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YES MINISTER
March 13, 2009 12:00 AM
By Paul Holmes in View from the Commons published 13 March 2009
By Paul Holmes in View from the Commons published 13 March 2009
Older readers will remember the brilliant TV series, Yes Minister, in which senior Civil Servants and Ministers gave each other -and the voters -the run around with incomprehensible jargon and verbal tangles.
On Wednesday 4th March I experienced a re run -but it was all too real this time as I met the 'Bus Minister' in his Whitehall office, to lobby him over the massive under funding of the Government's national concessionary bus fares scheme.
"But", said the Minister, "we have given out enough money to pay for the scheme."
"Yes Minister, in that case why are there at least 30 councils the length and breadth of the country who are hundreds of thousands -even millions -of pounds short? Chesterfield alone is over £1.5million short. That's 40 jobs lost, the cash reserves used up, services cut, all in order to pay the bill for 2008-9 and again for 2009 -10."
"But" said the Minister, "you cannot possibly know if you have been underpaid as the money is all muddled up in the Rate Support Grant, with all the other grants that Government gives to Councils."
"Yes Minister, if that were true how could you possibly know that you gave every council enough"?
"Ah yes,"said the Minister, "but we calculated really carefully how much each council would need."
"Yes Minister, so carefully that you gave Bolsover £400,000 MORE than they needed and Chesterfield £1.5 million too little. So carefully that you gave the Scilly Isles £41,000 to pay for their OAP's 'free bus' journeys, when they don't have any buses at all!"
So it went on for 40, angry, minutes with the Minister arguing black was white, up was down and there was no problem at all. Tell that to York, Harrogate, Erewash, Derby, Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, the Isle of Wight and so and so on and so on. Tell that to 40 or more people whose jobs are going in Chesterfield alone.
No wonder neither the Minister nor Gordon Brown have accepted my invitations to visit Chesterfield and meet the local Council and those losing their jobs.
Paul Holmes is the MP for Chesterfield.
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