Themed Debate on Oxfordshire Plan (Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats)

Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats <info@oxfordshirelibdems.org.uk>

Themed Debate on Oxfordshire Plan

April 6, 2010 2:00 PM
By Cllr. Zoe Patrick in Full Council

Although it is stated here that the Medium Term Corporate Plan was agreed on 9th February, I should first like to point out that despite asking at the last council meeting, there has still been no delivery plan issued.

Key challenges facing the county rightly starts with the economy, and I have to say that I was quite taken aback to read in the last Oxon News (here) published in February that in the leaders article on The World Class Economy how little Cllr. Mitchell knows about Science Vale UK. This site has now drawn in nearly 100 million of public spending towards the Diamond project, which is not a prototype nuclear fusion plant - sorry Cllr. Mitchell but you do need to brush up on your science facts before publishing next time! Another schoolboy howler in the article misspelt synchrotron altogether - these mistakes did cause some mirth within the science community, but does not look good on the county council if we appear to be ignorant of what is happening in our own back yard!

We also have the International Space Innovation Centre (could be described as a mini-NASA) as part of this investment into the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, and that is without the large scale investment and expertise of our scientists who work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN -this was covered on Radio Oxford last week. Hundreds of schools, including some from Oxfordshire all descended on the campus for National Science and Engineering week, and were given tours, lectures and an insight into the work which is going on there. I would hope that our Leader pays a visit there himself to learn about this huge science collaboration of which he is apparently unaware.

Under healthy and thriving communities we learn what we already know about Oxfordshire, that life expectancy in some areas is lower than elsewhere, as well as their health prospects, and I am hoping that some of the work which has now started to tackle the cycle of deprivation in those pilot projects in Oxford and Banbury will start bearing fruit.

I notice that the environment and climate change only warrants one small paragraph so we can only hope that the 18% carbon reduction target will be reached by 2010. I still think it was an opportunity missed not to go for 10:10.

And then we come to demographic change and the future of care. I will be covering much of this in my motion to council which follows this and still feel that despite pressure to withdraw my motion I think that it stands alone in its own right. Yes the Leader should write to the Prime Minister to ask him to respect the view of the House of Lords by deferring introduction of the reforms until detailed costings have been properly established. I do believe this is essential along with all the other parts of the resolution. However, I still found it a rather a odd that this was put as 'add-on' to the Oxfordshire plan rather than a themed debate in its own right. I was particularly concerned that the paper by ADASS on page 107 claims that the financial burden faced by councils in connection with this policy could lead to pressure to make greater use of residential care in order to comply with the duty to achieve value for money. This would certainly be a backward step if it were to happen especially as we try to support people being allowed to remain in their own homes, and I hope we can try to ensure this doesn't happen. Equally, on the same page we hope that more people won't be forced into reablement, which is another fear. There is much to discuss, but fear there is not enough time, but in principle I would support the resolutions as set out in the report.