AMID Liverpool City Council’s plans for over £56 million in spending cuts and another 4.99 per cent council tax rise (Liverpool Echo, February 22) the Liverpool Trade Union Council (LTUC) on Saturday February 21 organised a “People’s Budget” conference.

The purpose of this conference was to outline an alternative strategy to austerity which has destroyed working-class communities for 16 years. Similar conferences have occurred in Birmingham, Enfield, Coventry and Cornwall.

The conference in Liverpool was attended by LTUC delegates representing thousands of trade union members, as well as community groups and activists. The Liverpool Green Party deputy council group leader, Martyn Madeley, attended and spoke. As did Liverpool Your Party council group leader Alan Gibbons. Both advised that their respective council groups will consider the LTUC budget amendments. Cllr Madeley also signed a newly launched petition by 20 former and current union NEC members calling for Zack Polanski and Green Party to instruct its over 800 councillors to vote against austerity across the country. You can also sign this petition here (https://c.org/r55nStyRBm).

The key discussions from attendees were a council housing building programme, Send care provision, saving a local library and, crucially, jobs. Amid reports of the highest youth unemployment rate in five years (16.1 per cent) it is crucial that across the country good-quality jobs with trade union rates of pay are created.

A council housebuilding programme, as was done in Liverpool from 1983-87, could create skilled apprenticeships, for example. The president of the LTUC, Dave Walsh, was one of those taken on in the 1980s as an apprentice plasterer.

The LTUC’s People’s Budget proves there is an alternative. It uses the council’s own usable reserves — money the city already has — to cancel the council tax hike entirely and reverse over 98 per cent of these cuts.

Austerity-pushing councils have received financial bailouts recently. Nine councils in London are reportedly being sent £530m additional funding to stave off bankruptcy. Why can’t additional funding be won back by a fighting, working-class, socialist council rather than accepting and managing economic decline?

Our People’s Budget stops the Labour council’s proposals to fine parents of children missing school, to remove vital second carers from disabled people, and to restrict one-to-one care to “exceptional circumstances.”

Instead, we’d begin a five-year programme to build 5,000 genuinely affordable council houses, environmentally friendly and with gardens. This can be began by using existing reserves and the council’s prudential borrowing powers. However we would not stop there — we would launch a campaign to demand from central government a replenishment of used financial reserves and point to the over £500m in lost financial support from central government since 2010. By delivering good-quality, affordable council housing alongside reversing council tax hikes the council would have behind them the support of working-class families across the city.

In 1984 Liverpool City Council, with a fighting socialist strategy, won back a package of £60m in funding (with inflation this purchasing power today would be £250m-£300m) from the Thatcher government. This was the so-called “Iron Lady.” Imagine what could be won from the “Tin Man” that is Keir Starmer!

The law is clear: elected councillors — not employed council officers — ultimately make the final decisions on usable reserve and borrowing levels. As the Isle of Wight Council stated in 2007: “Members should have regard to the personal duties placed upon the director of finance as chief financial officer. The council may take decisions which are at variance with his advice, providing there are reasonable grounds to do so.”

The choice in the council chamber is simple: do Starmer’s dirty work, or back a fighting budget that puts working-class people first. We will lobby the council budget meeting next week and fight for the needs of working class people.

The full LTUC People’s Budget, including a model amendment for councillors, is available on request.

Dean Young, delegate, Liverpool Trade Union Council (Unite NW/0538 branch).