17 March - Bexley Council holds a public meeting from which the public is excluded entirely
There was an unusual meeting at the Civic Offices last night, one we have
seen only once before and that was four years ago. Its purpose was to select an
Independent Person, something if taken absolutely literally Bexley Council would hate absolutely.
An Independent Person is required under the 2011 Localism Act to sit on the Code
of Conduct Committee which judges Councillors who are the subject of a complaint.
It wasn’t very easy to get in. The lady on reception said she’d been advised
that no members of the public were expected which was presumably true. Bexley
Council always hopes not to be scrutinised.
In May 2013 a single two year appointment was made but as no complaints had been
made by 2015 the Independent Person’s appointment was extended for another two
years. This time the plan is to have two Independent Persons.
The appointment process for an Independent Person is rather obviously held under the provisions of the Localism
Act that demands one. The rules that govern the process are the seven Nolan Principles which include
Accountability, Openness and Honesty; none of them being qualities closely associated with Bexley Council.
Last night it was decided that Accountability and Honesty translated into total exclusion
of the public from the whole of the meeting. It was open only for the three
seconds it took to appoint a Chairman and for the public to be told to go.
Appointing a meeting Chairman is supposed to be a democratic process
but in Bexley it is always a sham vote. Every single time. Last night Councillors Cheryl
Bacon. Louie French and Stefano Borella (two Conservatives and one Labour) were
present and as always they simply pretended to vote.
The
Chairman is always appointed beforehand and it’s very obvious. The chosen
Councillor is always already sitting in the appropriate chair and doesn’t say a
word. The others give the same name unanimously. If the selection was
genuine, one would once in a while hear another name or the Chairman would offer
one and not be consistently already sitting in the right place with a prepared opening speech.
Councillor Bacon had been pre-selected and John Watson asked why she was excluding the public.
The response amounted to no more than ‘because I can under Schedule 12A of the 1972 Local Government Act’. The 2011
Act has many references back to the 1972 Act but not specifically to Schedule 12A.
Bacon was simply reading from her script.
Elwyn Bryant introduced himself as a member of the public and asked how, as
stated in the Agenda, it would be in the best interests of the public to be excluded.
Chairman Cheryl Bacon had no answer and suggested Elwyn submitted his
question in a letter. I suspect he will.
Another question asked if applicants were to be interviewed after the public left.
Not immediately, but some time later was the answer.
Presumably individual candidates would first be discussed by the Panel in
which case one can begin to understand the exclusion but if so why had the
meeting been publicised as an open one when in practice only the sham Chairman vote was?
Maybe the Localism Act dictates an open meeting without any provision for exclusions as would be
expected when Accountability and Openness are the guiding principles. A secretive Council would
naturally look around for a way out, the 1972 Act passed 39 years earlier.
Appointing the ‘right’ Independent Person is very important to Bexley Council.
True independence from Teresa O’Neill could be a severe embarrassment. The
last Independent Person was only called upon to make a decision once and
leaked emails said she made the wrong decision. One that didn’t please the Leader.
The Independent Person concluded that Councillor Maxine
Fothergill had done nothing at all wrong when hauled before the Code of Conduct
Committee. Her real ‘crime’ was
shopping a Tory thief to the police.
Maxine’s lack of loyalty to the party had to be punished.
As might be judged from the photograph the Councillors were not unfriendly and I see no grounds for a complaint about the
Chairman, she was merely doing what she had been told to do and being unable to explain why she was doing it
is unsurprising. Hers was in many ways an identical performance to
the
infamous meeting of June 2013. There would have been no complaint about her
performance there either, it was the lies she told afterwards that caused the
police to send her name to the Crown Prosecution Service.