27 July - Oh dear, it’s back to 2011 standards of honesty at Bexley Council
One of the routine hoops that the Full Council meeting has to jump through is
to approve the reports from the various Committee chairmen. With any
luck they are quickly nodded through one by one and everyone can go home at a
reasonable hour. The 17th July was not one of those occasions, Labour Members
objected to the report from the Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee
which had been chaired by Councillor Alan Downing.
The objections were
reported in the News Shopper two days later but rather formally and with little sense of the disarray that had arisen.
Here I will attempt to shed rather more light on what came over as a particularly disgraceful half hour of transparency versus censorship.
Councillor
Wendy Perfect (Labour, Northumberland Heath) referred to “the technical documents” presented to the Scrutiny
meeting on 2nd July. She had attended because she was “particularly keen to hear
what was said about SEN transport in view of the debacle that had taken place at
the beginning of the year causing children and SEN parents distress”.
She learned that a report from last May painted a rosy picture and, “verbatim” Cabinet Member
John Fuller had said that “schools were saying we are on your side and
agree with your policy, we think it is great”. He went on to say “the majority
of the appeals we had last year regarding travel we won. The Council were
correct. We had one parent who took us further than we wanted to go and they
lost. They had to pay costs and everything. We were right in what we were doing
and this year we had no complaints at all”.
The foregoing conveys only a little of Councillor Perfect’s message which was
buried deeply within quoted paragraph numbers and sub-section this and
sub-section that. It all being a little too complicated at the end of a long day
I wandered towards the boys’ room muttering “that woman can bore for England”. A
Conservative Councillor heading in the same direction agreed whole heartedly.
However by the time I returned Councillor Perfect’s message was beginning to
shine through. Far from John Fuller’s “there’s been no complaints at all”,
“every single case had been upheld by the Local Government Ombudsman”. 55% of
complaints to the LGO from London “came from one borough, Bexley”.
Ms. Perfect’s objection to the Scrutiny Committee report had the potential for
serious embarrassment and Councillor Ogundayo (Labour, Thamesmead East) began to read out yet more
unpalatable facts in the manner of someone reading a telephone directory. It was
only marginally less boring than Councillor Perfect’s address. One could see
various Conservative Councillors on the verge of nodding off, as indeed was I.
So bored or maybe embarrassed was Council Leader O’Neill that she interrupted
and asked the Mayor to rule the Labour objection out of order. After conferring
with her learned friends, the Leader’s attempt to use some arcane point of order was
overruled by the Mayor and Councillor Ogundayo was invited to continue boring all and sundry to death.
Councillor Teresa O’Neill objected but the Mayor was having none of it.
The Leader was clearly not happy and continued to mumble objections.
Councillor Ogundayo continued as before apparently oblivious to the fact that reading
a catalogue of SEN transport rules and regulations was masking her message. viz. that
the Scrutiny Committee had been told porkies on 2nd July.
The Mayor herself diplomatically stated her own “personal opinion”, that the
Labour Councillors had taken boredom to new levels. Making amends for what had
gone before, Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) got a little bit closer to the point by
quoting from the LGO’s damning reports on Bexley. “Bexley does not reflect the law” being a typical extract.
Councillor Dave Putson (Labour, Belvedere) quoted from yet more LGO case reports which showed up
Bexley Council in a very bad light indeed. Among other things Bexley Council was
demanding that single parents should be in two places at the same time. The almost ten years old Bonkers’ tag
line “Dishonest and Vindictive” was once again proved to be very appropriate to Bexley Council.
Councillor Sybil Camsey (Conservative, Crook Log) objected on a technicality to
Labour Councillors exposing the Council’s failures to act lawfully and with
compassion. “This discussion should not be taking place.” The Mayor agreed.
Councillor Francis (Labour, Belvedere) wondered, as no doubt will all of us, “why Members opposite do not wish us to talk about it”.
The Mayor attempted to focus the debate by saying it didn’t really need quotations from all six LGO reports and I am inclined to agree.
Labour Leader Daniel Francis summed up. In essence the case was that the Cabinet
Member made a statement favourable to his portfolio in July which completely
ignored half a dozen disturbing LGO reports made in the Spring. It seemed like a
fair cop that didn't really need more than half an hour of lecturing to prove.
Six times the LGO had said that Bexley Council failed in its statutory duties
but the Cabinet Member appeared to be either oblivious of it or concealed it
from the Scrutiny Committee. Councillor Francis called for a special meeting to
discuss remedies and the way forward “in the interests of residents. There has
been a serious attempt to mislead the Scrutiny Committee and the only option
open to the Cabinet Member is to resign”.
The Conservatives jeered their contempt for honesty and Scrutiny Chairman Alan
Downing said “the party opposite does not share our concern [for disabled
children] and spoke a lot of twaddle. I can’t believe what I have been listening
to and I wonder what they are on about”. So discussing adverse LGO reports is
‘twaddle’ according to the Communities Chairman. Is there any need for further
comment on such callous remarks?
Councillor Francis appeared to be close to tears as indeed should be every resident
of Bexley who gives a moment’s thought to the injustices dished out to the disabled by
Bexley Council.
The LGO reports really are damning.
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-012-904
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-008-486
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-012-597
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-011-365
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-010-415
https://www.lgo.org.uk/decisions/education/school-transport/18-010-993
Labour’s Press Release.
It has been reported that the arguments continued long into the night away from the gaze of the webcams.
Note: As one might expect Bexley Conservatives conducted a
furious fight back on Twitter to mask the LGO’s reports with sometimes
irrelevant facts. Their main claim appears to be that Cabinet Member John Fuller
did not mislead the Scrutiny Committee but had merely taken his eye off the ball
and didn’t know about them. I would prefer to think that is the case because
John Fuller has led an almost blameless life in the nine years I have been attending Council meetings.
When the facts become clear they will be
reported in another blog.