Lydia Talks To... Jane Corbett, Labour Councillor

Lydia Talks to ... Jane Corbett, Local Councillor – FULL TRANSCRIPT 21/04/2021

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Lydia Talks to... Podcast with me Lydia Finney.

You may know me as Lovely Lydia on Instagram where among other things I talk about politics and current affairs in a way that cuts through the noise, brings in the context and makes it meaningful In Lydia Talks to I’ll be talking to people to help me do just that

With many parts of the UK going to the polls on the 6th of May, I wanted to get a bit more insight and background into those elections. Next week I’m talking to a previous guest on Lydia News – Lorna Robertson – about the Scottish Elections and soon after chatting to an insider of Welsh politics...

But first I want to focus on the English Local Elections and get a peek behind the scenes of Local Government. To help me do that is Jane Corbett, Labour Councillor for Everton Ward in Liverpool City Council, a role she has held since 2002.

Jane is standing down from her role and is not seeking re-election on the 6th of May – this isn’t intended to be a political interview where I hold Jane’s feet to the fire, but to look more generally at the role of Local government, the interplay between central and local government... but that said I wasn’t going to leave out the recent furore over Central government stepping in to oversee parts of Liverpool City Council’s activities after what was described as a “serious breakdown of governance” by the Caller report. So that’s in there too along with Jane’s stories of her experiences and insights.

Now it’s got to be said that this was recorded on Zoom – I’m still such a beginner podcaster. My fantastic Virtual Assistant Lucy Critchley and her husband Jack work their magic with me podcasts and they are gently trying to improve my recording techniques... so please bear with the audio

I start by asking Jane what prompted her to get into local community politics and then later, stand as a local councillor...

Jane: So growing up, I really didn't know anything about politics. I knew that there was a general election and that was it. I came to Liverpool first time off when I was 17 to help on a place scheme. My mother asked me to do something useful in the holidays for a change. So she gave me a list of places to look at and there was a place scheme in Liverpool and I thought, I'll go there. Sounds romantic, it's in the Irish to me. So I arrived aged 17 on my own and absolutely loved it, came back and met my husband here and we were living in a tower block in 1981 and we had three fires in a fortnight that were with... the smoke...

It was the bin shutes and the smoke piled straight up the block and we were on the 14th floor. We couldn't get out. So the fire-bobbies used to lift up the letterbox and shout through and say, "if the smoke gets any worse, I stand on the veranda"

That was '81. And we met up with the other residents in the block and we did a piece of work where we all just went round, checked all the fire doors on the fire escape, which was internal.

And and none of them self closed, not one. So we then went down to the housing office and we basically worked out together who had the power to change this and to keep us safe. So that's what got me involved locally. So I joined the local residents association in '81. I'm still involved now. It's Great. We call it The Community Council, West Everton Community Council or WECC as it's known locally. So I'm a Trustee and Company Secretary there still, which is on my register of interests, even though it's completely voluntary, but it's really important that people know I do that

and then in 2002 and the person who is standing as the Labour councillor, then suddenly had to stand down. He had a job, a different job in a different part of the city, and he felt that he needed to to move on. And I was his agent. And that was about three and a half days before we had to get our papers in or his papers in. So and people said, you know, you need to to do this now because I was on the panel for the next year in case I was needed, only I wasn't looking to be a councillor.

So I went home and said, what would you think to the family. And they went, "Well, you're involved anyway doing it. Really. So why not?" I asked my mates in the community and they said, "yeah, let's do this together". So we did. So I got it in 2002 as a Labour councillor for the Everton ward, where I've lived for over 40 years now, which is a brilliant community, very strong, been absolutely bashed around and it's the most disadvantaged in the city.

Lydia: Yeah, I mean, that story to me, I mean, it's very evocative of Grenfell Tower and, you know, all the terrible things that happened there, but also trying to meet a very local need. And, you know, and this is all about local politics and what we're heading into now, elections on the 6th of May for England to elect their local councillors. And you know what I'd really like to talk to you today about is, is why people should go out and vote.

Why should they go and vote for people like you? You're not standing this time, but in the past, what what's what's the purpose in going out to vote?

Jane: Yeah. So what I learnt really from from 1981, all that time ago, was that people who make decisions, who are in power, they need to make the right decisions based on right information and right involvement from the communities that they're representing. And we need good people in there who are listening, who are working like that. Bad people who are making decisions at you without the right information, not listening to the local community doesn't understand the needs, doesn't understand the opportunities either.

Hasn't got the right connections with people wider than just in the community to bring to the table as well. And then you might well end up with wrong decisions happening locally. And I think sometimes people think the local councils are about the local bin collections and lighting on the streets. They are, but they're also about children, services, schools, adult social care, planning, regeneration of your community, health

and wellbeing, community safety, anti-social behaviour, business, procurement, such a vast array of things that if you're not involved or rather if you won't even vote...

Why not, do you not see that this is so important for not only your community, but for the whole city or the whole area or the whole borough?

Lydia: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think there's a there's a commonly held misconception, misunderstanding about what it is that local government does compared to what central government and in this case for England Westminster does. I mean, are you able to kind of give us an overview of the sort of the separation of powers, as it were, who's who's in control?

Jane: So people in control of different parts of it. There are big headlines that come down from national governments, whoever that may be.. Planning planning frameworks hit the ground locally. And there's very little you can do about them. You have to work within that framework. Schools. If the councils run the schools, then they have power within those and have you know, we still place local governors in schools. Or we recommend them now. However, you've got a whole variety of schools now, academies, a whole lot.

And the things that are really helpful. And if you look at ...We had the two tower blocks, where we had the fires, were eventually emptied out. We got moved and lay empty for quite some time. And then it was used as a block for asylum seekers to be housed in. Most of the guys in 2000 were from Iraq, a lot of them Kurdish and Kurdish Sorani speakers. And the government had the power there, they were setting the agenda.

And in fact, they went on hunger strike and they stayed with us for six weeks because I'm lucky enough to live in a community centre, in a church centre. And interestingly, I remember doing a programme with Radio Four when we went up and down the blocks when all of those lovely guys had moved out and we saw some Arabic painted on the wall. And one of the guys with us was asked, what does that say? And he said, it says, "I came to this country to live and now I just want to die."

It was "wow". So the power that people have nationally is huge power. The power we have locally is also big. And and there are things that you can do locally that are in our gift. So, for example, when I was a , what we call cabinet member now in Liverpool for Education & Children Services, huge brief. But what was really good was being able to look at how how are all the schools doing not only in their educational attainment, but in their resources, about their connections with businesses, employment, what about special needs and disabilities.

So there's lots of things locally that councils get on with day after day and they connect you all together for the area.

Lydia: One of the things that I was very much asked by people is to sort of get a better understanding of how much power you have locally to enact change. I mean, do you have an example where something you're particularly proud of perhaps that you have been able to enact locally?

Jane: Yes. So in the mid-80s there was a massive housing regeneration programme right across the city. In some areas it worked. Some areas it didn't. The key thing was that not enough local people were involved in being listened to. So what happened very locally to where we live here in Everton was that actually there was so much demolition and so little replacement housing that and we told the council at the time, if they went ahead with the plan, we could lose all the local infrastructure.

So that would be the schools, the transport, the shops. And we did, we fought back against the closure of the schools and we managed to keep some of the schools open. But we needed to get the population back up again. What we did as a council and as a labour council when we got in was to turbocharge a plan to get our local high street back up with anchor stores, with proper district centre. It took us... Because I was involved as a community activist then as well.. It took us twenty five years to get a supermarket, back onto Great Homer Street and the local market Greatie Market,

for those who don't know Liverpool at all is this famous market, kept us alive locally, but it took twenty five years of stitching back together and it only took three years to unpick it all previous to that. So you can do things locally, but you need to look at the long term, as well as the as well as the short term and build upon really good principles and practises.

Lydia: Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I'm just thinking about, you know, we often look at election cycles being sort of four or five years and there's a lot always a lot of talk about, you know, 'we need to think for the future'. The whole fixed term parliaments act was brought about to prevent short term thinking, you know.. You're talking about a twenty five year cycle, that came about after a three year degeneration.

To what extent are local councils kind of working against what's coming down from Westminster, from central government? And what extent are they kind of working with the policies that are coming down? I mean, if they're different.. We currently have a conservative government, you currently have a Labour administration in Liverpool. What's the dynamic there?

Jane: So it could be it could be that whoever is in power, whoever's in power locally and nationally and work together, it could be.

Lydia: Irrespective of party

Jane: irrespective of party, if there's a genuine listening to each other and a willingness to work for the common good. OK, I'll give you an example. The Welfare Reform Act, Welfare Reform Act came in in 2011 from memory. And what that did was that looked at basically Social Security and benefits, the benefits system.

And it had 22 changes spread out from 2011 onwards, which we're still going through now. The impact of those changes, the cumulative impact of those changes wasn't looked at by government. So rather than just bleat about it locally here, because I lead for this issue on fairness and tackling poverty, we said, OK, let's push the government to do a cumulative impact assessment. So we asked them repeatedly and they didn't. So we said, OK, well, let's do it then.

Can we do it ourselves? So we did it the best we could. And we we were the first people in the country to do a cumulative impact assessment as a council. And we then had the connection with the Select Committee, the Work of Pensions Select Committee, to actually Frank Field, who was an MP on the Wirral, and Frank chaired that that committee in government for a long time and he got us an in. So he said "right come down with your report."

So we did. So I went down with him. We had half an hour with one of the ministers who listened really carefully and because his background was children and he'd been brought up in a family that had a lot of foster kids staying with them for many, many years. And his dad's set up a whole business franchise that took people particularly from prison. And he could get the big picture and he got it. And now he lost his seat funnily enough a couple of months later, however, that was there.

But then also I spoke at the select committee in London. I was asked to speak about the impact on the ground of the Welfare Reform Act. If they'd listened, we wouldn't be in a position now where so many people are depending on food banks, in work as well as out of work. So it can be done. But it has to be done on the level, wanting the best for people in the country together. And I'm not saying that any party is better than another.

We can all get it wrong. But I think the key thing is that we listen to what's happening on the ground, but we look at the impact before we make those policies. Look at what is and particularly in something huge like the Welfare Reform Act, when I think it was Thirty seven billion pound was taken out of the budget in the country. So you need to look at the impact before you take... You know, if the if the council if the councillors had looked at the impacts in the mid 80s of what would happen on the ground in this part of Everton.

Would they have done what they did? Debateable.

Lydia: Yeah, yeah, very much so. I interested in what you brought up about listening to local people, and that you as a counsellor or a representative of the people that you serve. And I mean, I'd like to hear a bit more about how you might... you're a Labour Counsellor, it's currently a Labour led Council in Liverpool. To what extent is there kind of cross-party working, are the party the party labels hindrances to working together? I'd like to hear a bit more about that, if you would.

Jane: OK, so if you visited, before Covid, if you visited a full council meeting in Liverpool, you'd think that there was no cross-party working at all. But that is a bit like the drama. That's where, you know, we can

stand up and say our piece, whether it's against each other or against the the government of the day. Actually, what where you get really good joint working cross-party is either in the wards, if you're if you're mixed in the wards, but particularly on select committees, scrutiny committees, because what happens on scrutiny committees is - and we all need to be held to account -

So when I was a cabinet member for Education Children's Services, the officers that I worked with, I remember one of them was heading up the children's services. So she said, "I've told our staff, look, we look forward to these committees because it keeps us on our toes." I thought, what a great attitude, so doing stuff together at select committees, because when you go to select committees, you're not whipped, you're not told what to do.

So you ask the questions of the executive. You see the government do it as well. And that's how we do it locally. That's really important. So I remember doing several pieces of work on scrutiny before Labour became the administration in Liverpool. We did it on special schools. I chaired the Education Select Committee then, and several people were saying to me, "we've got a really good little primary school in Liverpool, which has a specialism on autism, autistic spectrum disorder and it's threatened with closure.

And we can't have this. We've only got one." And if you remember back that that was early 2000s, mid 2000s. It was very much a swirl around mainstream education for all children. And I could see that argument. But there was also a real need for making sure that there were specialists working with children with disabilities and special education needs. And so we said, let's do screening panel on this. I did it cross-party, but also I made sure that we had the parents and carers around the table as well.

And that meant that we had a local wisdom on the table and they could talk to the children and we visited and the school in question. And we visited other primary schools as well. We've got as much information as we could. I worked with the council offices. We looked at the bigger picture in terms of populations of in terms of SEND needs. And we came up with a proposal that said, 'no, we need to keep the school open and we need to do outreach from that school into the mainstream schools.

Now good enough because there was a respect both ways between myself and the person who was the cabinet member for education, the executive members as they were called then for education, the Lib Dems took that on board and said "yeah ok we'll go with that." So you can do it. I mean, I've I've done of the other ones as well, which we can come onto later if you want.

Lydia: that's really interesting. And, you know, an ideal example of how when there's a need there's demand from the parents, from the carers to say we want the school to stay open. And you, as a local representative, cross-party, wasn't a Labour led council at that time. And so we did something. We were asked, we did it. So nice, neat example there, I like that. I picked up on a word there, you said that on committee you weren't whipped.

And that feeds into a sort of a bigger question that people often have about party politics and the extent to which its members are controlled centrally. I mean, can you give me a bit more on what you mean by

being whipped for you as a council member, but also to what extent that that's coming down from sort of Central Labour Party and down to you in Liverpool?

Jane: Well, interestingly, nationally, Labour Party, we don't we don't we don't feel under any .. We're not whipped by National Labour Party. And quite right. You know, we've we've been voted in by the people of Liverpool to be the majority administration, the majority party rather, and that's who we accountable to, but we are Labour councillors, but that stay within the framework of the Labour Party and the principles the Labour Party were built on - social justice, economic justice, all of that... Human rights.

Now, when it comes locally, though... But there's a good relationship with it should be between local and national. So we both learn of each other and we both we both work the way forward. You know, we get at a national conference, you get that locally, you get that with the MPS etc. If you talk about being whipped locally. So where you would get which is where you have.. You basically the labour councils all meet up together.

We discuss issues. We come up with our plan of a way forward. We agree that. And then when it goes to full council, when everybody's there together, we we stick to that agreement is not so much toeing the party line as as long as you've had a really good discussion beforehamd.. if you're suddenly told a full council and main council meeting, you got a note saying this is are you going to vote, then obviously people are going to go, well whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, we haven't had a discussion about this.

If you've had a discussion and you've worked it through together and you've come to an agreement, that's what you abide by. And that's what I mean by being whipped. And actually, to be fair, looking across party work within the main council meeting, the full council meeting, we've always done it well on anti-poverty measures. So our local welfare scheme, which is one of the best in the whole country, very expensive to run. But wow we're keeping people's head above water here, you know, people that are struggling to make ends meet in work and out of work, and we're putting a lot of money into it because we're responding to the impact of a national policy.

But that is cross-party. Everybody, Greens, Lib Dems, the Libs, Independents, Labour, all the motions that I put through to full council on the anti-poverty agenda have all been supported cross-party.

Lydia: That's very good to hear. Certainly, I think we need to address here talking about scrutiny and how important that is. We can't ignore that Liverpool council has just come under some government control in response to what was described as a dysfunctional council, that a hundred million pounds of public money is believed to have been 'squandered' and that there's been a "serious breakdown of government". And I think we need to address that. I'm going to just quote from Labour MP Paula Barker, who's MP for Liverpool Waverton, where she said that the party had "a massive hill to climb" to rebuild the trust of Liverpudlians after the Caller report, which she describes as "an incredibly hard hitting inspection."

Is that something that you would agree with, that there's a lot of work to be done?

Jane: Yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, it's shameful isn't it to be in national papers and to try and explain to to the people that we represent how we've got to where we are. But it is worth saying that this didn't certainly come out of the blue. So in 2018 new chief executive, new fresh pair of eyes.. it's always useful to have people coming in from outside every so often and saying, whoa, how does this work, what's happening here?

And the inspection by Max Caller came out of or was the consequence of an internal audit report of the council, the city council. So that showed that the internal audit of the council was working well. What the inspection did was really turbo charge it and say, right, come on, we've got to look at this. And it's worth also saying that this is one part of the council. I sound like I'm minimising it. I'm not.

I'm really not. But it is one part of the council and it's the Regeneration, Highways, Planning and Land Council, land section of the council and and the commissioners that are coming in aren't 'taking control'. You know, it's not the Tories coming in to run Liverpool. What happens is on anything like this, on a 'best value inspection', as they call it, if they deem that you need, the investigation shows that you need support and challenge that is put in by the government, although we pay for it of course.. given we've 63% cuts to Liverpool off our budget.

But then what happens is the government gave, for us, the government gave the commissioners a certain amount of power and said, you use it if you need to. If the council don't get their act together quick enough and get through the action plan quick enough and they're stalling... we're not stalling. And we started off looking at due diligence back in 2018 and it's been ramped up and there's lots of more things, there's lots more to do. And actually what was interesting for me was, I was on the cabinet doing educational research and then I did the f

Fairness and Tackling Poverty Agenda then came off the cabinet in 2017

But I asked to go on the Regeneration Select Committee because, you know, locally for me, regeneration was a big issue and I love regeneration. I did it as a as a master's because I haven't got a degree. But I was looking for something to get a piece of paper with and do some learning. Do some theory. And so I did it at John Moore's Open Univerity.. and I was the oldest in the class Lydia. It was quite scary..

Lydia: someone has to be Jane!

Jane: Exactly. Yeah, but what it did do, though, for me was.. I love Re-Gen. So I asked to come select committee and when I went on, I said to the chair, who was really good, a good Labour member who's an independent thinker. I said, "look, these stalled development sites in Liverpool, we got to look at them. You know, what can we do?" We couldn't, obviously, because there's a police investigation and then the Financial Conduct Authority, Guidance Systems, Regulation Authority guys, all of them looking all over the sites.

But what we did look at and I up the terms of reference and said, "you know, are you happy for me to chair it?" Yep. Cross-party. We had Greens, Lib Dems, Labour on the panel. And we did our report on it's called a factual investment Scrutiny report looking at stalled sites. And then we came up with the recommendations, it had 11 recommendations and which we put together as councillors completely separate from the offices. We put those together ourselves.

And the beauty of that was that some of those are very specific to Liverpool Council. Some of them are general for more for local government, generally, the changes that need to be in place and some of them are national policy changes that need to take place. If we could get the national policy changes in place, we would be able to show that this is how actually you can do really good regeneration in a big city like Liverpool. So and actually funnily enough the Max Caller report referenced that piece of that scrutiny report and I met Max to go through it with him.

And so in all of that really difficult space in the centre of the storm, in the eye of the storm, whatever that storm is, there's always a chance of spinning it the other way and going, right, come on, let's let's look at this. Let's do it well, let's come out of this and let's be a model of best practice. And what was great was that once we finished that report that was agreed by council and our cabinet in August 20 before the investigation started, so you could see that we were on we were on a roll.

But the inspection of really turbocharged us, which is useful.

Lydia That's interesting. I mean, I'm very much seeing this as an outsider from you know, I don't live in Liverpool. You know, you guys are in a different part of the country. I'm very rural. You're very urban. But I suppose what I'm looking at is from the perspective of someone who is, you know, am I going to go out and vote... what am I voting for, am I voting for a representative or am I voting for someone or a group of people who are actually after their own interests?

And how how could I tell the difference? How would I, how can I make an assessment? I think quite a few people have said to me that they find it very difficult to find out what their council is doing. And, you know, there's always lots of stuff on central government, but it's very difficult to find out what's going on locally and really getting to the grips of it. And so, you know, this must this storm must have knocked confidence.

I mean, how what do you say to people who are thinking like, "oh, do I want to vote? Do I want to vote for these people?"

Jane: Yeah. Yeah. So so the good thing about councils is that people vote in local councillors. I mean, we do ours every every year, every well, apart from one fallow year. And so we take turns to stand and and there's three people in every ward, which is good because Everton being the most disadvantaged ward in Liverpool and we've got a population of sixteen and a half thousand people. So that should mean that we could actually do good stuff on the ground with the local community.

The key for local politics is that people see you, they don't physically see you there. You're in the end of the phone with them. And you're I mean, I do the majority of my work and on text, on phones, very little actually on email, whereas other wards in the city, most of it's still on email. It depends where you live, what the culture is, In Everton you get the word out by the local wire and people know if you are genuinely wanting to get stuck in or you're lazy or if you're only in it for your own good.

So going around at the moment, what is really hitting people is the state of the environment, literally pavement politics. Whether the anti-poverty, the levels of income are shockingly low, are the street lights on. Is it going to be safe for me to walk across the ward? Why is there drug dealing now in the area? And what how many police who are around? Do they talk to the police? Can they talk to me to then talk to the police?

Can they trust me to pass information on, for example? And that's a big, heavy duty to carry. But it does mean that some information will get through from a from a community perspective while people are kept safe. We set up a thing, for example, on that I said to the police, "look, you got to get information locally. People won't talk to you. They will not have people coming to their front door dressed up in a police uniform.

It's too dangerous." While the drug dealing is so bad, for example. Lots of lovely things happen in Everton. But there is a drug dealing, it goes up and down. And also, depending on the levels of poverty and childen are so at risk on this. Anyway. And so so we set things up with the police and we sort out a way through.

Lydia: that's interesting. I'm also thinking about, you know, if someone were to come to you with a certain issue... Some people have spoken to me have suggested that they encounter "passing the buck". So they say to their local councillor, "look, there's an issue with school buses in my area. What are you going to do about it?" And the local council says "Oh it's nothing to do with me. You know, government cuts can't afford it. Speak to your MP." And then the MP will come back and go, well, that's nothing to do with me. That's your local council."

So, they then sort of fall between the gaps. I mean, how how does that kind of play out in your experience?

Jane: Yeah. So OK. Yeah, good point. Because different sections of the public sector have different roles. I do, well I was before Covid ayway, doing face to face surgeries every week in different parts of the ward and people come and see me or that message me or whatever. If it was something that I knew that actually the MP had the clout with, I would say them "right, are you alright with me passing this on to the MP?

Yes? OK" so I get their permission, obviously, because I can't just pass things straight over but get their permission, but what I don't do is just pass it over and let it drop. I follow it through. So I say to them always, "listen, if you haven't heard back from from them within week, say or if it's urgent that then just

text me, ring me, text me, (I always do a lot of texts) and let me know and I'll get back in contact with them.. Same with me.

If you haven't heard that from me, text me. Just hassle me". So I say "you hassle me and I hassle them, whoever they are." And that means that then you've got one door. You can't expect local people to go round and round until they find somehow the right door to get through or the right key in the door. That's just not fair. So we do a lot of connecting things. So I connect people with, you know, whether it's the MP or whether it's the housing associations or and the landlords or telling them where where they can go with.. Or the citizens advice bureau or the law centres or so you tend to be a connector, but the connector has to keep hold of keep hold of that hand, that person's hand until you know that it's safe to let go.

Jane: Yeah. that's that's a lot of clients to keep spinning, Jane. I mean, how much support have you got? I mean, in terms of do you have people do you have an office? Do you have people doing this work with you?

Jane: So we have each councillor now has a laptop, which we didn't used to have. But we have for the last three years perhaps, and we now have a mobile phone as well, which is good, a council one. And we have an office, there are over 70, 76 Labour councillors in Liverpool. And we have one, two, three, four people in the support office, some of them part time. They don't do the casework for you. So you have an awful lot of casework.

And so, yes, it's hard work, it's hard work. You don't get paid that much. But it's but you're there as ... It is a privilege to be honest with you, and and the thing is, in someone like Everton, we do stuff together. You know, this isn't just me on my own. Me and the community, the community and me and others. And, you know, so we do stuff together and we're used to doing stuff together.

And I think in some areas it would be different. And in some ways the country might be different. So we don't we don't get that much support and we don't get that much money. However, who.. You know, who else is in a position where they're privileged enough to have people coming to get to see them with real, sometimes really personal issues that then and I quite often say to people, "OK, so if you're in my position, what would you do?

Come on, you give me ideas," you get them involved because you can work ...They're people with with with the the knowledge, they're the ones that know what it's like on the ground. They're the ones that know what could how it could work in theory. So pick their brains. They pick mine. We work our way through together. But yeah. I mean, you know, it's it's been very difficult. And the whole austerity agenda, policy actually has been exhausting because things have just unravelled and unravelled and unravelled.

And therefore you get more and more people and issues coming directly to you. So it's hard and it's, you know, things going swings and roundabouts.

Lydia: I'm just thinking, Jane, just as we kind of bring this to a close, whether you now - if you could speak to the younger you in that tower block with your kids and dealing with the fires and so on, you would you would you go back and go, yeah. "Get into politics". Would you do what you have done again? Would you go in and enter politics if you can speak to your younger self and have a stern word with her?

Jane: Yeah, I would absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. I think I think I would come as it in a slightly... Well, you never know, do you? Because you always look back. And my trick in my head is, particularly when things are really difficult and I'm thinking, do I really want to open my mouth again on this one? and say, OK, look at yourself three or five years hence, look back at yourself and say, did you do the right thing?

Did you talk to the right people? Did you listen enough? And so, yes, I would. I think the difference, though, is I'm linked up with a little charity in London called Blueprint for Better Business. And they were all about purpose driven business and and purpose driven investment. And I think looking at it a different way now, what I would have done earlier on if I could look at the bigger picture on all of this.

So get some of the principles deep into into the fabric of the community, the city, whatever. Find the people, find the allies. Bishop David Shepherd (Church of England Bishop of Liverpool), used to say "find the allies, Jane. Find them." And he used to work with Derek Worlock (Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool) , you know, the Catholic and the and the Anglican Archbishop together and the lovely Methodist guy, John Lewis. So find the allies but find the people who are there for the common good.

Find the people who want to learn from each other and move forward in a positive way. You know we've got COP26. We've got a whole climate emergency. Oh, my goodness. You know, I look at my little grandson .. Who I'd love to give a big hug to, which hopefully I'll be able to soon, who's down south .. And say 'what sort of world with my little grandson be growing up in. Will it be so difficult in terms of the climate?

Will it be so difficult in terms of inequality? Will it be... Or will it be? We've pulled ourselves back from the edge here and he's getting listened to and his mates are getting listened to. And there is no longer, you know, real bad racial discrimination and and economic discrimination. And I mean, you look at, you know, I mean, just thinking and finishing on Liverpool, OK, talk about working class communities getting discriminated against. Oh, my goodness.

People open their mouths and it's like, "oh, where are you from? You from Liverpool." In Liverpool. You're proud to have a Scouse accent.. Outside of Liverpool or even inside Liverpool sometimes. Do people get judged on what they sound like, what they look like, and all the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett on "The Spirit Level" the inequality agenda.. Is huge on this. Absolutely huge people getting the widest gap in society. The more people get judged on what they earn and what they own.

And I would say what they look like, what they sound rather than who they are. You know, that wonderful quote by Martin Luther King "one day my children will be judged not on the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character." Wow,

Lydia: yeah, wouldn't that be amazing I mean, absolutely, I think that's feels like a good place to end with a moment of thinking how we can actually use our voices to make a difference and we can do that in lots of different ways.

And you've been through an awful lot of different elements. You've been in the council for many, many years and you've probably seen an awful lot of change in that time. So what would you say as our final piece, what would you say to someone heading out to vote on the 6th of May?

Jane: I'd Say, do you know the person you're voting for?

And can you get hold of them if you don't? Have a conversation with them, see what they're see what their track record is like and see why they're there. What's that? What's that big framework that they're working to? One of the principles, what they're trying to do here, are they really for the common good? Are they purpose driven rather than looking for the money and opportunities. Who are they linked up with? Or do they go, yeah, look locally because this is a local election. look locally and think and ask your mates, you know, ask your neighbours and your friends and your family and say, you know, is this person OK to vote for? Who they are working alongside and think it through?

Just think it through. Don't jump, think it through. And if you're worried, still do it. And don't be don't be.. Because some people are just scared about going to the polling station sometimes.. round our way it used to be the big event every year, you know, Bessie Braddock in the 60s, "vote vote vote for Bessie Braddock!" And all the kids would be out on the streets. You know, let's get back to having it as a big event and people saying

"come on. Come on, guys." It's the it's the older women in Everton that say to the younger people in Everton, "get out to vote. Come on". This is important for you and your families. It's great. I love it [laughter]

Jane Corbett there, Labour Councillor for Everton Ward who is stepping down at the next election. What really struck me in all Jane had to say was how intimate she is with her local community, which must come from being such an active part of it for so many years. And how very close and strong that community seems to be. Almost idyllic.. and then we shouldn’t forget she said more than once she was representing the most deprived ward in Liverpool.

I’d be so interested to hear from other councillors as to whether they could claim a similar experience..
In fact I’d love to compare and contrast with the experiences of other councillors so if you know one or are one... do get in touch

In fact if you’d like to get in touch with me for whatever reason – to ask questions or to give me feedback, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me on writetolovelylydia@outlook.com

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast then please do leave a review and tell your friends... I’ll be back very soon talking to Lorna Robertson about the Scottish elections... Thanks for listening and Speak to you soon!