• Support jobs with money raised from repeating the bank bonus tax – not hold back recovery with the VAT rise and cuts that will put almost one million workers out of their jobs.
• Protect police numbers – not cut them while wasting £100 million on new elected police commissioners.
• Protect your frontline local services – not make unfair cuts which will hit the least well off the most.
• Get the deficit down through strong growth and sensible cuts – not by slashing too far, too fast, and putting your local economy at risk.
• Stand up for young people – not kick away the ladder by tripling tuition fees; scrapping EMAs; cancelling Building Schools for the Future; and slashing school sport

DOWNLOAD THE SWINDON LABOUR MANIFESTO 2011

Voting Stations are open from 7am till 10pm.

Guidance on voting procedure is available from Swindon Borough Council.

Labour Candidates and their contact numbers are:

1. Abbey Meads – Mark Viner (07811 142 413).
2. Central – Derique Montaud (07711 556 261).
3. Covingham & Nythe – Peter Watts (01793 529163).
4. Dorcan – Ged Meheran (07989 918 352).
5. Eastcott – Chris Watts (07776 238 327).
6. Freshbrook & Grange Park –  Neil Heavens (07817 262 258).
7. Gorsehill & Pinehurst – John Ballman (01793 694 584).
8. Haydon Wick – Tim Page (07717 669944).
9. Highworth – Anthea Beaumont (01793 762 517).
10. Moredon – Jenny Millin (07879 023 903).
11. Old Town - Cindy Matthews (01793 644 388).
12. Parks – Fay Howard (07952 350 656).
13. Penhill – Paul Baker (01793 334 598).
14. Shaw & Nine Elms – Michael Heal (07810 872 849).
15. St Margaret – Nigel Chalk (01793 346165).
16. St Philips – Joe Tray (07813 170 202).
17. Toothill – Steve Wakefield (07775 911 922).
18. Walcot – Ellen Osa (07577 923 694) .
19. Wroughton – Geraint Day (07753 957 565).
20. Western – Des Moffatt (07709 066 707).

Polling Stations locations are available from THIS LINK:

To use this link you’ll need to know your Polling District. Check on your card – the Districts in each Ward are as follows:

1. Abbey Meads - AM1-AM4.
2. Central – CE1-CE4.
3. Covingham & Nythe – CN1-CN4.
4. Dorcan – DN1-DN4.
5. Eastcott – ET1-ET5.
6. Freshbrook & Grange Park –  FG1-FG4.
7. Gorsehill & Pinehurst – GH1-GH3.
8. Haydon Wick – HG1-HG5.
9. Highworth – HW1-HW5.
10. Moredon – MD1-MD6.
11. Old Town - TL1-TL5.
12. Parks – PK1-PK4.
13. Penhill – PH1-PH4.
14. Shaw & Nine Elms – SE1-SE4.
15. St Margaret – SM1-SM3.
16. St Philips – SP1-SP6
17. Toothill – TW1-TW3.
18. Walcot – WA1-WA3.
19. Wroughton – WC1-WC5.
20. Western – WE1-WE4.

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OFFER YOUR HELP IN NORTH SWINDON OR SOUTH SWINDON

The emphasis so far has been in health and social care.  But other moves are afoot, for example to allow people working for Jobcentre Plus to own and control their organisation, or part of it.   The “externalisation” of adult social care and community health services by Swindon Borough Council and Swindon Primary Care Trust (PCT) from April 1 provides a case study.

Under an initiative started by the previous Labour Government – the ‘Right to Request’ – groups of public service workers were encouraged in a limited number of areas and activities to bid to form mutuals or co-operatives to take control of the running of the services previously provided by the local National Health Service (NHS) or local government. There had been several examples of that in both health and social care.

Now rebranded as ‘Right to Provide’ by the UK Coalition Government, there is now a definite push to get public sector employees to consider taking control of their activities.  This raises several moral and political issues, including:

• why should a group of people who happen to have an employment contract with a particular public sector body at a certain moment in time be allowed to control, let alone own, the public service that they work for?;
• what forms of public control would exist for bodies that might fomerly have under the supervision of local councillors or even bodies such as PCTs – which have no local democratic mandate and whose boards are filled with unelected quangocrats;
• there is a case for having perhaps small groups of public service worker form employee-led social enterprises, as in providing logistics or laboratory services, for example. But is it right that that principle be allowed to extend to bodies employing hundreds or even thousands of people, and which affect a large number of the public? Changing a public monopoly to a private one in many situations.

The Swindon PCT and Council example showed that there was little public consultation as to what should be done to move the service out of the PCT.  To be sure, under the previously agreed Labour scheme, no PCT is allowed to directly run such services since the start of April 2011.  Yet the unaccountable ‘managers’ in the PCT and the Council officers and councillors involved repeatedly refused to consider or even talk to those with an alternative suggestion as to how things could be taken forward. It would have been possible to produce an organisation with a wider public governance.  It would have been possible to pass on the service to another public body, even to another NHS body. Wiltshire Council has very recently done exactly that, by transferring community services to the Swindon-headquartered Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust! It is what we in the co-operative movement would call a transfer of engagements.

For example, there are proven ways of building in public accountability that shares control among different groups of people.  This is called multistakeholder governance. It is used by NHS foundation trusts to elect public and staff governors, for example. It is used by many co-operatives in several countries. Yet the Coalition is fixated on employee control alone or even on the more insidious employee ownership, even of very large public service providers. One reason that the Labour Government pursued some of its public services reforms was to try to tackle what is called ‘producer capture’. That is when groups of public sector workers act in ways that give little emphasis to the needs of services users. or to use different language, do not have sufficient ‘customer focus’. An employee owned or employee led body providing public services is open to the same criticism.

The Coalition trots out the example of the John Lewis Partnership, no doubt beloved by many of the well-heeled and by the chattering classes. As was said by Peter Hunt, chief executive of Mutuo, at a conference on social enterprise, mutuals and co-operatives in health and social care that I co-organised in London at the end of March (www.socialenterpriseinhealth.org.uk) the John Lewis Partnership is not a model for public accountability in any shape or form. Whatever its undoubted merits at involving employees in the running of its department stores and supermarkets. That is a far cry from caring for patients. The John Lewis Partnership model has many benefits from the point of view of involving its staff. But where does that leave the public? The users of services? Or other organisations involved in health and social care, such as local voluntary and service user groups?

Another key local political point is that the so-called managers in the PCT and Council, and their political bosses, failed to adequately consult – and indeed rebuffed – suggestions about their plans, and failed to consult those who are knowledgeable on co-operative, mutual and social enterprise development pertaining to health and social care.

The local Council and PCT have effectively placed a large public service in the hands of its employees, removing at a stroke public accountability. In two or three years it will have to retender up against well-prepared for-profit enterprises if the segment that is all about competition, in the Health and Social Care Bill now proceeding throught the UK Parliament, survives. In fact the competition element is the biggest single change being proposed in that Bill a fact that seems to have taken many politicians and their advisers too long to twig.

I hope that I may be wrong, but I am not holding my breath as to whether those elements of the Bill will get changed.

Geraint Day, Labour and Co-operative candidate for Wroughton and Chiseldon, 2011 Swindon Borough Council elections.

(press the PDF icon below if you want to printout this article)

I served on the former Thamesdown Borough Council in the 1980s and 1990s.  My interests include housing, roads, social care and health care, and the development of thriving communities. I work for a professional organisation whose members are at the cutting edge of healthcare delivery.

The advisers to the Conservative Party nationally have planned for years to reduce the size of the public sector. They planned over several years many of the details of how to cut back local government, including publicly provided social services. They also planned in fine detail how to go about dismantling the National Health Service (NHS) as a publicly run and accountable service.

For some reason the supine behaviour of the Liberal Democrats has allowed the Conservative Party to get away with the distortion of the truth that their present national, and local Swindon Borough Council cuts are somehow the result of economic crisis. That crisis was in any case caused by greedy bankers and other financiers. It beggars belief to hear the accusation that somehow a Labour Government spending money to improve vital public services since 1997 could have caused a global financial disaster. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats actually insult the intelligence of people by saying as much. For the Liberal Democrats, right up to the 2010 General Election, their national leaders were resolutely against the planned ruthless Tory cuts in public spending. Now they say the opposite.

The result in Swindon – in the rural areas as much as the town itself – will be the erosion of public services. It will mean further neglect of road and pavement repairs. The new 30 pence charge to reserve a library book not currently on the shelf will also discriminate against areas outside the town centre. Smaller libraries have smaller stock. At the same time an increase in fees for council services will lead to reduced use. That will encourage local public services into decline as hard-working people and those who through no fault of their own lose their jobs in droves in the next year or so, and cannot afford to fork out the increased payments.

I chaired Swindon and District Community Health Council, am a governor of the local NHS foundation trust, and serve on the steering group of Swindon Local Involvement Network, which oversees adult social care and community health services. I am a member of the local Civic Trust and was for 18 years an elected director of what is now The Midcounties Co-operative, one of whose shops and post offices serves the population of Wroughton. I also helped set up a credit union. Additionally I have worked in science, teaching (physics and mathematics), administration, for the NHS, for two large national public bodies and two national membership organisations. I also served as a non-executive director or committee member of local voluntary bodies dealing with homelessness, alcohol misuse, and with the voluntary sector generally.

The Labour Party and the Co-operative Party have had an electoral alliance since 1927. That is far longer than the marriage of convenience not even a year old, between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. There are 300 or more Labour and Co-operative Party councillors around Great Britain. Building communities began not with the Tory Big Society last year. The co-operative sector in Great Britain has been doing that since the 18^th Century.

It is vital that Wroughton and other areas begin to turn the Tory tide to create a progressive Labour-led Council once again. The present Conservative Council will, if unchecked, oversee the demise of any meaningful set of public services right across the Borough within a few short years. Local people simply do not deserve that.

Geraint Day

Wroughton and the surrounding villages face some very important issues over the coming years; new affordable housing, caring for the elderly, public services and anti-social behaviour. I believe that by engaging with the community and working together we can make our ward an even better place to live.

I am proud to have been selected to stand as the Labour candidate for Wroughton and Chiseldon and hope that you will vote for me on May 6th.