First, I would like to reiterate thanks to all the officers who have worked so hard to try and make this a good deal for Norwich.

In my speech, I am going to focus on just one of my concerns – this agreement’s focus on businesses and growth rather than quality of life for residents.

The combined authority would be conflicted between serving the public interest and serving business interests, and I feel that the business interests are being given the upper hand.

The combined authority will consist of council leaders; an elected mayor; … and a representative of the Local Enterprise Partnership.

No trade unions, no charities, no other special interest groups of any kind – the LEP will be the single unelected voice on the authority.

Increasing amounts of money and power have been handed to LEPs nationwide in the past few years, yet they have no proper system of overview and scrutiny. They are not even subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

A National Audit Office report concluded that LEPs – quote – “are not as transparent to the public as we would expect given that they are now responsible for significant amounts of taxpayers’ money.”

Unlike all the other representatives on the combined authority, whose remit is to serve the people who elected them, the LEP’s interest is solely in driving economic growth and advancing the interests of businesses, whether or not such “progress” serves our citizens.

In this deal, the LEP has been given the power to influence taxation policy – a veto on an elected mayor’s power to increase business rates by two per cent.  Even then, the under-representation of small businesses on LEPs means that, as usual, it will be large multinationals dictating the agenda.

On top of putting business at the core of its governmental structure, the combined authority will be forced to put the profit motive foremost in its agenda too.

Its 25 million pound allocation to “leverage additional financial benefit” is essentially like a grant to a start-up business – money to make money – which it seems to me is then likely to become the sole purpose of the combined authority – forget about providing services for citizens.

As if that wasn’t enough, the agreement also states that funding allocations will be judged based on whether they have “contributed to national growth” (p.114), which effectively punishes any combined authorities who put the provision of public services before profit – the very opposite of how funding of local government should work.

The devolution proposals are, in my view, a cynical attempt to divert money away from the services that people rely on and towards private sector interests.

Make no mistake: the money being put up for devolution is not ‘new’ money. It is the same money, taken from our taxes, cut from our local authority revenue support grants, claimed for their own agenda by George Osborne and his cronies, and now siphoned off for the private sector instead of being spent on vital services.

We must stand up to these Tory policies that steal public money from the poor and vulnerable.

In my speech, I spoke about those Green politicians who have been working hard on this already, including Phillipe Lamberts, an MEP from Belgium who has been taking on the banks and insisting that country-by-country reporting of financial information ought to be mandatory.  He is supported in Brussels by Sven Giegold, a German MEP and newly-elected South West MEP Molly Scott Cato, both of whom are expert economists who are using the influence they have in Europe to tame banks, curb tax dodging and make our financial systems work better for people and planet.

Closer to home, Green MP Caroline Lucas sponsored an Early Day Motion “General Anti-Tax Avoidance Principle” in 2012 and led the debate on the Fair Tax Mark, the label for good taxpayers.

I’m glad that Norwich City Council has joined the club through this motion, and that the leader of the council will be writing to George Osborne asking the government to listen to the strength of public feeling and act to end the injustice of tax dodging by large international companies in the UK.

I heard the Lord Mayor’s announcements and voted to agree the minutes of the last meeting.

I followed up the written answer I had received from the cabinet member for housing to my question, on the topic of housing upgrades being promised in 2011 and still not being fulfilled, with a supplementary question asking why the cabinet member was not aware of these cases. In his written answer, he claims that no such cases exist, but Green councillors did confirm that there are a number of cases like this which have given to a variety of responses from the council.

We heard the treasury management annual report.

I voted to approve changes to the capital plan for the “Push the Pedalways” project, which aims to improve cycle networks within the city. This decision passed.

The Norfolk Pension Fund motion was taken in parts, both of which fell.  I voted in favour of both.

I proposed a motion on Pay Day Loan Company Advertising.  More details can be found here (including my speech). The motion was carried unanimously.

I voted for a Green motion which was in opposition to shale gas extraction in Norwich. The motion was carried.

I voted for a Green motion requiring that communities should be consulted before pubs may be converted for certain other uses. The motion was carried.

Council RESOLVES to ask the cabinet, where the law so allows, not to :-

(1)  permit council assets or facilities to be used for advertising by ‘payday loan’ companies; or

(2)  use external facilities where ‘payday loan’ companies are advertised, for council services or events.

Here’s what I said in my speech:

“I was pleased to find, two Fridays ago, that Norfolk County Council Trading Standards were distributing funds recovered from loan sharks to community projects looking to tackle those illegal operations through raising awareness and promoting the alternatives.

“The Lord Mayor himself presented the grants to the eight projects which were voted most worthy by members of the public.

“The choice of which projects to vote for, I can assure you, was not easy, as all the projects were more than worthy and I spent some time talking to representatives from each about what they would entail.  In the end, I chose a particular project which not only wanted to educate about the folly of high cost loans, but also to promote the local, low-cost alternatives to environmentally damaging material consumption – certainly in line with Green Party values.

“However, one of the legal alternatives to loan sharks is hardly better. So-called payday loan companies frequently charge interest rates of over 4000% APR.  Just to put that into perspective, if I had taken out a loan of £100 three years ago today, and failed to pay it and the interest back, at Wonga’s interest rate I would now owe over seven and a half million pounds.

“These types of loans can blow the value of credit out of all proportion to the capital sum. In 2012, Wonga lent out £1.2 billion pounds and had a turnover of £309 million, suggesting that 1 in every 4 pounds paid back by their customers goes on interest, and a large proportion of that interest goes on profits – Wonga’s profit was £84.5 million for the same period.

“And to make sure that they keep on avoiding the truth about how expensive their loans are, payday loan companies spend  disproportionate amounts on advertising, which the chief executive of Citizens Advice described as “a slap in the face” for their customers. The top five payday loan companies spent a whopping £36.3 million in the 12 months to June 2013. That is more than some larger high street banks with many many times the turnover.

“Whilst we cannot prevent legal loan companies from going about their legitimate business, however morally suspect that may be, we as a local authority ought to be doing all we can to protect those vulnerable to excessive debts by not facilitating the advertisement of these kinds of loans and instead encouraging those in financial difficulty to use more reasonable alternatives or seek financial advice. There are already a number of credit unions that serve Norwich, which offer short-term loans with interest rates at around just 12.68% and, despite having their general advice service cut, Citizens Advice do still offer debt advice to those in need.

“And of course we have the projects I’ve already mentioned, which will be all the more successful if they don’t have to compete with continual distraction by payday loan companies’ own advertising.

“So I hope members will support this motion, and send a clear message about the moral position of this council to payday loan companies.

“Thank you.”

I heard the Lord Mayor’s Announcements, and voted to agree the minutes of the previous meeting.

I asked a supplementary question to the written answer I had received to my question on Train Wood. The question asked the cabinet member to clarify whether he supported the principle of keeping Train Wood in public hands, to which he re-iterated his previous response that Train Wood is the responsibility of the county council and that the city council’s responsibilities are to maintain its planning policy that affects the site, such as public access rights.

I voted in favour of “Allocation of funding for riverside walk”. This item was carried.

I seconded the motion on Funding Local Government and subsequently voted in favour it.  The motion was carried.

I voted in favour of “Declaration on racial discrimination”. The motion was carried.

The final motion on housing strategy was not moved.

In June 2013, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a further 10% reduction in central government funding to local government, on top of the existing cuts.

In light of the continued effect of the coalition government’s cuts programme upon local residents, council RESOLVES to:-

1) note that there are alternatives to this ideologically driven attack on public services; and,

2) ask the government to reverse the ongoing reduction in grants to councils, which could be funded by other measures.

During her speech, Councillor Haynes highlighted some of the measures by which grants to councils could be funded, including:

• The levy of a financial transaction tax on speculative activities,
• raising income tax for those with incomes above £100,000,
• cracking down on tax havens and tax avoidance,
• putting far greater emphasis on taxes that discourage environmentally or other damaging behaviour,
• not replacing Trident.

In my speech, I highlighted why this is significant with reference to the Green Party’s objectives, and developed on the specific measure of the Financial Transaction Tax (more popularly known as the “Robin Hood Tax” or “Tobin Tax”):

“As a council, our day-to-day responsibility is the ongoing welfare of our residents, but our task has clearly been affected in recent years by wider events.

“Since the financial crisis of 2008, local residents have been made to pay — often with their jobs or at best frozen or lower wages — for the mistakes of a small financial elite in the City of London.

“The Green Party has long-recognised the importance of local authorities’ role in acheiving our core values of social and environmental justice, and particularly in this context: ‘for every person, in this and future generations, to be entitled to basic material security as of right’ and that ‘the success of a society cannot be measured by narrow economic indicators, but should take into account of factors affecting the quality of life for all people: social equity, health, happiness.’

“These objectives require long-term investment in skills, people and local communities, but local councils are struggling to keep their heads above water with just the essential services that they must fulfil.

“‘Austerity’ is not a foregone conclusion, as the coalition government would have you believe, but an intentional choice that the government has made to prop up the City of London by imposing austerity on the rest of us.

“Considering that it was those institutions that caused the crisis — encouraged, I might add, by the previous Labour government’s obsession with short-term economic growth — it should be they who pay for the mistakes they caused.

“The government claims that there is no alternative to cuts to public services, but several of my residents have been quick to point out that there are alternatives.

“In the UK, we already have a successful financial transaction tax on shares, which raises £3 billion a year, but if this was extended to include further asset classes — bonds, derivatives, foreign exchange — it could raise an extra £20 billion a year, which alone would be enough to offset the Local Government Association’s estimate of £16.5 billion annual shortfall in councils’ budgets by 2020.

“As already pointed out, this is by no means the only alternative. I therefore second this motion to call on government to reverse their reduction in grants to councils.”

The motion was carried, with all Green and Labour councillors in support, whilst Lib Dems abstained.