their healthiest and least healthy communities.

Although Durham has done well in this and next year’s allocation, there are a lot of issues that anyone can see need ironing out – like the fact that the City of London (the mega-rich centre of the capital with just 11,700 people living there) gets three times as much Public Health spend per head as North Tyneside. Blackpool gets more than three times as much spent per head as Ashington and Blyth. So it seems only reasonable that we should pursue a formula which reflects both the health needs within local authorities, and their performance in dealing with the shameful health gap between our healthiest and least healthy communities.

Apparently, however, that’s all OK. And the Labour Party doesn’t welcome £44.5 million and £45.5 allocations for Durham.

Or perhaps it’s simply that Labour don’t welcome something good we’ve had from government – slagging off government will run better in the election leaflets.

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Back to Mark now…

I find it utterly incredulous that the Labour Party would refuse to support pushing for more funding for health needs in County Durham.  It is as if they think everything that comes from government is wrong.

It is even more ridiculous to vote against it when the only part of it they disagreed with was removed from the motion.

As far as I’m concerned if pushing to ensure County Durham gets the funding needed to improve people’s health is wrong then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

Labour also seems unhappy to welcome the £700 income tax cut for working people announced today. From April next year no-one will pay tax on the first £10,000 – a key promise of the Lib Dems. Check your payslip at the end of April to see the reduction in income tax and compare it to three years ago under Labour.

And another year of council tax freeze with the government providing the council with additional funding for three years now to ensure hardly any council tax rises – under Labour council tax doubled!

But none of this is welcomed by the Labour councillors in County Durham – because it hasn’t been done by them! Typical Labour.