Promises, Promises. Four Years of Broken Promises.
As we enter the final stages of the Mayoral Candidate Selection Race, we will take a look at the Mayor’s record. This, of necessity can only look at the record of one candidate, but if the Labour Party shortlists candidates, we will try to do a more in depth look at each of the short-listed candidates.
Now we will look at the headline promises that Ms Fiaz gave just four short years ago.
BROKEN PROMISE #1
Well, this hasn’t happened. The promise of 1000 new council homes has just not materialised. Indeed, fairly early into her term of office the promise of 1000 homes built became the promise of 1000 started. In order to meet her target she has had to rely upon developments planned and started under the Wales regime.
BROKEN PROMISE #2
If anyone knows of a single private housing development in which the developers have been convinced to provide 50% council housing, please let us know. We will revise our entry if that can be demonstrated. However, Ms Fiaz was not promising a single scheme, she was promising this in EVERY scheme. Our information is that there is NOT A SINGLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT in which this has been true.
We are not so naïve to suppose that politicians never exaggerate, nor express aspirations in the language of assertions. We have taken that into account. This however, is a catalogue of PROMISES made without reservation or nuance or hesitation. In almost every area and under every one of her own headings, Mayor Fiaz has broken the promises she made to the local Labour Party and to the electorate.
This is a promise where we do not know. We don’t believe it to be true. But we can’t be sure because there is no data. The best that can be said is that this was aspirational. It is equally reasonable to assert that more likely to have been a cynical falsehood. Not only has no data been published (prove us wrong, PLEASE) but we do not know what is being measured nor how.
It creates a cosy story without actually having to do anything.
It may be that Mayor Fiaz would like to let this promise quietly disappear. The promise was made at the height of the Corbynite frenzy in the Labour Party and was imported from the Corbynista centre of local government in Preston. Now that things have changed in the Labour Party and J. Corbyn is no longer even a member of the PLP, this may be a ‘promise’ that she would like to forget.
BROKEN PROMISE # 3. We didn’t see much opposition from the mayor to the creation of Newham School Community Trust which brought together Lister, Rokeby, Sarah Bonnell and Forest Gate schools in 2019. Nor indeed to the creation of a new primary academy in docklands. Nor to a Special School academy for children with special educational needs.
We surmise that the inclusion of her opposition to academies was merely to placate the Momentum supporters that she needed to get elected. Once elected, this was an easy promise to dump.
Credit where credit is due. Significantly more money has gone into council youth clubs, (although much of it has gone into capital work on vanity projects), quite how and if this will affect the issue of gang violence is unclear. We understand the logic. Give young people something useful to do and they won’t join gangs. The trouble is that not every young person makes use of youth clubs, indeed the actual numbers are likely to be significantly less than 20% of young people. In addition, the crime reports show that many of those involved in knife crime have no residential connection with the borough at all.
There is no Youth Safety Action Group that we can find, however, there is a Community Safety Partnership and they have a Plan, albeit somewhat unfocussed. Under the title “What we will do”, about knife crime we find the following ‘actions’.
Monitor delivery of the borough’s knife crime action plan.
Outreach work with local retailers to inform them of future changes in legislation
To maintain focus on enforcement supported by partnership working to address the drivers, i.e. environmental factors.
That’s it on knife crime. We should all sleep better!
The answer seems to have been to throw money at a problem without trying to solve it. Not a broken promise, but not an answer either.
Just what does this mean? Are we supposed to understand from this that the mayor would have both the willingness and the power to oppose national legislation? Somehow, we think not. Was she intending to change the way in which primary and tertiary care was managed? Again, we think not. Again, this seems like the meaningless twaddle produced to placate her supporters in Momentum, so when she says “work with the community to…”, what she meant was, work with the various Trot led campaign groups. But then, we are not sure that she has even done that. She got rid of her most active health campaigner as Cabinet Member for Health within a year of appointing her.
Most of this ‘pledge’ is feel-good fluff. No promises broken because there is little actually promised. There is a bit, however, about “publicly provided”, which suggests that she has little understanding of the delivery of health care in the primary care sector. Even so, the commitment of the mayor and her newest Health Cabinet Member to their promise on “publicly provided” healthcare must be suspect. Here’s what Cllr Ali said upon the opening of the new health centre at Royal Wharf.
“This is a fantastic new development that will improve access to health and care services for local residents. It’s also good news for local health services generally, helping us to achieve our aims of better integrated services, improved outcomes and a better patient experience”
BROKEN PROMISE # 4.Upon learning that it would be taken over and run by a UK branch of US health-care operator Operose Health Ltd, Cllr Ali and the Mayor had this to say. Err, nothing…
So much for the promises of campaigning, working with campaigners and ensuring the public provision of healthcare.
Yep, we think that it is fair to say that she has opposed the new Silvertown Tunnel, though this will make for interesting conversations with her new neighbour based at the western end of the Royal Docks. He coincidentally, will have a grandstand view of the construction.
BROKEN PROMISE # 5. “Create a fairer and more consistent parking scheme.” Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. See here and here for a more thoughtful response to this absurd statement.
BROKEN PROMISE # 6. We are inclined to treat this in the same manner, see here for our response. As to recycling, we are not sure whether this has improved. Certainly, a greater variety of recyclable waste is now collected from the doorstep. What we are not sure of is how much is being recycled. We understand that a large percentage of recycled material is simply shipped to land-fill, but we haven’t got the figures yet.
This one is brilliant. We have got to say that Mayor Fiaz did hold a referendum.
The trouble is that she had to be forced to do it; firstly, by the members of her own Labour Group and secondly by Labour Party members who threatened legal action against her.
By the time that the referendum finally arrived, Fiaz had been transformed from an ardent opponent of the mayoral model into its strongest local champion.
Did she break her promise? In the sense that there was a referendum, the answer must be ‘No’. As to whether she deceived people and her own supporters in particular, any answer must be much more nuanced. In her selection campaign, she clearly stated that she wanted an end to the mayoral model, see below in the next section ‘Campaigns’ (“The Directly Elected Mayor governance model is broken in Newham”). Clearly, some of her support was based on a two-fold commitment; (a) opposition to the mayoral model, and (b) to hold a referendum.
The only hard commitment was to (b), i.e. to hold the referendum. This she did, albeit having to be dragged kicking and screaming. With regard to (a), well this was never a commitment, it was implied, but was never a commitment. So when it came to deciding on the future model of governance for the council, she could happily campaign AGAINST any change and FOR the “broken” model of governance. Especially if it kept her in a job on £86k pa.
That’s politics for you.
We have decided to take a look at the expanded pledges under this heading, in part because it looks like a wish-list to placate her Corbynista supporters, which once in power, she could quietly jettison.
BROKEN PROMISE # 7. No new tax on development land and NO CAMPAIGN
BROKEN PROMISE # 8. No new rent controls and NO CAMPAIGN
BROKEN PROMISE # 9. NO CAMPAIGN for new borrowing powers, but just what new powers she wanted are difficult to fathom, given that local authorities had significant power to borrow from both the public and private sectors already.
BROKEN PROMISE # 10. Right to Buy is still here, albeit in a form that is more restricted. But this was the result of national government action and nothing to do with Mayor Fiaz, indeed the changes happened before she joined Newham Council. And there is NO CAMPAIGN.
BROKEN PROMISE # 11. As we have seen above, the mayor has seen six schools become academies. So much for her opposition. And there is NO CAMPAIGN.
The figure stated is a nice round number, but probably inflated by 40%. What it doesn’t show, because that would undermine the narrative is that the “present”, i.e. the previous administration added something like £1bn of capital assets to the council’s balance sheet.
Yep, the Pleasure Gardens was a loss maker and cost something like £3m that will never be recovered.
But it is interesting to note what Ms Fiaz considers to a vanity project. The new Sixth Form College utilises the Old Tech College on the East Ham Town Hall site. Recently, three Newham sixth forms were rated amongst the best in the county, that is to say, three Newham sixth forms were in the top ten for getting students into Oxbridge. A simply stunning achievement about which Mayor Fiaz has been strangely silent, perhaps this is because their success is closely linked to the work done by a certain R. Wales and Q. Peppiatt. Amongst these three top performers was Newham Collegiate Sixth Form (plus Brampton and The Academy of Excellence). What Mayor Fiaz refers to as a vanity project is delivering real, life-changing results for the children of Newham.
Then there is the big one, the ‘stadium’. There is no doubt that the stadium was a financial disaster and it was championed by Wales. But Fiaz neglects to mention that the decision to invest in the stadium was not taken by Wales, but was taken by the full council at a special meeting attended by no small number of those who later joined her cabinet. At the vote, for which Wales was not present, not a single one of them voted against it. But then it is in the nature of politics that success has many parents, whilst failure is always an orphan.
The implication of her campaign was that she would manage the finances better, so let’s take a short look at Mayor Fiaz’s approach to finances.
Disbands the Transformation Team which had delivered tens of millions in annual savings.
Increases the number of senior managers and directors.
Increases Council Tax in 2019, and in 2020, and in 2021 after 10 years in which there were no tax hikes and no cuts in services.
She has cut services and threatened redundancies
She has imposed the Social Care surcharge in 2019, and in 2020 and in 2021.
She has introduced draconian new charges on residential parking so that residents now have to pay a new tax to park on their own street.
She is using parking enforcement as a new tax upon which there are no restraints.
Promises to cut both the level and number of special responsibility (SRA) posts. In post she increased both the number of and payment for SRA positions.
The reader can judge just how well Mayor Fiaz is managing the finances.