Comment: Labour's Hopeless Secretive Regime Must Go

4.02.18pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 7th Jul 2009

Lambeth Liberal Democrat opposition councillors have called a Special Council Meeting on July 8th at Lambeth Town Hall to discuss Labour's Housing Crisis.

Labour's botched ALMO is discredited and near to collapse, repairs are on hold, promised improvements in short supply, rents the highest in the land even after a highly political bailout by Government, and leaseholders are now reeling under massive increases in service charges often for services they don't receive.

Labour's response is that everything is fine or if painted into a corner that it is all the fault of the Liberal Democrats. Labour, let it be said, has been running things (or do we mean ruining things?) in Lambeth for nearly four years now. And it's all getting worse not better. Much, much worse.

During the long hot dog days of summer, when the Council goes to sleep, the pain for many of Lambeth's most disadvantaged people just gets harder to bear. That's why we've chosen to focus on Housing at the July debate.

Even the Government is waking up to the fact that Housing is the big issue for many in our inner cities, which is why it is trying to think up catchy headlines like local housing for local people. It knows that its traditional Labour vote is draining away - but even former London Mayor Ken Livingstone described Labour's latest Housing pronouncements as "classic spin."

The truth is that Labour is in a spin and doesn't know what to do. In Lambeth Labour's instinct is to hunker down in a bunker mentality until the Local Elections next May.

Always with a tendency to secrecy, Labour is now paranoid about letting anything into the public domain that it cannot control and manipulate for popular consumption.

So we have a top secret report into the ALMO's failings rather than being open and honest with people that this reckless gamble has not delivered what was promised and in the opinion of Government Inspectors will not do so this side of Hell freezing over.

It has all been a waste of time, energy and resources - but worse, it has condemned our less well-off residents, to poorer conditions, higher charges and a gloomier future.

The focus of our debate is housing, but it could equally apply to other Council services that are under attack from Labour. Like their cousins across the river, Labour Leaders in Lambeth are control freaks who are desperate to keep the bad news strictly under wraps until after the election.

Our task is to expose their cynicism and hypocrisy.