Harry in hell
This is a report from a public debate on Tory cuts to voluntary sector funding in Hammersmith and Fulham. The debate was organised by the Hammersmith Community Law Centre, which lost 60% of its funding in recent voluntary sector cuts. The debaters were Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor Harry Phibbs, Polly Toynbee, Labour MP Andrew Slaughter, Nick Seddon and John Fiztpatrick. It was chaired by Clive Coleman.
Another majestically windy summer evening in London, and a tall, roly-poly white man by name of Councillor Harry Phibbs takes the stage at the Irish Centre in Hammersmith's Blacks Road, to talk awesome neocon garbage about funding voluntary and public services. To wit: 'Of course you could [fund more voluntary organisations] if you increased the total budget, but we all realise that there's a problem there... do you put the council tax up?'
'We could put yours up,' says someone in the audience.
'What about the money that went to your pay rise?' say several others.
'What about those ludicrous [street] cleaning machines,' wails an irate member of the audience called Mark Mitchell. 'They cost thousands of pounds. They do [nothing]. They go throughout the day, especially when people are walking along the streets. It's spending on the wrong things.'
Harry Phibbs is a Tory councillor at Hammersmith and Fulham Council. That makes Harry part of the Conservative administration that is trying to snuff out the left-leaning lawyers who run the Hammersmith Community Law Centre by cutting over £100,000 from the centre's annual council grant. Phibbs is also an Evening Standard journalist, for anybody out there who actually reads it. He also comes out - very early in the evening - as a member of the management committee of the very Hammersmith Law Centre that he and his Tory colleagues are so eager to erase. It is a startling revelation that touches off a synchronised intake of audience breath, and perhaps explains why Harry is terminally unable to make eye contact with anybody in the audience: he seems keen to avoid a visual on any of the many people here tonight whom the Tories are taking down.
Unfortunately for Harry, the 200-strong audience that has turned up to hear tonight's debate on the pro and cons of voluntary sector funding is made up almost entirely of Law Centre management committee members, a very large number of people from many ethnic groups that have needed the Law Centre's help over the years (often to fight organisations like Harry's), Law Centre staff and countless other fans of the voluntary sector and decent public services.
The rest of the panel isn't much help: Polly Tonybee is sitting alongside Harry, and clearly can't stand it: impressively, she manages to give the impression of ignoring him for the entire evening, while all the while quietly edging him off the end of the table. A few seats down on the panel sits a wide-eyed fantasist and 'charity expert' called Nick Seddon. Nick reveals early that he believes that the voluntary sector should look to the private sector for reliable philanthropy, so Nick is clearly out to lunch.
Next to Nick is Labour MP and ex-Hammersmith Council Leader Andrew Slaughter. Cynical members of the audience observe that Andrew wasn't quite such an enemy of funding cuts when he ran the council (some remember his council's attempt to whack £20,000 from the Shepherd's Bush Advice Centre's budget as though it was only yesterday, not least because it was). There is also the sensitive issue of his own government's campaign to change funding for legal aid from an hourly to a fixed-fee system, which socially-minded lawyers argue will limit legal aid funding even further and put many lawyers off the idea of engaging in it. The hell with that for now, though: clearly, Andy has decided that his own crappy behaviour doesn't excuse Harry's, so he's turned up for the kill.
Down that end of the panel as well is Law Centres Federation president and founding Hammersmith Law Centre member John Fitzgerald. He is busy describing the cuts to the Law Centre's funding as 'the most spectacular act of municipal vandalism that I can remember,' and rousing the crowd with calls to civic action.
So - things aren't looking too crisp for Harry, and they don't improve much when the time comes for him to heave the old white butt out of his seat, and address the masses. Large, red-faced, and sweaty, he tries to infuse the spiel with a few of the Tories-Are-Human-Too lines that the modern Cameronised Conservative so desperately wants to believe enriches the Conservative charm offensive.
'I want to start by saying,' Harry starts tremulously - able by now, poor bastard, to look only at his own trembling hands - 'that we should remember that there is a human element here… there are three solicitors in this room who may be losing their jobs, [because of the funding cuts to the Law Centre]. If that's the case, I would certainly wish them well in the future…'
''Jesus Christ,' several members of the audience say. The rest of the place dissolves as Harry stutters on.
'I kind of admire him for turning up,' one member of the audience says.
'Fuck that,' says another, loudly. 'It's his job.'
So - that's pretty much the ball game for Harry, with just a few minutes gone. To his credit, though, he tries to puff on a bit. He goes in for a bit of inter-council benchmarking – the 'we're shit, but who isn't?' line that is such a crucial part of today's local government comparative-performance culture. To wit: 'Hammersmith and Fulham ranks sixth in London boroughs [for funding to the voluntary sector]. Hackney, Richmond, Ealing – they're all spending considerably less. That's the context. It is perfectly clear that funding the voluntary sector is a worthwhile way of spending of money, and we feel the thriving voluntary sector is a way of providing greater independence... '
Alas for Harry, this benchmarking logic is no longer an easy sell. All that Harry is really saying is that Hammersmith and Fulham isn't as far through its rape of local public services as councils that got a head start. The whole hall is muttering about it. So what if the Hammersmith and Fulham Tories have yet to obliterate services as completely as New Labour councils have? They're certainly giving it their best shot. Everybody here knows that the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory Council has devoted its year in power to trying to close local schools, cut home help and social services, and closing area housing offices.
Possibly, the main reason they decided against wiping the voluntary sector off the Hammersmith map altogether is that recent local campaigns to save schools and home help, etc, have left them reluctant to re-provoke the masses for a bit. Plus, they'll need to get rid of the Hammersmith Law Centre completely if they're going to lobotomise the Hammersmith voluntary sector properly. As a number of audience members point out, the Law Centre is the voluntary sector's engine in many ways. A great many voluntary sector organisations take free legal advice from the Law Centre in Hammersmith, or send clients the Law Centre's way when they've exhausted their own knowledge and resources: the facts are that many people who use voluntary sector services need legal advice and representation at some point.
Still: there are people here tonight who think that buried within the Hammersmith voluntary funding shambles is the funding template of the future. Nick Seddon is our man here. His argument is that voluntary agencies shouldn't look to local authorities consistently for funding, because local authorities are notoriously fickle and likely to allow to fund (or not) on this or that political whim.
There is probably something in this. People here are very interested in the notion of political whim, particularly Harry's. Several audience members ask Harry if the law centre's history of representing politically-unpopular clients (immigrants, asylum-seekers and very controversial individuals like the nine Afghan men who hijacked a plane to the UK, were convicted, and then granted leave to stay by the courts here on human rights grounds) led the Tories to believe the Law Centre would make a popular target for cuts. Certainly, the blogs of some Hammersmith and Fulham councillors refer to the Law Centre's work with the Afghan hijackers when discussing cuts to the centre's funding.
The counter-argument to Nick, of course, is that political whim could work in the voluntary sector's favour, in theory at least. Surely, the whole notion of democracy is - or was - that the voting public pressures politicians into loftier political priorities. Big meetings like this are an example of that pressure. And sure, democracy is hopeless and politicians are as likely as not to ignore the voting public and maybe turn the dogs on it, but surely the democratic option is better than Seddon's proposal, which is to look to the private sector for philanthropy. 'Private donations, foundation grants…'
Unfortunately for Nick, almost nobody here - except maybe Harry - seems able to picture a world where the likes of Shell, say, or Coke fight each other for the chance to sponsor human rights lawyers who want to take immigration and asylum cases against the Home Office, et cetera. It seems equally unlikely that Virgin or United would step forward to sponsor lawyers to pursue the human rights of convicted plane hijackers. As John Fitzpatrick says, the reason that the Law Centre was able to represent the Afghan hijackers in their fight to stay in the UK was precisely because the Law Centre is a community-based organisation – its management committee is made up of local people who work closely with the community and make decisions about who to represent in a democratic way.
Fitzpatrick also says that politicians need to remember whose money they are dealing with. 'They are channelling OUR money. They are making decisions about the money of the community. We are asking them to be a little bit more grown up and mature as politicans… and not to take it as a personal affront, when we pick upon a particular case. [As things stand] it's as if you have insulted a councillor personally if you point out that a housing department officer has broken the law in refusing an applicant homelessness status...' He also makes the point that the law centre didn't choose to represent the Afghan hijackers. It was asked to represent them, and decided to do so on the basis that the Home Office should not be allowed to ignore Immigration Tribunal decisions – even politically unpopular ones.
Polly Toynbee, meanwhile, has stared at Nick for an age without blinking. 'It seems to me to come from another planet,' she finally splutters of Nick's ode to the private sector's benevolence. 'The idea that there is this huge well of money out there, well… they (the private sector) think that they give a lot, but they give very little, and they give the money to projects that they want to control. You're not talking about shaking a tin on the high street. They [the private sector] certainly don't want things run democratically, with a [management] board and the people deciding how it is going to be run. You want to go back to some primitive feudal system where we're all dependent and tugging our forelocks at a handful of rich guys…'
They'd have to be apolitical rich guys as well, which would narrow the field further still. One member of the Law Centre's management committee gets to his feet now to pursue exactly that point. 'I've got a question for Harry,' he says. 'Isn't true that you [the council] questioned the Law Centre acting against council and is this is the reason why you and your fellow councillors have cut funding? (The Law Centre has sometimes taken cases against the council, particularly where the council has made incorrect decisions on housing and benefits. The Centre has a history of winning, too, which may be part of the problem).
'There's absolutely no dispute to why these cuts are being made…' Andrew Slaughter starts.
'Well,' disputes Harry, 'the Law Centre will continue to allow people to sue the council. And… and… um…in relative terms, the amount of money that the Law Centre is getting relative to other law centres in London its still very much more than other Law Centres in other neighbouring boroughs…' This benchmarking/comparative lines goes down about as well as it did the first time, so Harry decides to abandon these efforts to juxtapose Hammersmith and moves on to pointing the finger. [Also], I'm on the Law Centre's management committee, and I made it perfectly clear [to the committee] that I didn't have [a part] in the decision-making [about the funding cut]. That decision was made by Councillor Antony Lillis. He had to look at the overall picture and make an overall decision and face all the jeers and cheers accordingly… I've got no evidence that (the Law Centre's history of taking cases against the council) was the basis of the funding decision...'
Andrew Slaughter clearly feels this is balls. 'So,' he sneers at Harry. 'You don't agree with the comment that YOU made that we (the council) are paying the people who are suing us?'
'Um… um,' says Harry. 'Um…um… the question was that was [the Law Centre's pursuing of cases against the council] the basis of the funding cut. My understanding is that it was not...'
'Well,' sneers Slaughter.
'All right, all right...' Clive Coleman cuts in. 'Let me ask Polly Toynbee if that's a picture that is being seeing nationally – [Law Centres having their funding cut] because they're seen as a source of opposition to the council?'
'Well, they certainly have been from time to time,' Toynbee says. 'It is difficult for politician to give money to people who then throw it back into their faces. That takes an enormous depth of democratic understanding…'
'Yeah,' Slaughter snorts, looking at Harry.
'… and I think,' Toynbee continues, 'that when you're dealing people who use community law centres, you're not dealing with people who are politically motivated. You're dealing with desperate people - mental health cases, homeless people who are desperate. You're not dealing with people who have a political animosity against the council. You are dealing with people who have no recourse at all - who are at the bottom end of absolutely everything.'
Nick Seddon, meanwhile, has recovered from Polly's attack. He manfully puts himself forward for another. 'The fact that other law centres have lost [their funding] money suggests that it's not quite as simple as the council withdrawing money because the law centre has been nasty to it. I think the wider issue is that councils are unreliable funders. We like the idea that a council is going to be caring and understanding of needs for the good of civic democracy, but in practical terms, councils don't function like that. This is exactly the opportunity for private foundations to get involved and say Yes, we believe in this enough support it…'
And on it goes. Probably the most sensible question of the evening comes from one of the young Law Centre lawyers. 'Why does funding new organisations mean cutting funding for older organisations?' she asks. It's a point the crowd takes up eagerly, and with a certain aggression. Why is it acceptable to pour money into consultancies and PFIs, but not into services for people who want good local schools for their kids, or genuinely need help with housing, or social care?
That's the conundrum, says Toynbee. 'We pay low taxes, but we have huge ambitions. This government had fantastic social ambitions, like Sure Start, and you can say that is wonderful, that is really a Swedish vision of how a child can be helped, but you can't do it on US levels of taxation. We still have politicians who tend to say 'here are all the things that you want, and [you can still pay] low taxes. I would like to see all our politicians being a bit more honest about getting what you pay for…'
The audience claps, although seems to disagree. It isn't so much a problem of scarce resources, people say, but of poor distribution of those resources. Several members of the audience point out that Hammersmith and Fulham council got a comparatively generous settlement from central government this year. 'Where has all that money gone?' a few people yell. Harry stands himself up again, this time to argue that the council's settlement was quite tight in his view.
'We've had a dispute with government about their failure to provide sufficient resources on immigration. Central government funding is not over-generous.'
'Yeah,' Slaughter says. 'It's probably only as much as a city bonus for one of your voters.'
'If people can identify money that we are wasting, then that will be very helpful in reducing the debt and council tax,' Harry says. 'It's a constructive thing of coming up with suggestions. We certainly want to hear them. We're obviously very open to criticism.'
