Wednesday 20 October 2010

Comprehenisve Spending Review: What it means for Londoners...

The Comprehensive Spending Review will hit middle income earners in London and attacks the poorest, with women shouldering the biggest burden.

We have just seen a series of swingeing cuts attacking police, transport, housing – with higher rents for tenants, benefit caps that will hit Londoners hardest and thousands of jobs lost – not just in the public sector, but across the board.

  • We have already seen cuts in London, imposed by Boris, which include
  • £1.7bn cut to London’s bus service;
  • £16m cut to Metropolitan Police Funding
  • Cut of 455 Metropolitan police officers
  • A £16m cut to London Underground with 400 Tube Ticket Office jobs to go and ticket offices closing all over London
  • Plans to make London Underground step free have been axed
  • London’s affordable childcare programme has been axed
  • Extending the Docklands Light Railway and upgrading Croydon’s Tramlink – both axed.

Today’s announcement by George Obsorne is a vicious attack on London and Londoners.

If the 20% cut in policing is translated into police numbers, that’s another cut of 6,500 police officers and almost 900 PCSO’s in London.

If we add today’s cuts to the Mayor’s cuts to transport in London, we see cuts of over £6billion to London’s transport system.

Tube and bus fares are likely to go up by 7% - bus fares have already increased by 20% last year and have actually increased by a third since 2004.

Housing – the budget for social housing has been cut by 50%. The cuts to housing benefit and today’s announcement to charge up to 80% of market rates for social housing will disproportionally affect Londoners – especially those living in central London.

The Mayor himself said earlier this year no government has moved “so far and so fast to make cuts” as has his administration at City Hall.

Of course, I welcome the reports that Crossrail will be spared but the cuts being imposed today, and those imposed earlier by Boris, will severely affect Londoners from all walks of life.