Keynes was both a serious Liberal and a serious man. His work in two world wars and their aftermath is the stuff of legend. His contribution to economic thinking, recently somewhat vindicated, makes him a giant. Bertrand Russell found him intellectually formidable.

But he also built the Cambridge Arts Theatre and was the first Chairman of the Arts Council, created by the postwar Labour Government.

It would be too easy to say merely that a great man needs a hobby like anyone else. The Classical world and civilisation since have shunned the suggestion that somehow culture was an add-on, like sitting down to watch the X factor after a tiring week. Greek culture was defined by Homer. The Romans (or at least the ones who wrote about these things) saw beyond ‘bread and circuses’.

So the gathering of cultural luminaries in the House of Lords last week was not, by any measure, just a ‘jolly’. Familiar faces from film, old rockers and young soul performers rubbed shoulders with television actors, impresarios and even a specialist in high fashion jewelry.

Jane Bonham-Carter had organised, with the assistance of Nick Clegg’s office, something which was as much a political statement as a chance to see and be seen. Yes: the Party was launching a policy statement ‘The Power of Creativity’. More importantly it was making a statement that the arts matter. And that cultural people can and should support the Liberal Democrats.

Nick’s speech, covered last week in brief on LDV, was especially significant. In it he gave a clear pledge to maintain arts funding at current levels – something increasingly doubtful in the other two main parties, bent on cuts while sparing the largest spending departments the trouble of even modest belt-tightening. He also reminded us that the cultural sector was capable of new industries like video games, in which we have a considerable competitive advantage.

Culture is not an add-on. Nor is it a Disney theme park. It is a vital part of the life of the nation and of local communities. So when a right wing think tank suggests that a cut of 50% in cultural spending would not be noticed and when local council budget-making targets the arts development officer rather than the costly managers to whom he or she reports, it is time to speak up loudly.

Nick did this and hundreds were there to hear him. Let us hope that the Federal Policy Committee, which likes to remind us of how important it is in producing the Party’s General Election manifesto, was listening.

Liberal Democrats have always been clear on where political power should reside. We are democrats and we are instinctive supporters of decentralisation and empowerment. We trust people to make their own choices and to run their own lives, or do we?

A few years ago I sat on the Party’s commission to look at public services. It was an unwieldy body that struggled to find focus and despite the fact that it was tasked to produce federal policy it delivered instead pages of English-only imperatives that served only to pad out its main thesis, that we should be empowering local people not turning public services into a money-making venture for private entrepreneurs.

In many ways the public-private argument is superfluous to the thrust of this article. At the end of the day who delivers a service is secondary to who controls and directs it and why they are doing so. The big surprise for me in all the discussions on the public service commission was the reluctance of some very good liberals to propose that English Councils and English Regional Government take on responsibility for the delivery of many public services that are currently within the ambit of central government.

The argument was that it was inappropriate to devolve these services down even though many of them are already being delivered by the Welsh and Scottish Governments. It was the sort of reluctance that later characterised the very weak proposals put forward by John Prescott for North East England, a proposition that was so poor that it deservedly got the thumbs down in my opinion.

Here in Wales there is a different debate. We have a devolved administration with limited law-making powers. We are currently engaged in a process that will lead to a referendum on whether we acquire full law-making powers on those areas devolved to us or not. Actually it is more complicated than that but I do not want to bore you. Needless to say, even after that vote the Welsh Assembly will have fewer powers than the Scottish Parliament.

The debate we are all avoiding however, is where local government fits into this scenario. At the moment we are assuming that the newly empowered Welsh Assembly will just take the place of Westminster in the constitutional mix and that is very much how we have played it to date. But there is a wider debate as to what structures we need to deliver services to a nation of 3 million people and in particular whether 22 local councils and seven health boards are appropriate vehicles to spend the bulk of the Assembly’s £15 billion budget.

My view is that we most probably need bigger and fewer Councils but that the main debate should be around the democratisation and accountability of service delivery as much as its efficiency. Accountability drives efficiency. It is one reason why the Assembly does not actually deliver services itself but funds others to do so. However, as a body the Welsh Government is demonstrating an increasing propensity to interfere in the work of elected bodies and in doing so remove local accountability.

It seems to me that in a liberal model of devolved administration, the government makes the laws and locally elected bodies deliver the services at the most appropriate level and without the duplication we have now. Thus, if for argument’s sake we were to revert to eight Unitary County Councils it would be logical for them to take over the running of the health service in their area from the health boards.

Is it appropriate for wider economic and transport powers to be given to such Councils? Should we task them with control over further education as well as sixth forms?  Should they take over the role of Cadw on heritage in their area? Would we want them to have greater powers in terms of the environment and biodiversity? And if we were to settle on a model of say 15 local Councils how would we treat them?

This is a debate that still has to take place in Wales and it is inextricably linked in with getting the structures right so that we can deliver economies of scale at the same time as accountability and transparency. Even in a small nation the National Assembly is too big to do most of this properly and yet even the Welsh Liberal Democrats do not yet have a clear idea of where we want to end up, even if our instincts are entirely the right ones.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Local Government Spokesperson
peterblack.blogspot.com

Tomorrow night (27^th January) Liverpool City Council will adopt a council tax rate for the next financial year at exactly the same level as for the current year. A key component of that zero increase is the decision of the LGA and Local Employers to make no pay increase offer this year.

In the private sector there has been a gross drop in pay of more than 7% since the recession hit. This is a combination of no wages (jobs lost) or reduced wages by cuts in basic pay levels, perks or hours worked. Workers as a whole have felt great pain. By and large against this back drop public sector workers have not done to badly. The 1.4 million employed through local government negotiators have received at least a 3.25% increase with a bit more for those at the bottom and a bit less for those at the top. The remainder of the public sector have had an increase of at least 4.5%. So the LGA had to ask itself two questions when deciding what to do this year:

1. Is it morally justified to ask people whose pay and conditions have got worse to pay to safeguard pay and conditions for those who have done not brilliantly but OK?

2. How can we afford to keep going the services which are desperately needed by those in most need at a time when income of all sorts has fallen?

No-one wanted to take the step we did. We also recognise the unfairness of it. Teachers, whose pay is met through national negotiations but which come from the council budget will get 2%+ this year whilst school caretakers will get nothing. Our response is simple – we believe that the Government should not have kept to the three year pay plan which was agreed when times were better.

Looking ahead on public sector pay there is no good news. Labour will keep pay increases to 1% although we will soon see inflation at a rate of almost 3%. Tories don’t actually ahev a declared policy although they are making an alarming series of noises which I believe will mean major cuts to staffing levels and to public sector pay. Lib Dems have the Vince proposals of a maximum of £400 per year increase which applies to a cleaner as much to a chief executive. This clearly means that low paid will get a higher albeit modest increase proportionately than the higher paid. Not quite what I was suggesting but perfectly acceptable and definitely should now be supported.

Top employees salaries are now a mess. Again there are two questions to be asked a moral one and a practical one:

1. What the h**l do they need £150,000+ for? This applies to everyone. I don’t know what anyone does with that sort of money which far exceeds what any of us needs.

2. How do we operate in a market where there is considerable traffic from the public to the private sector and where there is clear evidence that senior staff could earn considerably more by making such a move?

In the short term the answers are obvious. There must be pay restraint and the restraint must be greater at the top. In the longer term society as a whole needs to work out why a banker is worth 50 times more than a nurse who might save your life.

Cllr Richard Kemp is Liverpool City Councillor for Church and
Leader of the Local Government Association Liberal Democrat Group

Cllr Jonathan Wallace is Gateshead Councillor for Whickham South & Sunniside Ward
jonathanwallace.blogspot.com