The Greens and Labour on the coming local election
We discuss the upcoming Kent County Council election with Rich Lehmann, Leader of the Greens, and Alister Brady, Leader of the Labour Group.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a short series of interviews with the political group leaders at Kent County Council, where we meet the candidates pushing to take control of the authority in May. On Saturday, we spoke to the Conservative leader of the council, Roger Gough. Today, we hear from Rich Lehmann of the Greens and Alister Brady of the Labour Group. Tomorrow, it’ll be the turn of Antony Hook of the Liberal Democrats and Thomas Mallon of Reform UK.
Rich Lehmann is the leader of the Green and Independent Group on Kent County Council, which includes independent councillors Mike Baldock and Barry Lewis. We discuss the party’s policies, upcoming devolution and reorganisation in Kent, and what the party is aiming for in May.
How would you describe the Green Party?
I would describe the Green Party as the only major party offering a genuine alternative to the type of politics and the view towards the economy that we've had for the past 45 years. I joined the Green Party because it was clear to me ten or so years ago that they were the only ones who had really thought through things holistically in a way that actually takes account of the effects of the choices that you make. You can't just save money in one place and not think about how it's going to affect things in another. The Green Party are unfortunately branded as solely being about climate by some electors. It is so much more than that, but if we're to address equality in any meaningful way, that has to include trying to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Locally, we are doing that in whatever way we can. It's very difficult with a very small parliamentary group to really make a mark, but we have moved from one councillor in Kent to, I think, 57 we're at now, in the last six years. That shows that people value the work that we do. You have to work so hard to get elected as a Green in Kent. That, to me, just really underlines the level of motivation that we feel to try and change things for the better and the level of commitment that we're prepared to give to this role.
What are the Green Party's key focuses for Kent County Council?
My key focus is wherever possible to work towards rebuilding communities. We've had, over the last 45 years, a decaying of communities and atomisation of towns and villages and people in general. We need to turn that trend around. Part of the reason we've got so many people attracted to fairly right-wing views at the moment is because they're disconnected from their neighbours and their communities. That's not necessarily the reason to support rebuilding communities, but it is a useful side effect of that. A key reason to do it is that it's essential for our societal mental health to have a greater understanding of the lives of our neighbours and the people around us and be more connected with the places that we live in.
Should 16-year-olds have been allowed to vote in the upcoming local election?
I feel that they should. Examples that are given are things like joining the army, and you can get a job and pay tax at 16. If those things are true, then you should also be able to vote in elections. I was someone who didn't get a chance to vote until they were nearly 22 because one election happened just before my 18th birthday. If you've got a situation where 18-year-olds are allowed to vote, and you believe that 18 is an adult, then it's a little bit of a woolly area. Maybe the first answer was actually the better one. But I feel that a 16-year-old will, assuming a five-year parliamentary term, spend most of that term as an adult if you count 18 as being an adult. So why should they not have a say in what the outcome of that election is?
Would KCC benefit from proportional representation?
Difficult to say benefit, but I think proportional representation is objectively a far fairer system, and I would prefer to see it. As you're probably well aware, at the last county council elections, the Greens got 15% of the vote in Kent and four out of 81 councillors, so 5% of the councillors. Conservatives got just 50% of the vote and 75% of the seats. These kinds of things lead to that disengagement that people have from politics and politicians, feeling that their vote doesn't count. One of the reasons that turnout was so high in the Brexit referendum was that every single vote counted, and that's very rarely the case in other elections that we have in this country.
How much should KCC support unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors?
I believe that we should be aiding unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, but I think that the government should be funding the vast majority of that work that Kent County Council does because it's just a geographical fluke that we're nearest to the shortest crossing point from mainland Europe. Were it to be another county that was, I would think it was unfair that they were given that burden. But in terms of the actual support we give, I definitely think that we should be giving that, yes.
Has KCC done enough with regard to climate change?
That's a very good question.
I'm kind of sad I'm not including GIFs of your reactions in the article.
Yeah, yeah. I can't quantify enough as to how much they're not doing enough. I did ask a question recently, which got a response of, ‘Oh, but we're doing this, this and this.’ Yes, they are doing some good things in regard to getting solar farms built, but there are still huge areas of improvement, which we're lagging behind on. One of the key ones for me is the fact that our waste all goes to be incinerated at Allington, and that pumped out even before coal-fired power stations were closed. The waste-to-energy incinerator at Allington was generating more carbon per kilowatt hour than coal-fired power stations. Now that all the coal-fired power stations in England have been closed, it's significantly above other forms of energy production, and we need to do more to reduce the amount of waste that we send there. Admittedly, some of it does need to be sent there because putting it in landfill isn't ideal either, but the amount that we send to be recycled needs to be increased and the amount that we send to incineration needs to be greatly decreased.
How should KCC be devolved?
I would prefer not to see it devolved. It depends on how you define it devolved. Two or three years ago, we put in a motion, cross-party with the Lib Dems, calling for a Kent Assembly. What we would like to see is the powers that the government are proposing to give to mayors given to county councils. There's no reason why you couldn't have either a structure very similar to the existing county council or a newly created body if it needed to be one, given those powers and able to have the kind of spending decisions and policy decisions that mayors and the devolved governments in Northern Ireland and Scotland and Wales have given to counties.
There have been four maps released as potential reorganisation of the Kent region. Do you have a preference?
Of the four maps that have been released, I think my preference would be Swale, Ashford and Folkestone. Swale, Ashford and Maidstone was one of the four. I'd be happy with that. One of the ones that wasn't one of the four would be Swale, Ashford and Canterbury. What I would like to see ideally is the deprivation spread as evenly as possible. The problem with Maidstone going in with West Kent is that it kind of concentrates a lot of the wealth in that part of the county, whereas Maidstone joining some of the people who are at least in the middle, moves that across a little bit and equals things out. But there is certainly always going to be, unfortunately, a massive disparity in both wealth and deprivation between Sevenoaks and Thanet. There's no way of carving it up that doesn't leave that being the case.
If you could change anything about Kent politics, what would it be?
One of the key learnings for me over the last few years has been that politicians, and I did say this in the most recent full council meeting, at local level, are not necessarily any more transparent rather than the ones in House of Commons. It's been a steep learning curve in terms of just understanding that even if you ask a very straight question in a committee meeting at the council, you don't always get a straight answer. Perhaps there's a historical understanding that if you're naive enough to ask a straight question in a meeting, you won't get a straight answer. Therefore, it's fair game to do that. But I feel that it's incumbent on us as councillors, if we're in a public meeting, to give an honest answer to an honest question and not give a misleading answer. It's one thing saying, ‘No, I'm not going to answer that.’ But it's another thing to pretend that you've answered the question when you haven't, and basically, it's a very short distance between a blatantly incorrect answer that you know is incorrect, but in your head, you're letting it off the hook through some kind of loophole. That, to the listener, is very adjacent to telling a lie. I'm not suggesting that any of the councillors have told lies in public council meetings, but it's another reason why there is a lack of trust in politicians across the board. Over the years, just in the last 10, 15 years, there's been this kind of move towards politicians on TV interviews being asked straight questions, and they've clearly been briefed on how to avoid answering those questions. Even when the interviewer tries to repeat the question, they repeat their non-answer again and again to the point of embarrassment on both sides. It's understandable that that's probably one of the reasons people are fed up with politicians.
Can we expect your party leaders to be in Kent to support the local election campaign?
Zack Polanski (Green Deputy Leader) was in Kent last weekend.
What will success in the KCC elections look like for your group?
In 2019, we quadrupled from one to four, and there was an ambition in the back of my head that quadrupling again would be fantastic. It was very ambitious, but I'm still hoping that we can triple to 12. I'll be very happy with that. Ten is the number that I would be happy with. I want double figures.
And is that ten straight Green or ten for the group?
Ten straight Green, definitely. There is an outside chance that the independents will get enough independents elected that they might want to form their own group. But certainly, the independents that we've worked with over the last four years, if they were to be re-elected, then we would be open to another agreement along the lines of the ones we've had.
Alister Brady is Leader of the Labour Group, which is now made of five members after two members of the group became independents. We discuss the party’s priorities for KCC, devolution, and what would represent success for the party.
How would you describe the Labour Party?
The Labour Party is a party that focuses on the person, the individual. Other ideologies focus on institutions and how people fit into those institutions, but the Labour Party focuses on that person, the value of that person and how we can help that person.
What are the Labour Party's key focuses for KCC?
For the last four years we've built alternative budgets. Every year, we have seen cuts to services and frontline services. We wanted to get in front of that, look at the budget on a whole, and we're lucky to have a couple of finance officers from KCC, and they come back to us in about September. Then we start working on that budget meeting with all the corporate directors, bringing our invest to save priorities. Mostly, it's seeing what can be brought in-house to make it more efficient. If things aren't able to be brought in-house, how to make that service more efficient and deliverable locally. To invest in prevention, getting in there early, helping people, universal services, helping people early, because further down the line, there'll be more complex interventions needed. The sooner you start helping with children and adults, the sooner you can start saving money in the long run but actually helping those people.
For this election, we've got six overarching priority pledges. The first one is ending Tory waste. That is looking at frontline service delivery. KCC, at the moment, commission out 73% of services to the private sector. That equates to about £1.8bn worth of services. The council is just a middleman. They get money from government, and they parcel it out to these massive companies. They've created a market where the market sees there's no alternative. They can engage in profiteering because we haven't given an alternative. We can do this differently.
One of the other massive asks is to look to start to fix the social care service and develop a system that puts people first. We went to the Association for Public Service Excellence to see if we can change the model of domiciliary care, how we can support people for longer in the home living happy, fruitful and better lives in their home. Because if we move them into residential care, or they move into residential care too soon, then we see them decline, and it's incredibly expensive, and people really want to be supported in the home. We asked that public service excellence group to look to see if it's possible to start moving that in-house. They were able to see that we could move a portion of that in-house because, at the moment, there's a framework model. It's making it person-centred and enriching their lives by doing that.
There's an integrated care strategy that is worked up with the NHS and it's got some really good things. However, KCC, when we get a decision, looks at governance, finance, securing Kent’s future, but it doesn't look at the care strategy. We would align decision-making to see if that aligns with what that care strategy is with every decision. If it's irrelevant, then it doesn't align. However, everything should feed into that. Straight away, we put forward a motion to do that.
We wanted to bring back the community wardens. These are recognisable faces in the community. We were able to fully fund bringing that back to 23, the levels of community wardens in 2023. The Conservatives want to move that into the private sector. Community wardens really are recognisable faces that signposts where you can get help when needed, and they should be available and work with resident associations. But KCC Tories want to put that on the phone. When you look at social isolation after covid, people want to speak to people. They don't want to go on the end of the phone and tell their story again. They want to build a relationship. We would move that back to the 23 level and the government gave £23m extra to KCC to go towards adult social care. That is a drop in the ocean, and more needs to happen, but we would use that to be able to fund these initiatives.
Our children's focus policy is a grade-A education in and outside of the school settings. Straight away after covid, we realised there would have been a massive issue with social isolation with children because they hadn't been in the classroom for many months due to lockdown. We proposed, and we fully costed to have an after-school play service for five to 11-year-olds. That would have been at the children's centres if the Tories didn't close the children's centres and moved them to family hubs. We would have to do them out of the family hubs, which are quite hard to get to. But at the moment, services out of the family hubs are not universal, they’re appointment only. We would make this service universal.
We were able, within this alternative budget, to have youth workers in schools. You're probably surprised to hear that that doesn't really happen that often. There are dedicated teams in the family hubs, and the youth centres have been closed. I think there's 38 children's and youth centres that have been closed around Kent, but we would have dedicated teams in districts who are able to go into schools for a period of time, timetabled, so they're recognisable faces as well. The young people within secondary schools would be able to approach them because they trust them and open up, and then we can get prevention again. We're able to then speak to the children and deliver these services and preventive services and help, which is shocking that it doesn't happen.
Repairing roads, obviously potholes are on everybody's minds. It's looking to fix them better and make the bus services better. There was an extra £14m from government to help on road maintenance. Now, that's commissioned out to a massive company, hundreds of millions, a big company that's not very responsive. We would look to break up that contract to then have local maintenance companies filling those potholes. They're more responsive. They know the roads. They know how to do that quicker. It’s a really clunky system. We would make that system a lot easier so people can report potholes and then you've got a responsive team to be able to then go and fix it.
From government, there's an extra £5m for active travel for walking and cycling. We would use that locally, talking to residents’ association groups, bike groups, walking groups, and schools on how we can use that money to better the pathways and the routes to school. There's a government better buses bill, which has got objectives of public ownership of bus service. We're at the mercy of Arriva and Stagecoach, and we've just seen services cut. We would work with government to see how we can make that better, efficient and affordable.
Another priority is securing job security and delivering better jobs. Within the 2023 Procurement Act has just been updated by this government in February. It's heavily weighted on social value, small and medium-sized enterprises and voluntary and community sector enterprises. Instead of KCC, which they do at the moment, going to the biggest company, there's your money, and then that goes out to Kent. We would look to prioritise smaller companies, local companies, so that money goes into that area. £1.8m is a lot of money that could be spent directly in Kent.
Every single decision, like the integrated care strategy should have tackling the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis written in. How is that impacting that? How are we tackling that crisis? Because it's overarching and we need to move forward on this, and decisions aren't made through that lens. I've stood up and said this quite often to anybody who would listen. There's a different way of doing things. That's why we built alternative budgets for four years to say we can do this. This is possible.
Should 16-year-olds be allowed to vote in the upcoming election?
In this election in May? Probably not. However, what I would like to see is a change to the curriculum, an increase in civic studies to get people into a place where 16-year-olds can vote.
Would KCC benefit from proportional representation?
Probably. When you look at KCC before all the defections and people moving to independents, the Conservatives had 62 members. That has created an idea vacuum. They've been in power for 27 years. That doesn't help to rejuvenate society and service delivery, and KCC is not representative of the Kent population. If it was able to do that, then possibly something down the lines of a single transferable vote system. ‘This is who I would like, but if I don't get that person, I would like this person.’ I think if you say to people, the majority of people in Kent, do you think that the Conservatives should have had 62 councillors to be able to scrutinise decision-making, they would say no. Iit means the opposition members are under so much pressure to be able to read every single word of every single decision because some of the backbenchers in the Conservative Party, how do I put this politely, are not that good at coming forward when critical thinking is involved.
How much should KCC support unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors?
To the legal requirement. You have to operate within the law. We don't set those laws, governments set those laws, and the European Court of Human Rights. I can't believe a lot of politicians think that human rights are a bad thing, but we should do it to the legal requirement.
Should we do more than the legal requirements?
Within our budgets, I don't think that's possible. We're really restrained. 14 years of austerity has seen so much money going from public services. I said last time in full council, it was the leader of the council's time to talk about all the good things they've done over the last four years, and the only good thing they could say was, ‘We haven't gone bust.’ I think KCC, at the moment, through mismanagement over the last 14 years, is just barely keeping its head above the water. We have to do our legal requirement, but if we do more, then KCC will go bust and that will just be so bad for the Kent population.
Has KCC done enough with regard to climate change?
Well, like I said, you don't have a golden thread running through decisions made, where you're looking at the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis when open spaces are sold. From day one, in policy resources cabinet committee, I would say, why are you selling this open space? It's better for people's health, but you can also do so much more to tackle the biodiversity crisis, and they just sell it.
How should KCC be devolved?
Well, when this came to the special extraordinary meeting at KCC, we wanted to prioritise local government reorganisation over devolution and have the elections go ahead, and the Conservatives voted to not have these elections to go ahead. I think we really need to talk to town councils, parish councils, districts and residents to find out what they would think is best. I think local government reorganisation is better for service delivery. Now, there's arguments over whether there should be three or four unitaries, and there's arguments for and against. If I go knocking on a door today and ask people questions, what KCC does, what the districts do, what parishes do, people don't know. To be able to say East Kent Authority is responsible for everything and then parishes are responsible for place, the maintenance of place and fields, that is a lot easier to understand and more efficient. But the argument is three or four unitaries.
Where do you stand on how the areas should be divided up?
I know that community value and how we see our communities to not lose our identity, it should be a little bit smaller. There is an argument that three unitaries, there isn't really a community identity if it's that big. I think there's 729,000 people if that happened today of a three unitaries. Now, the level of growth within the next ten years turns that into another county council. You hear that the objective is to get rid of Kent. That's absolutely nonsense. Kent is a county. It's about how you deliver services. I think local government reorganisation and unitaries are necessary. The conversations need to happen with everybody to try and find out which is best.
Do you support the idea of a mayor for Kent?
Eventually, if it means more money for Kent. But we wanted to have the local government reorganisation conversation first, because when you see the letter that the leader of the Conservatives has just sent, he's still talking about devolution, devolution, devolution. However, let's talk about local government reorganisation and devolution because you can devolve powers from government to a mayor, get extra money and also focus on service delivery. That's the important thing. Strategy for the overarching strategy for Kent, which the mayor would be in charge of is really important, but as important, if not more, is service delivery. How do you help people? How do you help your residents? Doing that first to then moving on to devolution and a Mayoral Strategic Authority is the right thing, but get that right and then that next bit follows.
If you could change anything about Kent politics, what would it be?
Having a Labour-run Kent County Council.
Can we expect the Labour Party leader to be in Kent to support the KCC campaign?
Sure. We've got some really good Kent MPs, and I think they're at the forefront of some of the campaigns. Of course, we're the gateway to Britain from Europe, and the leadership understands how important this area is and values it.
What does success in the KCC elections look like?
Larger group.
Can you quantify that in any way for us?
No, because then that will get played. Double figures. It's very easy to say, and then the next thing is, ‘Oh, you didn't get that, you must be disappointed.’ Easily double figures. We're confident. We've got some really good candidates. It's all about being a local champion, doing something for the community, not just somebody bowling up on a piece of paper saying, ‘Oh, I love this place, please vote for me.’ It's like, what are you going to do? ‘Oh, no, they're rubbish. Vote for me.’ Have you got evidence of what you've done for the community? Are you a recognisable face? We've got some really good candidates, and we're really hopeful.
Footnotes
These interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You can read our previous interviews here.
If you want to suggest ideas or send tips for people to interview, email Steven.