A decision to axe a £1.4 million funding package for 13 voluntary organisations, including the Citizens Advice Bureau, was unlawful, a High Court Judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Blake said a Birmingham City Council decision to stop giving money to groups such as the Citizens Advice Bureau was “clearly defective” and that councillors appeared not to understand their obligations under the Race Relations Act, Sex Discrimination Act and Disability Discrimination Act.
Council leaders failed to take proper account of the impact that withdrawing grants would have on disabled and vulnerable people, the judge added.
No consultation was carried out with people who would suffer because of the funding cuts, neither did the cabinet consider other ways of helping the organisations to identify alternative funding.
It's going to become a familiar story.
Because there are alternatives.
I'm sorry to note Ed Balls has been a little dismissive of tackling tax avoidance as a way of tackling the crisis - but also note he only said it can't solve the entire problem - about which I entirely agree. It can't. Which is why I offer much more - more than the Labour party, to its cost has dared do. But if we're serious we'd start investing heavy in those alternative ways of funding - now.
Why not start with the £16 billion lost a year because Companies House and H M Revenue & Customs aren't funded to properly regulate the 500,000 limited companies that disappear a year that should be paying tax? It's a good target. And would have got Birmingham out of trouble.
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Legal Aid – is that not for certain section of society?
Public loos? Yes, I know it sounds silly – but every pregnant woman, bladder/bowel/prostate patient might have to avoid town now!
I think we can make every cut be seen for what it is actually
It’s all DISCRIMINATORY!!
@Hannah
Agreed
And it is deliberate
I think we can assume that Balls’ record in government was and will be even more useless than can be inferred even by the remarks attributed to him here.
I don’t agree that action against tax avoidance “can’t solve the entire problem”. It can, but you need to start with an accurate estimate of the size of the problem and resource those charged with reducing it.
The problem with Balls is that he remains in the Hedgies and Venture Capitalists (i.e. asset strippers’) pockets. Balls’ willful refusal to admit to the size of the problem is just one strand is a cynical strategy whose chief aim is to protect their secret friends. I’m afraid it’s still not just Balls’ by name.
Richard,
I recommend this article by Johann Hari of the Indy. His description of the exploitation and neglect of the ‘real middle class’ is spot on.
I’ve often believed this country would be a better and more prosperous place if we stopped pandering to the idle rich, embraced work and valued people by their contribution to society and not by how much they plunder.
To oppose the neo-liberal, profit-is-everything consensus risks accusations of being a full-blooded communist. Hari proposes an alternative which is profound and hard to oppose. Miliband should read it and give us the revolution so many of us crave.