Next mayor's 'Awkward' task to be neutral
Mar 6 2009 by Paul Dale, Birmingham Post
Hall Green Lib Dem councillor Mick Wilkes will make a first-class Lord Mayor of Birmingham when he gets the job in May.
But his election will be particularly warmly greeted by Tory city council leader Mike Whitby.
For Wilkes – an independent spirit whose intellectual rigour has blown holes in a number of Whitby’s pet projects including the new library, the Highways PFI and the municipal bank – is the leader of the backbench Awkward Squad.
The Lord Mayor must be non-political, so Wilkes will have to bite his tongue for a year. It will be fascinating to see how two other Awkward Squad members fare in May, when the Conservative group holds its annual meeting.
Will maverick Tories James Hutchings and John Alden be able to hold on to their positions as scrutiny committee chairmen?
Both have upset their colleagues during the course of the year, chiefly over repeatedly calling into question the deliverability of the business transformation project, which is supposed to save the council about £1 billion over a 10-year period.
Hutchings even went so far recently to suggest that council officials were attempting to “deceive” people over the amount that could be saved.
This is a serious allegation, which could be referred to the Standards Committee to investigate whether Coun Hutchings broke the code of conduct. There is another reason, too, why Hutchings’ colleagues might remove him as chairman of the finance and performance scrutiny sub-committee.
His outspoken support for Gaza and plea for the council to stop buying Israeli goods and services has infuriated a good many Tories.
There were scowls aplenty on the faces of Conservatives when Lawrence of Arabia, as Hutchings is now known, rose at a full council meeting to present his latest anti-Israel petition. Retribution is not far away, I fear.
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Being the paragon of tact, diplomacy and virtue that he is, I am sure Birmingham housing cabinet member John Lines will want to apologise for having misled city councillors.
Inadvertently, of course, but Lines does appear to have problems when it comes to understanding how the Government finances social housing. The bulldogish Tory keeps bashing on about Whitehall taking £100m from Birmingham tenants, via their rents, to subsidise housing in the rest of the country.
Housing minister Iain Wright has pointed out that since 1994 Birmingham has received £126 million through the Housing Revenue Account system, via the contributions of other councils. In 2008/09, for the first time since 2001, Birmingham will contribute to the system – but only to the tune of £8m, which is some way from Lines’s £100 million.
I look forward to the inevitable planted question at the next full council meeting, which will no doubt give Lines an opportunity to repeat his claims.
n By Paul Dale
