Question time from the Local Government Group Annual Conference 2010

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Question Time

Facing an audience of local government councillors, ITV economics editor Daisy McAndrew, Mirror journalist Kevin McGuire and opinion pollster Deborah Mattinson took part in the Local Government Group’s version of ‘Question Time’, chaired by The Independent's Michael Brown.

Listeners challenged the panel on cuts, housing, the lost generation...cuts, focus groups, the double-dip recession and...er...cuts!

On making cuts

Kevin: "The government is farming out cuts to be made by local governments - so it’s councils that get the blame. I think you are brave, working for local government. You’re in for one hell of a bad time."

Daisy: "The plus side is that local politicians know where to cut better than national politicians; you have a much better idea where the flabby bits are in your local area; you know where cuts can best be tolerated."

Deborah: "There is what I call ‘Peter Pan politics’ going on in this country, which is where the voter is too often infanticised - held in a childlike state by politicians. So politics becomes something that is done to the voter - a kind of specatator sport, and the whole cuts thing is a really good example of this.

"The cynical view is that local government will take the blame by implementing the cuts. The positive view is that if you do this in a way that actually takes the voter with you by really understanding them, you might just get away with it."

Kevin:"The cuts will keep on coming until the government realises they can’t cut anymore, because people will take to the streets...they're not going to tolerate this."

On focus groups

Deborah: "Focus groups are the only way that a politician, local or national, can really understand what people think. If the politician is not in the room, people do say different things."

Kevin: "Focus groups have screwed up so many politicians I know. Going out and knocking on doors is the way to find out what your electorate think."

Daisy: "If you’re a very out-of-touch politician, you need a focus group; if you’ve got your finger on the pulse, then you don’t. There are some politicians who need help, and some who don't."

Chair: "When I was an MP, one of the best focus groups I ever had was my group of councillors. When I stopped listening to my councillors, and when they lost their seats...I lost my seat. So I would say to every politician in Westminster: 'Listen to your councillors!'"

(Clearly this went down well)

On housing

Daisy: "One of the really big challenges for councils and for government is how are we going to house the new generation? Particularly now when people can't get mortgages because they need such a hefty deposit."

Kevin: "Ian Duncan Smith talked about how people have to be more mobile and go around looking for work. In a sense he's quite right, but where are all the houses? There's about 1.8 million people on the waiting list; where are the houses? They just aren't there."

On whether there will be a double-dip recession

Kevin: “We’re in the hands of the gods.”

Daisy: "Six months ago I firmly believed there was going to be a double-dip recession, now I think it’s more a case of ‘hold onto your hats, it’s going to be very, very bumpy, but we might just pull it off.' I changed my mind when the need for cuts became clear from Europe."

On what legislation should be scrapped

Kevin: "Nick Clegg launched his 'tell us what laws to get rid of' idea, and people are saying - get rid of the ban on being able to marry your horse and so on! But if you actually look at the suggestions from members of the public - most of them are around drugs laws. I don’t have any suggestions of legislation to get rid of, but I do suggest that Whitehall shouldn’t dictate when you empty your residents’ bins."

Daisy: "The whole targets culture is now being reversed. It was only brought in with the best of intentions, but we all know that you try very hard to hit one target and all the others fall by the wayside."

On what they would do if they were chancellor for a day

Daisy: "Pray."

Kevin: "I would reverse all cuts. Restore the one per cent increase in national insurance because I believe we have to spend our way out. The private sector is the motor of growth. In the old happy days, Nick used to agree with me! However painful it is, we should stop the cuts. We cannot be compared to Greece. Their debt is three or four times bigger than ours, in a smaller country."

Deborah: "I would almost call for a return to the Sixties – for those of us who can remember the ‘I’m backing Britain’campaign. We should be introducing hefty incentives to encourage new British entrepreneurs."

On the risk of a lost generation

Daisy: "It’s very, very worrying. I have no answers. I share the concern."

Deborah: “I feel really, really gloomy about this. It’s all very well telling the graduates to go and flip burgers, but what about the kids who would have been the burger flippers? I think this whole lost generation thing is very, very, very scary.

"This whole area of youth is something that Gordon Brown was personally very passionate about and did a huge amount of work. I think if we’re not careful we will go back to the days when I first started doing political research – and there was the much maligned Tory youth opportunity programme. People would just fall about laughing in focus groups when we talked about it – it was so derided. I feel very, very worried about what’s going to happen to our young people and I don’t hear anything at all from this government about it."

Martin: “It’s not a very good time to be born really. Your mother will have lost her grant, you’re Surestart's probably going to be shut, you’re child benefit’s frozen, your school’s not going to be rebuilt. Then when you finally leave university with a huge debt there’ll be 70 people going for one job. Its not much of a prospect is it!

"You all know as councillors that you get complaint after complaint about antisocial behaviour – about kids hanging round – and it’ll all going to be made worse. In the end it turns out to be a false economy. If you have kids hanging round, causing damage, it's very expensive to put right and I know in many cases they are soft services to cut. I’ll understand why you’ll do it – it’ll be forced upon you, but it’s a false saving in the long term as well as just being fundamentally wrong."