‘Forget reorganisation, let’s have the curtain up on public services’
In his latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, our Chief Reporter speaks to Debbie Wilcox, leader of both Newport City Council and the Welsh Local Government Association
THE most senior councillor in Wales has made it clear to Local Government Secretary Alun Davies that his revival of plans to halve the number of Welsh councils has no chance of being accepted by his own party.
Debbie Wilcox, the Labour leader of the Welsh Local Government Association as well as of Newport City Council, was uncompromising in her view during a Martin Shipton Meets podcast.
She said: “So we have a change of Cabinet Secretary. We settled down to what we thought were [former Local Government Secretary] Mark Drakeford’s proposals [which entailed having more shared working between councils rather than mergers]. We didn’t reject [his] proposals: we embraced them. It was going to be a negotiation for us: he was on one side, we were on the other. We would probably have met somewhere in the middle.
“We said to Mark Drakeford, look at what we’re doing... these are templates of working together. Let’s not have artificial structures imposed from above that civil servants think up in Cardiff Bay and say: ‘Do you know what? Let’s give it to that local government lot. Let’s give it to them. Let’s put out a Green Paper with three options: Option 1 – merger. Option 2 – merger, And guess what Option 3 is – merger’.”
Asked whether Alun Davies had any chance of getting merger proposals through, Ms Wilcox said: “Not in its present form, clearly. There isn’t a Labour local government leader in favour of it. I’ve been quite clear and on the record as saying I don’t believe we’ll have 22 councils one day. But I’m not talking about 10.
“I wouldn’t want to restrict anyone who wanted to merge. If two councils wanted to merge for the right reasons and the business case and the ability – it wouldn’t be up to me to argue against that. But they have to come to it holistically and incrementally. This top-down artificial structure – what’s the purpose of it?
“I know they’ve put a consultation out called #stronglocalgov. And the first question is: ‘Do you want stronger, bigger councils in Wales?’ I can think of better ways of designing questionnaires than that.
“The consultation is open until June 10. We will put a strong and robust response into the consultation from local government, and we will point out the reasons why. But at the moment what we need, and I would implore the Welsh Government to understand this... we are doing all we can to work through the austerity agenda. We’ve cut billions and billions of pounds from local government in the last eight years. We’re doing a damn good job.
“On the whole, there are very few authorities in any kind of special measures, if any, for anything. We run your schools, we run your social services, we collect your litter, we do your potholes, we run things. We’re at the front end of government in Wales. This obsession with reorganisation – do you know what? – we could do without it at the moment. Nobody wants it. What we want are properly funded public services to bring people’s lives up to a certain standard of decency – that’s what we want.”
Ms Wilcox also spoke about her time as a student at London University’s Central School of Speech and Drama, where she was a contemporary of Jennifer Saunders, and her long career as a drama teacher.
She said: “We had a huge centenary celebration in 2006. It was a Sunday night at the Old Vic theatre. My partner was really surprised because it actually showed that I knew these people, because they said, ‘Hello Debbie’.
“Someone else I knew, but wasn’t at drama school with, was Victoria Wood. I met her firstly in the late Seventies in London at an event. We kept in touch and she was absolutely wonderful, because I was just a bit of a superfan. I’d go and see her backstage if she was in Cardiff or Newport. She’d always say ‘Hello’. She’d always have time to speak and she sent a Christmas card every year. She died just over two years ago, on April 20, and so many people contacted me because they knew that I had that tie with her. I think she was just brilliant. We lost her far too young.”
Asked whether she’s had ambitions to tread the boards herself, Ms Wilcox said: “Of course I did. I was going to be famous. I turned out to be infamous. I had a writing partner at the time – we were into song writing.
“We had a publishing contract with Rak Records. Mickie Most. Those were the days – Smokie [Robinson], Kim Wilde, Hot Chocolate and all that. And we had a producer called Brenda Brooker. We used to do lots of stuff – Eurovision and writing songs, producing.
“The irony is, if we go back to Jen Saunders, that they started the Comedy Store and it was in Nell Gwyn strip club on the corner of Meard Street and Dean Street in Soho. They used to say to me, ‘why don’t you come down because you’re funny’. And I said, ‘what do you mean – I’m going to be in the pop music business’.
“We were recording in a studio called Leeward Sand, and that was on the third floor, and the Comedy Store was in the basement of the same building. So my life’s been a bit like sliding doors – I’ve gone through the wrong one a few times.”
Instead of pursuing a career in the music business, Ms Wilcox ended up teaching for 30 years, as well as being the principal examiner for theatre studies for the whole of the UK.
She said: “It was a really wonderful time, a really interesting job, and that kept me away from front-line politics because I just loved being a teacher – and I was good at it. My reputation is out there. I enjoyed that engagement, but the draw of politics is a bit like Shere Khan in Jungle Book: those eyes rotate and it draws you in. For me, it’s an extension of public service.”
Her favourite dramatist is the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. She said: “They talk about him as the father of modern drama. Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House – I taught it regularly for years. The way that a man writes about women in those plays – and seeing real people on stage for the first time, which was what it is. I never tire of productions of those works.
“In terms of modern playwrights, I guess people like Willy Russell, who writes about real people. Educating Rita was a clarion call for people to be able to do things and not to be held back by their circumstances. There’s a line where she talks about hearing her parents and her husband sing in the pub. She says she can’t go in there because, she says, ‘I have better songs to sing’. That really resonates with me.
“The modern, modern stuff? I try to get up to London whenever I can do. I went to Stratford over Easter and I saw the new Restoration comedy they’ve got there, Mrs Rich. Absolutely wonderful. Because when you do go to these places it’s top-class people with the best set, lighting, and costume you can see – and wonderful experiences.
“That’s what I used to try and do for the children I taught: take them to venues like that to see the best.”