Katy Gordon

Katy Gordon, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Glasgow Kelvin today expressed outrage at Glasgow City Council’s attempts to remove the management of Cultural and Leisure services from democratic council control.

Speaking at the Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in Aviemore, she welcomed the party’s plans to encourage local people to get involved with running their local services and to place a duty on all public bodies (including councils) to genuinely involve the public.

Katy said:

“More decision making power should be devolved to local government and where possible devolved further to local communities.  We must find new ways to harness the ideas and enthusiasm of local people to really make a difference.

Glasgow city council’s recently announced plans for Cultural & Leisure Services means that management of all our libraries, museums, and sports facilities will be removed from democratic council control.  There is no evidence that Glaswegians support this.  In fact, responses to our campaign about this transfer have been overwhelmingly against.

But what is even more incredible is that the council want this transfer to take place before the May elections.  Labour in Glasgow are obviously afraid of genuine public involvement. It’s shocking that they don’t even want to consult the people about their thoughts on such an important decision as this.

The key question that we should be asking Labour is:  Do you trust the people or are you scared of them?  The Liberal Democrats trust local people to make the right decisions!”