The day the recession came to Oxford

10.08.00am GMT Thu 19th Feb 2009

Cllr John Goddard (right) with Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable MP

On Monday, BMW in Oxford summarily dismissed 850 workers, with just a week's pay, and the chill winds of recession started to bite in Oxford. On the same day, Labour's city council group forced through its budget, imposing the maximum possible increase in council tax, and cuts in services which will impact small businesses, vulnerable people and community groups of every kind.

Said Lib Dem Cllr John Goddard in a letter published in the Oxford Mail: "Oxford City Council should be bending its energies to do whatever it can to relieve burdens on local people and businesses by keeping taxes down, helping the least well-off, and reducing its own costs. Instead, once again, it has given its knee-jerk reactions: keeping taxes as high as possible; stifling possibilities for dissenting opinion; and criticising everyone else - including their own Labour government. At the same time, a tired and shell-shocked Labour government is borrowing billions, mortgaging our future, and failing to re-float the banking system which is still pulling the economy backwards."

Added Cllr Goddard: "The Labour administration has gone back on their promise to refurbish Oxford's Covered Market using some of the substantially increased rents, and are doing nothing new to help the most vulnerable people in the city. The Labour budget was not debated in the full council - not because the opposition parties had no alternatives, but because the Lord Mayor used her position as chair to force a vote before a debate could take place. As she must have expected, the vote was tied, 22 for and 22 against, so she could then use her casting vote to impose Labour's budget on the city.

"Gagged and guillotined, this was not the open and inclusive process needed to bring the city together. Oxford's Labour group, faced with an unprecedented crisis, has shown no capacity for new thinking. On Monday night, working openly together, the council could have put together a better budget."