Fuming: Labour councillor Pat Callaghan

THE Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday) took the rare step of pulling a recording of a council meeting from public view after it was considered too political to watch in the final weeks of the general election campaign. Camden routinely allows members of the public to watch what happens in the council chamber back through its website.

But after a queue of Labour councillors queued up to attack national government and austerity policies – many referencing the fact that the country will head to the polls on December 12 – the council decided the footage was too hot for so-called “purdah” rules. In the pre-election period, local government is not allowed to publish anything that may swing public opinion.

Councillors had been warned to tread carefully before Monday’s all-member meeting and a debate on education was postponed from the agenda on the advice of council lawyers. Few took heed, and instead treated the session as a proxy election debate.

And with the chamber loaded with a huge Labour majority, speaker after speaker condemned national government.

The deputy mayor, Sabrina Francis, allowed standing orders to be extended so a discussion on a motion relating to local government finance could go on.

In one of the most heated exchanges, long-serving Labour councillor Pat Callaghan, the deputy council leader, rapped her fists on the table and shouted across the room that austerity cuts had left children hungry “I was born two years after the war and I remember going with my mother to collect our food stamps and there was a reason for that then,” she said. “But there is no reason that since 2010 young children are going hungry.”

She cited cases reported in other areas of the country where children had been found trying to eat stationery in school.

Jonathan Simpson, another Labour councillor, said: “There’s 1,200 food banks in this country – and to me that’s a mark of shame for this country. A year ago I had somebody in my surgery who wanted access to a food bank. The sadness in the woman’s face – she was broken. She was saying she had the option of being able to get food on the table for her children or a pair of shoes for herself. It’s just heartbreaking.”

Former mayor Councillor Richard Cotton said: “Housing has faced the biggest cuts. If you walk along Camden High Street this evening, and I think you will notice that cut yourself. We are accused of romanticising our youth – call me a romantic, but I don’t remember food banks, zero-hour contracts and people sleeping in doorways.”

He added: “Austerity to me is a fancy word to describe something that has been going on for thousands of years, probably: the rich few feathering their own nest at the expense of the rest of us, particularly the poor.”

Opposition councillors complained that the session had been hijacked and turned into a “party political broadcast”. While the recording is not currently available to view, the most enthusiastic residents could have watched the session live.

Camden finance chief Councillor Richard Olszewski said local authority finance needed reform to help councils to continue providing services. “In Camden, nearly 40 per cent of children are growing up in poverty,” he said. “Three and a half thousand households don’t have enough money to pay for basic household needs.” He added: “Our central government funding has been cut from £241 billion to about £110 billion.”

The Liberal Democrats said they broadly agreed with attempts to bring more money into Town Halls. Councillor Tom Simon said Labour was borrowing their “gold standard” ambitions but added: “There has been a long-standing phenomenon where governments of all different hues have a tendency to say to local authorities: ‘We would like you to do this now, here is not enough money to pay for it’.”

Conservative group leader Councillor Oliver Cooper said that there was more that Camden could do within its existing budget, and called for performance to be improved in secondary schools, bin collections to be restored and the crime rate to be tackled.

Conservative group leader Councillor Oliver Cooper

He said that the Labour council wanted to reform finance so that money could be spent on “cabinet members’ hobby horses, as this council was defined by in the 70s and 80s”.

Cllr Cooper told the meeting that compared with other local authorities, Camden received a good settlement but local Labour councillors were looking for “excuses” for local poor performance.

“We should be looking at the amount of money that we received and decide whether it’s a good idea to be challenging the fact we are the third highest funded council in the country,” he said.

“The local government settlement right now is relatively good – we can discuss or debate why or what the cause of that is but if you reform it, you have questions, challenges and for Camden and places that are well funded, you will end up with Camden having fewer resources than we have now.”

A Camden Council spokesman said: “The Borough Solicitor has advised that because of pre-election period restrictions that the webcast is not put on the website until after the election.”

He added: “The rules apply not to council business as such but to publicity. This is widely interpreted in the law and would include the recording of the meeting which contains statements and contributions from councillors which the council would otherwise not be entitled to publicise at this time. A number of councils around London have taken the same step.”