The Lib Dem election literature claims that unlike Portsmouth, the Labour led Southampton City Council is ‘facing bankruptcy’. This is not true! The financial problems were the fault of the Tory-led administration that had run the council for several years until May 2022 when Labour took control. Labour’s plans to deal with Southampton’s financial difficulties have recently been approved by the government.

One major advantage that Portsmouth has over Southampton is the income generated from the public ownership of the commercial port. Last year this resulted in £8 million in additional funding for front-line services in Portsmouth.

In the 1990s, the then Tory-run council sought to privatise our commercial port, a plan that was strongly opposed by Labour councillors and by local trade unions. The plan was eventually voted down at a full Council meeting – by one vote! It is because of the campaign fought by the local Labour Party that Portsmouth City Council continues to benefit from substantial additional income from its commercial port.

Since 2010-11, all local councils across the country have been subjected to steep cuts in the funding they receive from central government. This has required all councils to make cuts to the services they provide for their local residents.

A small number of councils, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat, have effectively declared themselves bankrupt and have had to surrender control of expenditure to government-appointed advisors. And recently there have been media reports that many more councils will be forced to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two.

Let’s be clear – it is successive Tory governments that are to blame for the devastating cuts in services that local councils have been forced to make in order to balance their budgets. Let’s also remember that from 2010 the Liberal Democrats were in coalition with the Tory-led government and together they were responsible for implementing savage expenditure cuts that have decimated our public services.

In Portsmouth, our annual funding from Westminster has been cut by more than £65 million or 23% in real terms. That equates to £675 for every Portsmouth household.

Portsmouth, like every other local council in the country has had to make difficult choices over which services to reduce or close in order to balance the books. We need our local councillors to be honest with us about the scale of the task they are facing.