In 2006, a group of rebranded "compassionate Conservatives" beat Labour for control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, a long stretch of west London. George Osborne says the work they have done since then will be a "model" for a new Conservative government, while Cameron has singled them out as a council he is especially "proud" of.
People who took this at face value were startled by the first act of the Conservatives on assuming power – a crackdown on the homeless. They immediately sold off 12 homeless shelters, handing them to large property developers. The horrified charity Crisis was offered premises by the BBC to house the abandoned in a shelter over the Christmas period at least. The council refused permission. They said the homeless were a "law and order issue", and a shelter would attract undesirables to the area. With this in mind, they changed the rules so that the homeless had to "prove" to a sceptical bureaucracy that they had nowhere else to go – and if they failed, they were turned away.
We know where this ended. A young woman – let's called her Jane Phillips, because she wants to remain anonymous – turned up at the council's emergency housing office one night, sobbing and shaking. She was eight months pregnant. She explained she was being beaten up by her boyfriend and had finally fled because she was frightened for her unborn child. The council said they would "investigate" her situation to find "proof of homelessness" – but she told them she had nowhere to go while they carried it out. By law, they were required to provide her with emergency shelter. They refused. They suggested she try to find a flat on the private market.
For four nights, she slept in the local park, on the floor. She is still traumatised by the memories of lying, pregnant and abandoned, in one of the wealthiest parts of Europe. The Local Government Ombudsman investigated but the council recording of the case was so poor she said it "hindered" her report. After a long study, she found the council's conduct amounted to "maladministration". Since they came to power, the Conservatives are housing half as many homeless people as Labour – even though the recession has caused a surge in homelessness. That's a huge number of Janes lying in parks, or on rotting mattresses by Hammersmith Bridge.
Why would they do this? The Conservative administration was determined to shrink the size of the state and cut taxes as an end in itself. Rather than pay for it by taking more from the people in the borough with the most money, they slashed services for the broke and the broken first. After the homeless, they turned to help for the disabled. In their 2006 manifesto, the local Conservatives had given a cast-iron guarantee: "A Conservative council will not reintroduce home-care charging". It was a totemic symbol of leaving behind Thatcherism: they wouldn't charge the disabled, the mentally ill or the elderly for the care they needed just to survive.
Within three months, the promise was broken. Debbie Domb, 51, is a teacher who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. She had to give up work, and now she needs 24/7 care. After being lifted up by a large metal harness and placed in her wheelchair so she can talk to me, she explains: "This was always such a great place to live if you were disabled. You were really treated well. Then this new council was elected and it's been so frightening... The first thing that happened when they came in was that they announced any disabled person they assessed as having 'lower moderate' needs was totally cut off. So people who needed help having a shower, or getting dressed, had that lifeline taken away completely. Then they started sending the rest of us bills."
She "panicked" when a bill came through saying she had to pay £12.50 for every hour of care she needed. "I thought, 'Oh my God, how am I going to do this?' The more care you need, the higher your bill, so the most disabled people got the highest charges. Everyone was distraught. I had friends who had to choose between having the heating on in winter and paying for their care ... I know a 90-year-old woman with macular degeneration who can't see, and she had to stop her services. There are lots of people who have been left to rot, with nobody checking any more that they're OK, and I'm sure some of them have ended up in hospital or have died." One of the council's senior social services managers seems to have confirmed this, warning in a leaked memo that the charges could place the vulnerable "at risk".
She added " I know an 82-year-old woman who's never been in debt in her life who is being taken to a debt-collection agency for care she needs just to keep going."
Each year since the Conservative council was elected, the pressure on the housebound has increased. Meals on Wheels brings one good, hot meal a day to people who can't get out. The council jacked up the charges for it by £527 a year – so half of the recipients had to cancel it. A local Labour councillor documented that the council rang up a 79-year-old woman with dementia, and when she seemed to say she didn't need any food, they cut off her meals.
The cost of almost all council services has sky-rocketed, to fund tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. David Cameron says he wants to make Britain "the most family-friendly country in the world" with "childcare as a top priority", but his showcase council has increased charges for childcare by a reported 121 per cent – a fact that makes the warnings about Michael Gove's planned "top-up fees" for nursery places seem even more ominous.
We know cuts are going to be made, and they're going to hurt. But the stark choice that faces us as voters is deciding where the axe should fall. This council has decided it should cut off the most vulnerable of society - those with dementia, MS, the abused, the homeless. But most of all, it has made a deliberate choice to protect the wealthy and punish the poor.
Cameron said: "When I look at the record of what the Conservatives have done here in Hammersmith and Fulham, far from being embarrassed as the Conservative leader, I'm proud of what they're doing."
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