The news that a further £3 million is to be spent on Haringey Council’s notorious ‘Tech Refresh’ project has resulted in huge criticism of George Meehan’s Labour administration. Haringey’s Liberal Democrat opposition are furious that the council member in charge of the original project, Labour councillor Dhirendra Basu, has been reappointed by Labour to oversee the department responsible for the original scandal.

The project had an original budget of £9 million and went £10.6 million over budget by the end of the last financial year. Cllr Meehan announced last night that extra costs of £2.89 million would have to be spent on the project.

Commenting on the announcement, Councillor Neil Williams says: “This is yet another crushing blow to hard pressed Haringey tax payers, all due to Labour’s utterly incompetent handling of this entire project.

“On top of the £10 million already squandered, local voters are having to fork out a further £3 million to enable incompetent Labour councillors to walk away from a financial disaster that they themselves created.

“And on top of all of this, the councillor in charge of managing these costs, and complex new management systems for the Council’s IT services, has just been reinstated by Labour to the post from which he presided over this disaster in the first place.

“To say this does not inspire confidence would be a grotesque understatement. Labour’s sheer audacity in the face of this shambles is almost impossible to believe.”

Haringey Liberal Democrat councillors are urging Labour to put politics to one side in order to deal with knife crime, as Labour at last begin to respond to public concern over rising numbers of offences involving bladed weapons.

Nationally, the Lib Dems had proposed an amendment to the recent Violent Crime Bill which would have made the sentence for carrying a knife equal to that for carrying a gun, and locally Haringey’s Liberal Democrat councillors tabled a motion proposing that Haringey Council support the move.

Labour voted down the proposal, and Haringey’s Labour councillors rejected the motion to Full Council, proposing instead that Haringey Council “reject a policy that would lead to people who happened to be carrying a knife filling our prisons”.

Councillor Ron Aitken, Lib Dem spokesperson for Crime, Policing and Community Safety, comments:

“Labour rejected our proposals for tougher penalties. Now we see Labour considering exactly the same proposals on a national level, so it is time Haringey Labour councillors thought again, as they always claim they are being tough on crime.

“We wanted these proposals months ago, and given the recent stabbing in Wood Green, it is clear that they have been needed. By playing politics, Labour is showing that it only care about votes, not about public safety.”

Residents of Risborough Close, Muswell Hill, have once again enlisted the help of Councillor Gail Engert in their ongoing attempts to end the weekly accumulations of huge piles of rotting rubbish in their close caused by a Haringey Council cock-up.

Haringey Council said in December last year that the issue was the lack of a refuse storage area. The Council’s wheelie bins would not fit in their current storage area, they explained, and rubbish would simply have to be left out in the open to be collected, leading to it spilling out of the bags and attracting vermin, until a new storage area could be built.

In April residents were relieved to witness the construction of the new bin storage area, believing that the issue could finally be resolved. But a month later, they were furious – the problem was now even worse, as there had been no delivery of new bins, and now two different piles of rubbish were the result.

Councillor Engert comments:

“The residents have every right to be angry – Labour-run Haringey Council seems to have no joined-up thinking at all here. Council officers explain that there is little that can be done, and that they are at the mercy of their bin suppliers. When approached, another supplier was clear that they could deliver them within days. Why is the Council sticking with suppliers that simply cannot provide the service they require? I have written to the Council to insist that action is taken immediately. This cannot be a difficult problem to solve – we need a Council with a ‘can-do’ attitude.”

The Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team, including Lynne Featherstone MP, have applied to renew their passports to prevent their details from being added to the ID cards database.

Once the Government has set up the National Identity Database, everyone who applies for a passport will have to attend an interview and have their fingerprints and irises scanned.

Passports issued now will be valid for 10 years, meaning people will be able to wait until 2016 before they have to register for an ID card.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Clegg MP said:

“ID cards will be expensive, intrusive and ineffective.

“I urge everyone who is concerned about their introduction to join the NO2ID ‘Renew for Freedom’ campaign and renew their passport over the coming weeks.

“The Liberal Democrats were the only party to vote against the introduction of identity cards, and we’re making our opposition clear today by buying ourselves 10 years of freedom from this unnecessary scheme.”

Notes:

1.The anti-ID Cards lobby group NO2ID is running a campaign to get people to renew their passports this May. More details are available at www.renewforfreedom.org

2.Passports can be renewed at any time, irrespective of their expiry date.

3.MPs Nick Clegg, Lynne Featherstone, Mark Hunter, Roger Williams and party president Simon Hughes, took their passports to the London passport office in Victoria.

4.Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed that passport renewal before the introduction of the National Identity Database will stop details being entered onto the register:“Anyone who feels strongly enough about the linkage not to want to be issued with an ID card in the initial phase will be free to surrender their existing passport and apply for a new passport before the designation order takes effect.”— Charles Clarke, on 21st March 2006.

Haringey Lib Dems are campaigning against health cuts imposed on the borough’s local Primary Care Trust as a result of the national NHS cash crisis. Party representatives will be joining campaigners at today’s crucial Primary Care Trust board meeting, where cuts are being planned.

The campaigners are furious over the closure of local Health Clinics, the withdrawal of community health services including visiting nurses to schools and the sale of part of the site of Hornsey Central Hospital for private redevelopment.

The new Lib Dem spokesperson on Health and Social Care, Cllr Richard Wilson comments:

“Patients and health workers across Haringey feel betrayed by the Government’s chaotic boom and bust approach to health funding. For years we have been told about new money going into the NHS, but now local health bosses have been told to cut back £11 million from this year’s budget. Frontline services for the ill and vulnerable will inevitably be damaged.The Haringey Labour Party needs to explain to residents and care staff why local health funding is in such mess.

“Attempts to dress up these cuts as restructuring are unbelievable. The Lib Dems have long argued for more preventative and community health services so that more people can be treated at home rather than in hospital. However, the motivation for these cuts is clearly not a desire to improve services, but a desperate attempt to deal with the current funding crisis.”

Commenting on Hornsey Hospital, Crouch End Councillor David Winskill adds:

“The first casualty of the funding crisis has been the plans to invest in Hornsey Hospital.Residents in the west of the Borough are angry that promises to keep health services in the hospital are being watered down. This land was bought by the great-grandparents of the residents of the borough, and was intended to be used for public health purposes. It is an absolute scandal that the land might be sold off for private use – once it is gone, it is gone forever.”

Notes:

Haringey PCT will be finalising plans to deal with an £11 million cut in its 2006/07 budget, which will hit every aspect of local health services. Despite cutting back on almost all its investment plans, the Trust is still left with £4m of savings to find from current services this year.

Haringey PCT’s strategic financial plan – which will be discussed at the board meeting – states that the PCT had initially been allocated an increase of £27 million for 2006/07, but since January this has been slashed back to £16 million, an unexpected cut of £11 million.

Haringey Lib Dems have released details of the group’s spokespersons and lead members for the coming year. Bolstered by their large gain in numbers at the local elections three weeks ago, the Liberal Democrats are pledging to ensure that the highest levels of scrutiny are applied to the workings of the Labour administration in the London Borough of Haringey.

The Lib Dems gained 11 new councillors at the local elections, as well as topping the popular vote across the borough. As a result hold many more seats on advisory bodies and committees to which Haringey Council officers report. Many Council bodies will be tied, with equal numbers of Lib Dem and Labour councillors.

Councillor Neil Williams, Leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, comments:

“I am incredibly fortunate to have such a talented team behind me, and I am sure it will not be too long before the Liberal Democrats are the controlling group on this council. What the borough needs is a united team, elected with the most popular support in the local elections, and on a clear and detailed manifesto as was so sadly lacking from the Labour party in these elections.”

Haringey Labour turned down the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the huge growth of support for the Liberal Democrats shown by the people of the borough at the local elections, by voting in Labour councillors as both Mayor and the Chair of the Planning Committee at the Annual Meeting of Haringey Council last night.

The Chair of the Planning Committee is a role that local authorities should fill on a non-partisan basis, say the Lib Dems. The party agues that in the interests of fairness and ensuring that planning decisions are non-political, a member of the opposition party should be given the chair of the committee.

There has not been a Mayor from the west of the borough for several years, and the Lib Dems pointed out that in the interests of fair representation, this fact needed to be addressed. In spite of the very small majority that Labour now hold, with 30 councillors to the Liberal Democrats’ 27, they were willing to offer no concessions on the night.

Councillor Neil Williams, Leader of the Lib Dems, comments: “This just shows that Labour has not changed, and has learned nothing from the election.

“We are very concerned for the borough. The Labour party, even with its much-depleted numbers, is still divided into factions, and the election of Councillor Meehan as their leader will not help matters at all. He is a lame duck leader, who has the genuine support of just 18 out of 57 councillors – less than one third of the total. This will make for a very weak ruling group, which will devote its time to intrigue and infighting, rather than improving services in the borough. In contrast, we have a united Lib Dem team, which is ready and willing to serve the people of Haringey.”