Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Oliver Leader de Saxe, joined by Cllr Rich Lehmann, Leader of the Green group at Kent County Council and Cllr Alex Patterson, Portfolio Holder for Medway Council.
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00:00Welcome to Kent Politics Show, live on KMTV, the show that gets Kent's politicians talking.
00:26I'm Olive Leader of the Saks and today we're talking about the perks of the job.
00:31Taylor Swift tickets, boxes at Arsenal matches, expensive clothes. No, these aren't the benefits
00:36of being a KMTV reporter, but they are a few of the donations and gifts that government ministers
00:41have received. It's a debate that's got everyone talking at the Labour Party conference earlier
00:47this week, where the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, outlined Labour's goals for government
00:52and for public services. It's all been in a week where Kent and the rest of the country
00:57have been battered by bad weather with risks of flooding. Joining me to make sense of it all
01:02is Rich Layman, the leader of the Green Group at Kent County Council and Labour's Alex Patterson,
01:07the Community Safety Cabinet member at Medway Council. But first, education, education,
01:14education. It's something everyone in Kent has a view on and it's something upper tier authorities
01:19like Kent County Council and Medway Council have a lot of responsibility for. But demand is high
01:26and it could soon outstrip school places. That's according to a report set to be discussed in a
01:31couple of days at the Medway Council Cabinet. The lack of spaces in secondary schools is also
01:36causing problems for children with special educational needs and disabilities. And it's
01:42not just Medway either, with KCC planning to redesignate SEND schools to ease pressures and
01:48put children back into mainstream education. The schools minister told us a few weeks ago,
01:54it's not just an issue facing Kent. Well, I don't have the salt with me right now,
02:00but I am joined by my wonderful guests. And I wanted to start with you on this one, Alex. You
02:04are a cabinet member at Medway Council. You'll be discussing this report in a couple of days.
02:10And it doesn't necessarily make for the most joyful reading I've ever seen. Why is there
02:17such high demand for schools in the local authority? Why are the five towns facing this
02:22amount of pressure? Well, these sort of problems don't crop up overnight. And the first thing I
02:27would point out is that we are now 21 years and counting since our last local plan was approved.
02:33So the numbers are all based on a local plan that's quite significantly out of date. So I think
02:40what that will give us once we have a local plan in place at Medway is the opportunity
02:46to properly allocate funding for schools from Section 106 money. It's something that we've seen
02:53happen in my own ward in Rochester, West and Boston. We've had a brand new school opened last
02:58year at Rochester Riverside. And that was in part funded by Section 106 money from a planned
03:04development at Rochester Riverside. Just this week, we've seen St Mary's Island development
03:10finally completed after a quarter of a century. And part of that was a school that was built.
03:17So it does highlight the need for planning. But what I would also point out is that
03:2015 years ago, what got me involved in politics in Kent was a campaign to keep
03:25three schools open in Medway that the previous Conservative administration wanted to close.
03:30So I feel like I'm on the right side of history on this one. And those places that were lost
03:36due to that closure programme, the chickens have come home to roost.
03:41Rich, is this something that we're seeing in Swale and across wider Kent? Can we expect similar
03:47headlines about a lack of places and provision in schools elsewhere in Kent? Or is it just really a
03:53Medway issue? I think it's an issue across Kent as well, but it's very much a fluid issue. You have
04:01increases in population, which obviously increase the demand on school places.
04:08And the KCC works quite closely by monitoring house building and planning across the county
04:14to ensure that there's enough spaces for all the pupils that are expected. I mean,
04:19the story here seems to be about a large amount of inward migration due to a recruitment drive,
04:26which is great if the NHS have got more people working at Medway Hospital. But
04:30obviously, the side effects of that are things like an unforeseen increase in demand for the
04:35school places. But underneath that, there is obviously, it appears here that the situation
04:41was that these schools were already full. And it's very difficult to manage that ongoing.
04:47Across Kent, I'm aware that there was a huge demand on primary school places over the last
04:52kind of five or so years. And that is now moving up towards the later primary school years and
04:57into secondary school. So arguably, there'll be a decrease in demand for primary school places
05:04once those pupils have kind of aged up to secondary school level. But like I said,
05:10it just needs to be monitored continuously and kept on top of as much as possible.
05:15Because I think my question is, how are Medway and KCC going to cope as demand increases? We've
05:21seen how tight local authority budgets can be. We've seen the financial challenges that Medway
05:26and KCC have faced in the last couple of years. Can we actually afford this increase in demand
05:32in our local authorities here in the county? Well, I think, you know, it goes back to what I
05:37said about Section 106 monies. Even in the smaller piecemeal developments that we see
05:43as a result of the Tories' failure to put in place a local plan, there is still provision for
05:50the Section 106 money to fund school places. They're just not necessarily enough to create
05:56a new school from. So I think that really makes the case for planned development at scale.
06:03Because what that does when you have a development like Rochester Riverside is you create
06:08the demand for a primary school in one place, the same at St Mary's Island. So I think that's
06:14why it's really important that we get this new local plan in place. Because the sort of infill
06:20developments, the piecemeal developments, the sort of six houses here and two houses there,
06:26are not going to deliver the school places that we need. So local plan is absolutely at the heart
06:31of it. But I want to push back slightly because obviously it does take time to build schools,
06:35it does take time, even if we do get a local plan underway, if we get these developments underway.
06:39We've seen a school in Twiddle recently that was reopened after two years of development,
06:44and we're looking at potentially some schools in Kent running out of places as early as next
06:50September. Does Medway Council actually have a plan to tackle this in the immediate short term?
06:54Well there's all sorts of contingencies that can be developed to account for acute need. You look
07:01at what's happening in some South London boroughs where they're actually going through a programme
07:07of closing primary schools. So it's quite clear that there's been some sort of rapid population
07:13shift, and I guess in London that's because families are being priced out and that's part
07:19of the housing crisis that Medway and KCC find themselves at the sharp end of.
07:25Well Rich, I wanted to ask you as well, because it isn't just a mainstream education,
07:29SEND schools are being massively impacted in the coming years, especially because KCC are
07:34planning on re-designating certain schools, which will mean that more children will be in mainstream
07:40education from 2026. We also know that Medway have had some struggles with the number of places
07:47in secondary schools for people with SEND needs. I was wondering, do you think this is the right
07:52approach for the increasing demand on our education system here in Kent?
07:59It's a difficult one for me to answer. I mean the official line from KCC is that no child who
08:04should be in a school for children with special educational needs will be moved to a mainstream
08:09school, and should that be the case then I don't have a problem with that. There's a lot of
08:16conflicting information that I've got from both sides of the argument here, so I'm not comfortable
08:23commenting with any great authority on that. I'd like to come back to one of the points that Alex
08:27just made about house building and development and local plans. We've got, I agree in principle
08:35with that idea, but just wanted to give an example here in Faversham, we've got two large developments
08:40looming equating to about 4,000 houses, and were that to be in a local plan currently neither of
08:48the developers involved there would want to build a new secondary school even though one's necessary,
08:53and I think there's a bigger question here about a planning system which we've had over the last
08:59kind of 10-15 years which is driven by developers rather than by councils, and a planning system
09:07which gives too much power to developers to set the agenda and set the conversation around
09:13development, and I would very much like to see that scaled back, and I'm concerned that where
09:20some concessions have been made by the previous government towards doing away with mandatory
09:26targets we're now looking at those coming back in under the Labour government, and that's
09:29that's a real shame because last year we saw you know maybe 165,000 houses built and it was it felt
09:35like there was building everywhere, and to move from that to a position of 300,000 houses a year
09:41just seems virtually impossible. Right Alex you want to come back on that because obviously
09:46what seems to be the suggestion here is that it isn't really about the local plan and such, it's
09:50about the national strategy around house building and how perhaps schools aren't being considered
09:56within that framework and that perhaps Labour government aren't having kind of dropped the ball
10:01in some ways on this, what do you make of that? Well you know I think to talk about house building
10:06as some sort of inherently problematic thing, people need houses, you know the fact that I have
10:12two children you know now left home, got to university, graduated, what chance do they have
10:19genuinely of getting on the housing ladder in the current climate? We don't have enough houses for
10:24people to rent at a fair price, and you know we can bury our head in the sands and we can pretend
10:30that people will want to go elsewhere in the country, but the truth is you know people on
10:35the social media warriors will talk about why are you inviting people to come to live in Kent,
10:41I can see the attraction of coming to live somewhere that's on the doorstep of London
10:46and has fantastic transport links and I don't think you're going to change that, so I think
10:51the reality is we need to face up to the housing need and we need to make sure that those houses
10:56are built but built in the right places and with appropriate infrastructure. So very quickly maybe
11:01in a line, can we not turn on to the ad break, what is the solution here? Obviously we need more houses
11:07but we need to make sure our schools are well equipped for the future. Money, that's what
11:13it comes down to, we need enough money to build the infrastructure and we need that money to
11:18follow the developments in the right places. Rich what about you? I mean I would say here in
11:24Faversham over the last kind of six to seven years we've seen nearly 2,000 houses built and there is
11:29a housing need in Faversham for 2,000 houses, unfortunately the ones that have been built
11:34do not meet the need of the people that need them, they need to be affordable houses, they need to be
11:38smaller units at affordable prices and not four and five bed executive homes for people moving out
11:44of London. I'm not saying that there's no market for that but as I said previously
11:50about developers setting the conversation, it's entirely an industry driven by profit
11:55rather than by actual local need. Well I think we had to leave that there but coming off the break
12:01the freebie scandal and obviously the Labour conference, see you in a few moments.
12:20you
12:50you
13:20you
13:50you
14:20you
14:50you
15:20you
15:27Well welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. Still joining me is Rich Lehman, the
15:32leader of the Green Group at KCC and Alex Patterson, the cabinet member for community
15:37safety at Medway Council. But now halfway across the country from Kent, our newly elected Labour
15:44MPs have been discussing the future of their party up in Liverpool. With ministers under
15:49fire for the amount of gifts and donations they've received from concert and football
15:53tickets to clothing and accommodation, is it all a little out of touch? Well while the Prime
15:59Minister has hit back saying he's done nothing wrong, we caught up with the MP for Chatham and
16:04Aylesford to get his view on the situation. Part of that transparency is because we are
16:10declaring all of these gifts as is required, all MPs are required to do that. And look we
16:16you know that we need to ultimately accept that
16:21we've had this for 20 years where people have donated to the Conservatives, to Labour and I
16:26think this has been a distraction and I'm not the only one that said that from the agenda which I
16:31want to talk about, which is improving people's lives to get public services improved. As we saw
16:38we caught up with Trist there, a former Medway councillor, I think he's still a Medway councillor
16:41at the moment, on the move at the conference and Alex I wanted to go to you on this because
16:47what do you think? Surely it's a little out of touch and there's no real excuse for cabinet
16:51ministers earning more than £100,000 to be accepting this amount of gifts and hospitality,
16:57what do you make of it? So I think what I think is it does look bad, the question is not whether
17:04it looks bad though, it's whether it is bad, it's whether it's you know contrary to the Nolan
17:09principles, it's whether it actually is dangerous or corrupt and I think that where I would place
17:17it I have a lot less concern about someone buying a pair of trousers for Keir Starmer than Boris
17:23Johnson's mates trousering millions of pounds from dodgy Covid contracts and I think we absolutely
17:28need to be clear-headed about that. There is a big difference between something that has been
17:34declared in the proper fashion and something which is fundamentally corrupt. But your government
17:40are trying to regulate football, they are trying to regulate other parts of the industry,
17:45they are accepting donations, gifts from these organisations, how can we trust that change will
17:51go ahead in the way we want to see if they're taking this sort of money, these sorts of gifts,
17:57this sort of value of hospitality? I certainly would like to see the money taken out of politics,
18:03there's no question of that. I think unfortunately we've got about as much luck as King
18:09Canute had asking the tide to go back on that one, you'll now have to look at the US
18:15presidential election. But actually you know maybe this is an unpopular opinion but my view is that
18:21MPs should probably be paid a little bit more and that's not a modern idea, that goes back to
18:28the campaigns of the Chartists centuries ago who wanted MPs to have a salary for a particular
18:34reason, because at that time the only people who could afford to be MPs were the landed gentry and
18:40so we've had a situation where in the previous government the people holding the highest offices
18:46of state, one was married to a billionaire, the other was a self-made millionaire and absolutely
18:53the idea that they can be throwing stones from their glass house is frankly ridiculous on this
19:01one. But I do think that we expect our politicians and particularly our MPs and particularly members
19:07of the cabinet to almost be celebrities and while those wages are a lot higher than what I earn,
19:14that they're a lot higher than probably anyone in KMTV is earning, but they are not astronomical
19:20salaries when you look at the expectation that we have of those people to travel around the
19:25country and to carry out that job. So I think there needs to be a rebalancing, having said that
19:31I'm well aware of the optics of these things, as a cabinet, as a council at Medway we rejected the
19:39recommendation for an increase to our pretty modest allowances, because we understand that
19:44we are in a cost of living crisis. Because it is a cost of living crisis and that is what people
19:47are concerned about. And I think you've got to send that message. I want to kind of ask
19:51you about that Rich, what do you agree with that? Do you think our MPs should be earning more and
19:55do you think that this culture of gifting and donations is as part of this way of life in
20:01politics that needs to change? I think the thing that has really struck me about this story is
20:09that I've been, although I've not been in politics for a long time, I've been following politics for
20:13many many years and in 2009 there was a huge MPs expenses scandal in the last year of Labour's
20:20previous term and it almost felt like it was designed to bring about a change in government
20:25and a change in government did happen, whether you can attribute it to that or not. But it has
20:32then been largely quiet for 14 years and now within months of Labour getting back into power
20:37we've suddenly got another one of these stories and it just feels very driven by an agenda of
20:45protecting us and there's a double standard here. We had a story about Nadine Zahawi
20:53claiming to heat up some stables and a lot of stories like that but they just kind of last
20:58a day and they fizzle out. When it's Labour involved it just seems to run and run. It's a
21:03little conspiratorial though isn't it to kind of suggest that it's part of this kind of media
21:08gotcha against the establishment like because obviously this was just after winter fuel
21:13allowances were cut for many people across the country. Isn't what's happened here just a sign
21:19of the hypocrisy? I mean if it is then similar hypocrisies have been undertaken many many many
21:28times over the last 14 years which have not been headline news all week in the majority of the UK
21:35press. So that's the difference that I wanted to point out. I would say that a bigger concern for
21:42me regarding Labour is the four million pound donation they received from a venture capital
21:47firm who have hundreds of millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels and tens of millions
21:53of pounds invested in arms manufacturers and private health care and that is to me is a
22:01more worrying development than you know some donations and gifts and similarly to the point
22:10I was just making. Sunak in his last year as Prime Minister received over a hundred thousand pounds
22:15worth of donated gifts and that wasn't a news story in the same way that this is. So that's
22:22kind of the point that I'm making here. What I want to kind of ask you about Alex just before we move on to
22:26the next topic is obviously you've had a couple years embedded within the party machine and I was
22:32kind of wondering do you think the Labour conference this year was derailed by all these scandals by
22:39well by this scandal that's been whether manufactured or not by the press it has struck a
22:45chord with people and do you think it's kind of derailed Labour's message? Do you think they've
22:49got what they wanted to get across this time around? I was actually struck by how
22:56united the party was at conference and I was there for the very final debate on the last
23:02day and that was a topic which there was a lot of controversy around but I think the debate was
23:09respectful as I would always hope that it would be. Just to go back to Rich's point very briefly
23:14though you know I think he's not wrong that we have a press who have overwhelmingly back
23:22the Conservatives at every election certainly since 1979 and you know it's a
23:30bit rich because as someone who used to be a journalist and has become a politician there's
23:35nobody knows how to work their way around a freebie better than Fleet Street journalists
23:41so there's a huge dose of humbug involved in some of the stories that we are that we're reading
23:48but you know the fact is it disappoints me because I have high expectations of Labour
23:55politicians. I expect the worst from Conservatives. They have you know allowed crooks into the heart
24:02of government in the last regime so I think it's really important that no appearance should be
24:08given of any impropriety and that's what this is. This is not impropriety
24:14but it's a bad look and certainly something that I think is regrettable.
24:20Obviously with KCC elections just around the corner with local elections next year
24:25do you think the recent headlines are going to make a difference in how Kent voters react? Obviously
24:31Rich I know you're probably gearing up to try and make some headway this election. Do you think it's
24:37going to make a difference? Do you think that it might actually help your party out in the coming
24:41in the coming months? That's a very interesting question because the expectation I would say
24:52is that we're going to see a potentially and I think everyone in the county council is thinking
24:58it potentially looking at a rainbow coalition so were that to happen we will be largely the three
25:04main opposition groups Labour, Lib Dems and Greens will be targeting Conservative seats so
25:12a potential kind of threat to that arguably is a big dip in Labour popularity after their large
25:19general election win which could mean that the Conservatives carry on in power by a very small
25:27majority. What I wanted to say about that is you mentioned the three other parties there's another
25:32party at the moment that's on the rise they came third in a lot of seats across Kent from
25:37St Paul and Sheppey to I think Faversham and Mid Kent as well and that's Reform. Do you think Reform
25:42are going to pose a threat to Kent electoral politics going forward that they could make some
25:47wins in the KCC elections? Obviously we saw a lot of prevalent Reform voices in Medway what do you
25:53think Alex? Well you know moving on from the topic we've just been discussing if we've got voters who
25:59are concerned about outside earnings and people trousering cash you know the number one outside
26:07earner in parliament at the moment is one Nigel Farage so you know I think they're unlikely to be
26:14convincing any floating voters but absolutely what Rich says you know both at Kent county level
26:22on Medway council in our elections last year you know it's quite clear the Conservatives
26:28are out of ideas that are spent force and I think we're going to have to leave it there.
26:32I'm sure we could talk KCC elections all day but we have to go to the end of the show but before we
26:39go did you know that you can catch up with with your politics in Kent and Westminster in a variety
26:45of ways and for all the latest news views and visit Kent online's bespoke politics section
26:51listen to the Kent politics podcast and sign up for the Kent politics briefing that has just
26:56started but for me for now have a lovely evening we'll see you very soon.