MICHELLE Donelan’s aim to make local democracy more accessible would be admirable if it were not for the fact that her party’s swingeing cuts to local government expenditure is the sole reason why local accountability has been totally watered down to the point where, in many areas, a complaint to your local councillor is of little use.
Schools taken out of local authority control and the divisive and unaccountable free school programme is an area where local democracy has all but ceased. It is all very well for her to try to get more money for local schools when she knows full well that the proposed funding formula is completely flawed and teacher redundancies will surely follow, despite the election result.
Complaints about continuing cuts to local transport will also fall on deaf ears because Horace Pritchard’s area is as cash-strapped as every other council service. Local accountability regarding the closure and privatisation of health service provision is pretty well non-existent especially when she and Jane Scott, in their respective parliamentary positions, are fully aware that Jeremy Hunt has plans for even more cuts and greater privatisation, again despite the election result. I suspect we will get no local democratic support for example, for the reinstatement of overnight A&E services in Trowbridge from either of them.
I would have a lot more faith in Michelle’s desire to make local democracy more accessible if she insisted to Chancellor Hammond that the local government cuts already announced, and which will continue to do untold harm for Wiltshire residents, should be are reversed. Frontline police and fire service cuts under Theresa May’s watch have, after the recent atrocities and the awful London fire, resulted in Cressida Dick having to plead for more resources to cope in a severely stretched service. She should never have been put in that position in the first place and this is an indictment of the unnecessary continuation of austerity that gave the Conservative Party the kick they deserved in the recent election. Michelle Donelan should be pressing for a reverse to the local cuts in police and firefighters for Wiltshire, as that is what local people want but I doubt she will.
Finally her continued campaign for a revived Corsham station (I agree it should never have been closed) would be more credible if her party had not presided over the disastrous electrification project from London to Bristol Temple Meads and South Wales by failing to keep the government owned Network Rail’s costs under control. She should be fighting to get funds released now for the electrification of the line via Chippenham, Bath and Bristol Temple Meads and not up to seven years hence as forecast. Instead of electric services from last month, from October (and let’s not also forget that this debacle occurred in Devizes MP Clare Perry’s watch as Transport Minister) we will have a few bi-mode trains, converted at huge cost to the taxpayer, but not until October that will, incredibly, will be slower than the HSTs they replace. Some Tory MPs have tried to maintain that bi mode trains provides more flexibility for GWR but that is rubbish in the context of the electrification programme that was proposed. I just hope that neither she nor any Wiltshire councillors attempt to gain political kudos when the first new train arrives at Chippenham.
John Baxter
Deverell Close
Bradford on Avon