The Tories tell us problems resulting from bad weather are acts of God. The truth is different, says Murray Rowlands
Confronted with the serious shortcomings of Surrey County Council’s response to the recent severe weather, the pronouncements of its Tory representatives had a familiar ring to them. They included: “No one should travel in this kind of weather”, “ You should not be on the road without snow shoes”, “It was exceptional weather and impossible to plan for”, “Because of Government cuts, we only treated with grit those roads regarded as having priority” and “We were too stretched to provide an operator on our emergency call line”. A particular favourite was: “It proves global warming isn’t happening”.
We heard this sort of thing from the Tories when Margaret Thatcher was in office. Eventually, people started to see through excuses such as those which followed the disaster that befell the aptly-named Herald of Free Enterprise in March 1987. One hundred and ninety three passengers and crew lost their lives when the ferry capsized. The bow doors had not been closed. The subsequent inquiry identified a whole chapter of neglect where the desire for profit took precedence over an obligation to maintain decent safety standards.
Is it too cruel to equate the recent chaotic response of a county such as Surrey to a disaster on this scale? When we hear of people being taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia after being trapped for hours, we can conclude that it is not.
In Basingstoke in Hampshire, at least the local authority provided shelter for those in desperate straits. In Surrey, people were left to fend for themselves. Accident and emergency wards were packed with patients who had fallen on untreated footpaths.
However, nothing tempers the hubristic nature of Surrey’s public relations. A few days before the severe weather struck, the cabinet member for transport issued a statement proclaiming how well Surrey was prepared. When severe weather struck the county last winter, contractors did not have an adequate supply of grit and salt. This winter, the situation was different and priority was supposed to be given to highways leading to accident and emergency centres. The problem was not a shortage of materials to treat the roads. The problem was the failure to treat many of the roads on which people have to travel.
The absence of a properly functioning emergency telephone number meant that roads in a dangerous condition were not being closed. Surrey’s much-vaunted “One Stop Shop”, designed to link borough councils to the county council in an emergency, did no more than refer callers to a Surrey County Council number that went unanswered.
The worst of Surrey’s tribulations coincided with one of the busiest pre-Christmas shopping days. The ensuing gridlock was more highlighted by the bad weather than caused by it. The distribution of grit boxes did not provide adequate help. These were either non-existent or had not been filled before the snow and ice arrived.
Labour needs to do much more to demonstrate what a Conservative government under David Cameron would be like by exposing the failures of the Tories running local government. Labour should point to the contrast between Gordon Brown’s approach to the floods in Cumbria with the stumbling inefficiency of Tory councils. Labour has learned from past mistakes. The Conservative Party has not.
