On Friday a summit was held in Liverpool which brought together civic and faith leaders to discuss how the combined group could work together to deal with the challenging financial settlement from Central Government. This approach is an excellent one, in the face of the challenge that the cuts provide, all sectors of our community need to consider what they can do to help those in greatest need, and working together is a great deal more effective than working in our silos. However I am concerned that the approach taken in this case has simply revealed a different set of silos. The summit was used to bring together civic and faith leaders from a number of cities around the country and in selecting the locations to be included, the conveners made a decision about what sort of pain is to be treated and how much pain is seen as the measure of authenticity.

The cuts being experienced in the cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Sheffield as well as the host city are certainly eye watering. However if the only criteria applied is that of the cuts against historical budgets, the pain felt in locations where the previous settlements have been low will not be seen in the same terms. One of the problems of our party political system of government is that support for parties is not evenly spread across the country. During the 13 years of the Labour Government financial settlements were skewed in favour of places that had been disadvantaged by the previous 18 years of Conservative Government. We now have a Conservative Government who appear determined to punish some parts of the country more than others. However the true level of the pain could easily be overlooked. It is clearly tough to have a budget cut, but also we need to consider what real level of funding is being granted per capita across the country. The country and its residents deserve a better future than the resource swings and roundabouts that our current form of Government seems to deliver.

My suspicion is that this urban summit will simply reassure George Osborne and Eric Pickles that they are doing things right, with 4 out of 5 cities run by Labour run Councils seeking to gang up and challenge them. What we need to do is to bring together  Counties such as East Sussex and Northumbria, and cities such as Liverpool, Brighton and Portsmouth so that we erode the tribal nature of the debate which Fridays summit appears to have reinforced. Poverty and disadvantage is as insidious in an urban city as a rural idyll, although I am not suggesting that the causes or possible solutions are similar. It is irrelevant to those impacted by these pressures which party controls  local and central government and we also need to ensure that the faith communities are not seen to be in favour of one party.