Rowen urged to make Lib Dem tax cuts a reality in Rochdale

Rochdale Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, has called on the town’s Liberal Democrat MP to prove that his Party’s new manifesto tax-cutting pledge is worth the paper it’s written on by persuading the Borough’s Lib Dem led Council to show they are capable of implementing this policy.

“In a week in which Paul Rowen has expressed admiration for Nick Clegg’s uncosted plans to make £20billion of tax cuts if he were to be elected as Prime Minister, I think it’s time he demonstrated the viability of this policy at a local level by urging his Lib Dem councillors to stop wasting tax payers’ money and give something back to those who most need it,” he said.

Roundly rubbishing Nick Clegg’s proposals as unworkable at a national level without severe cuts to public services, Mr Danczuk nevertheless argued that council tax cuts could be made in Rochdale, largely because the Council had received such a generous Government settlement this year.

“We’ve already seen Hammersmith and Fulham Council agree to a three per cent cut in Council tax last year so why can’t the Lib Dems in Rochdale commit to a similar cut next year?” he asked.

At a time when the Lib Dem group leader, Councillor Alan Taylor, is currently out of action due to ill health, he urged Paul Rowen, a former Council leader, to use the summer recess period wisely by using his experience to help his Lib Dem colleagues address chronic service delivery problems and cut out the needless waste of tax payers’ money.

“Considering that the Lib Dems received an inflation busting increase in the core Government grant at 5.4 per cent this year, I feel that they should not have raised council tax by 3.8 per cent,” he said. “We are now at a point when the Council have admitted that they have a healthy surplus of over £1million and stories of the Council blatantly wasting tax payers’ money are appearing in the media every week.”

Mr Danczuk said that recent developments had convinced him that the council were throwing money at problems and were not giving taxpayers good value for money.

“The council feel they can waste £150,000 a year on a ‘people’s champion’ which deals with, on average, one complaint a month,” he said. “And now they’re about to waste another £67,000 on appointing people to help the portfolio holder for older people do her job properly because they’re making such a mess of services for elderly people. This is a shambles. You can’t throw taxpayers’ money around like this to try and hide incompetence. To see so much money being carelessly frittered away while the council are pulling support services to get new businesses off the ground is a disgrace and an insult to the hardworking people of Rochdale.” 

Responding, Paul Rowen’s Agent Dave Hennigan said: “Yet again this is a lot of hot air. When Labour were in power we were faced with huge council tax rises. This may explain why they were unceremoniously kicked out of power.

"The ‘stories’ he refers to are stories generated by himself - a stream of self-motivated attacks.

"The Liberal Democrats have levied the lowest council tax for a decade in consecutive years, and judging by the election results in May, the public are not conned by any attacks.

"We are not complacent though and will work hard to ensure that everyone gets value for money from their council tax.”