Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty
This is a horrendous time for the city council’s funding. Figures from the Local Government Association tell us that almost 80% of councils the length and breadth of the country will struggle to make ends meet. Conservative government cuts are perpetuating inequality in our communities in Brighton and Hove. LGBT people are facing greater inequality too: like other vulnerable groups, services for LGBT people around the country have been the first to be cut. As austerity bites and inequality rises under the Conservative government cuts, we cannot give ground to bigotry.
Even if we put the impact of austerity to one side, things are far from perfect:
- A report produced by the Health Committee of the London Assembly reports LGBT+ people identified that 40% of LGBT people experience a mental health issue, compared to 1 in 4 of the wider population. Some of that is because LGBT people are often invisible when it comes to decisions because of poor data and poorer consultation.
- One in six lesbian, gay and bi people have experienced a homophobic or biphobic hate crime or incident over the last three years; while 38 per cent of trans people have experienced physical intimidation.
We have to be mindful of how short-sighted cuts could really jeopardise LGBT equality. Our analysis of this year’s city council budget meant we were able to identify that Labour’s council budget included cutting the LGBT community safety post. In the aftermath of Brexit we have faced a spike in hate crimes- leaping from 49 to 64 crimes and incidents, including several prominent violent homophobic attacks in the city. The evidence is clear: now is not the time to cut the budget for the LGBT community safety post.
Our analysis also showed that because of the massive 80% cuts to the youth service and the £370K cut to the investment programme in the voluntary sector, support for LGBT people, including our young people, would be hit disproportionately. We know that almost half (48%) of trans people under 26 said they had attempted suicide. More than half (55 per cent) of lesbian, gay and bi pupils have experienced direct bullying. So it is clear that the work that Allsorts and community youth groups do with young LGBT people in the community is more than a service – it can be a lifeline. Many other LGBT community and voluntary groups rely on the funding that the council injects into the sector and it’s often matched by other bodies such as the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), so that Council money invested here stretches further. Lately the sector has been warned that the CCG will not be providing funding into the future so cuts here will hit twice as hard.
The Green Group of Councillors published a series of proposals which outlined our priorities and principles in the budget: http://bit.ly/GPBudget17
Our proposals include measures to reverse the cut to the LGBT Community Safety post and reverse cuts to the youth service. Our aim: to make suggestions that turn the focus of the Council towards the real value of the city’s preventative work and towards ‘spend to save’ initiatives that will support the Council – and our residents – in the long term. This is a different approach to managing budgets but we must push to resist savage cuts in difficult circumstances. We wanted to stick up for our more vulnerable community members and preventing problems for LGBT people becoming a crisis further down the line.
All the evidence supports the fact that if you cut services you will inherit problems in the future. This is why we committed to a different approach, putting prevention at the heart of our proposals. We are glad that the amendments that we put forward to budget Council have reversed some of the planned cuts to services that support LGBT people. We worked hard to save what we could, but we feel as if there really are no winners in a budget that cuts £20m.