Why is Michael Gove scrambling to find the truth about the council crisis? Birmingham deserves better

Almost a year ago, the Labor leaders of Birmingham City Council announced that the council was on the verge of collapse. So they imposed a spending freeze everywhere – and that was just the beginning of a spiral of chaos.

So why are we still waiting for an urgent public inquiry to reveal the truth about what happened here and why are Brummies now paying the price?

By September last year, the city council’s fate was sealed. Birmingham was, by all accounts, broken. Two formal Section 114 notices appeared just weeks apart, confirming that the council could not present a balanced budget without outside help.

With a deficit of £300m and growing, a matching payment that could still be anywhere from £250m to a billion and no reserves left, it has all gone terribly wrong since the “glory days” of the Commonwealth Games in 2022. .

READ MORE: £100m and four years later, Birmingham City Council relaunches flawed ‘Oracle’ funding system

Since last spring, several senior council officers on £100,000 plus salaries have disappeared without a word of explanation (all appearing to ‘resign’ their posts), while commissioners paid from Birmingham’s meager funds have been imposed on the city for to oversee “improvement and recovery”. Councilors who were part of Labour’s political leadership team that brought the city to its knees, and those meant to scrutinize its affairs in opposition and through a network of cross-committees, have largely remained in place, seemingly blameless for the catastrophe which unfolds.

And yet, for the city’s 1.1 million residents, there was no escape. Budgets for everything from youth services to early help for troubled families have been ripped out, hundreds of frontline jobs are being axed and a mass sale of land and property is underway which threatens our legacy cherished.

READ MORE: Why Birmingham City Council chief executive suddenly quit and other unanswered questions

Families of young people with special needs are being told they can no longer transport their disabled children to college, citizens who are disabled or elderly and rely on the lifeline of local day care centers are being warned that some will close, and libraries and youth clubs will close. hang up.

We now have the frankly ridiculous scenario of councilors who voted for a devastating budget that was supposed to lead to mass closures and funding cuts, now lobbying to save things in their own communities that they knew would be hit. “Save our library/daycare center/transportation funding,” they chant, then tell us they had no choice but to vote through the budget that is the cause.

A massive tax hike has been imposed, totaling 21% this year and next. That’s before looking at the long-term impact on statutory services, which will inevitably lead to increased demand from children and adults at risk in the years to come.

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The pain doesn’t stop there. Angry female workers and their allies have been on strike at schools across the city as they still await payments owed by the council under equal pay legislation. And all this before the city imposes a fortnightly bin collection service next year, at a time when flytipping is at an all-time high and recycling at a pitiful level.

Here at Birmingham Live, we pressed for answers. We’ve published repeated stories exposing the insanity of an equal pay bill that no one understands, we’ve highlighted discrepancies in what people say in public and what happened behind the scenes, and we’ve taken every opportunity to challenge senior officers, politicians and commissioners .

But the resounding message we keep getting is that “a public inquiry will look into this” or “this is a question for the inquiry”.

In February, I publicly called for the inquiry to take place without delay. In an article titled Blameless Brummies pay price for council fiasco – 13 questions to be answered I set out critical unresolved questions.

To their credit, the council’s conservative group took the time to provide a response to each of them, which will be incorporated into an upcoming article dissecting what we know so far. But a public inquiry will have the powers to do what we cannot – the ability to compel people to provide evidence and answers and to seek confidential documents and minutes. It’s the only way we’ll ever know the truth.

So why is it taking so long?

For that we have to turn to the Department for Equality, Housing and Communities, whose head is Secretary of State Michael Gove. He has so far been lukewarm on making a Birmingham inquiry a priority, despite announcing he would commission one in September 2023.

He said it was a critical part of the intervention he was announcing and was being asked to “investigate the root of the problems facing the local authority”. He said of Birmingham council then that it had a record of “ineffective, ineffective and unaccountable governance”. They are failing their basic duties.

“Where local leaders fail, it is the residents who are disappointed. This cannot continue.” And he added: “I do not take these decisions lightly, but we must protect the interests of Birmingham residents and taxpayers and provide reassurance to the sector.”

Since then we have wondered when an inquiry will take place, who will lead it, what its powers will be and what its terms of reference will be. So far we’ve been encouraged with the same response – we’ll get more details “in due course”. Last week, in a repeat of the response we had in February, we were told: “We are developing proposals in the area of ​​such an inquiry to ensure that they address the fundamental questions and options for moving forward to deliver best value for Birmingham residents. .”

The statement did not answer any of the questions raised – including one asking if there was any truth to the “coincidental” leak to the right-wing Telegraph newspaper that Gove was looking for a chief constable to lead the inquiry. It was a well-timed leak on the eve of the West Midlands mayoral election and I wrote about my frustration with it here.

READ MORE: Blameless Brummies pay price for council fiasco – the 13 questions that need to be answered

At the moment, amid a tsunami of negative stories about the government, it must be quite nice to have a financial crisis and an example of financial impropriety in a Labour-led council to rely on to make up for a small part of it . Only councilors have failed the people of Birmingham, says Gove, and his Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said the same. Former mayor Andy Street joined in the run-up to the election which he narrowly lost.

It will also be a useful narrative to draw on in the run-up to the general election, when Tory MPs in the West Midlands fight to hold on to their seats against Labor rivals.

There is certainly plenty of evidence to support laying much of the blame at the feet of the city’s Labor politicians. Labor has been the ruling party on the city council for more than a decade and has ultimate control and say over council affairs.

Clearly, they have failed miserably to learn from the Kerslake Report of 2014, which highlighted multiple governance issues and toxicity within the council. The lack of political accountability since the explosion of the last financial crisis has been astounding.

Councilors referred to predecessors, officers and austerity – anywhere but themselves – and bemoaned their largely part-time amateur status as an excuse not to go over all the financial and IT issues critical.

But there is definitely more to this mess than meets the eye. What if Birmingham’s political leaders were found to have been lied to and deliberately misinformed about critical issues, as some of them have claimed? What if misguided individuals defied political orders, then buried their mistakes? What if government officials, or auditors, or those paid to provide oversight and assurance, did not do their job?

What if pay irregularities were being used to mask a deep failure in the way the council’s Oracle finance, invoicing and procurement system works? What if it’s not ‘just’ a failed Labor council, but something deeper about the shocking state of our welfare and social care system and the impact of a Tory government devaluing local government for over a decade?

Birmingham needs to know the whole truth. We need accountability before healing can truly begin. If this leads to the discovery of individuals for incompetence or negligence, wholesale turnover of political personnel, disciplinary action or damage to personal reputation, so be it. If they uncover damning, or even criminal, evidence of wrongdoing, bring it up.

Brummies are now paying the price of failure. We demand that long overdue inquiry and we need it now. Mr Gove, are you listening?