1 April - Looking out for their own
It wasn’t just
Children’s and
Corporate Services which came under Scrutiny last week, it was Councillors themselves,
or at least that is the theory. There was a Members’ Code of Conduct Committee meeting too.
This is a gathering of eight Conservative Councillors and three Labour who get
together to decide whether or not a complaint about one of their colleagues is justified.
This isn’t quite the stitch up that it used to be; there was a time when the
Council Leader, presumably in a two fingered gesture to residents, appointed a
Code of Conduct Committee Chairman who was not only under investigation by the police at the time but a file
was with the Crown Prosecution Service.
The Committee currently includes a few Councillors who I might consider honest
and none who I would put in the definitely dishonest category - there are very
few of those left in Bexley - but there is
definitely a tendency to exonerate every one of their colleagues.
To be fair that is understandable because there is a history of Labour activists submitting false and
malevolent accusations because that is what some Labour activists do to brighten up their miserable lives.
Last week the Committee looked at five complaints. The first was quite serious. Several
Councillors were accused of not meeting the eligibility criteria for election. I
have seen this before where a Councillor had undoubtedly used an accommodation address and got away with it.
I do not know the facts of this case but
unsurprisingly all the accused were exonerated. I can only guess that one would be Ahmet Dourmoush who lives a few hundred yards beyond his ward boundary but
is eligible because he owns a thriving business in the north of the borough. Another might be Teresa
O’Neill who sold her house in Church Road and now lives in… Well I
know what the tittle-tattle says but until some documentary evidence turns up
it will have to remain under wraps. But nothing would surprise me when it comes to the Baroness.
Then there is the case reported here several months ago of the
Conservative
Mayoral candidate being entertained on Council premises. Political events not
being permitted within the Civic Offices.
This one initially looked bad because the Monitoring Officer appeared to be more
interested in preserving her job than being transparent. However I came around
to thinking
it was a storm in a tea cup and not a clear breach of the rules. There was never
any doubt that the Conduct Committee would not come to the same conclusion.
The third complaint was that Councillors were too friendly with a certain
business owner and therefore would not entertain a complaint about him. It sounds like
our old friend Kulvinder but I have not a shred of evidence to support that view.
The offence was judged too minor to warrant an investigation. A nice get out clause if ever there was one.
Another complaint was about continuing to
use an official photograph on a
political leaflet after an instruction had gone out not to use it. The Committee
decided it would involve too much work and expense to stop distribution more effectively and there was nothing to be gained from attempting to do so.
The final complaint was that a Councillor had not been very helpful with the
arrangements for installing Christmas lights. It was decided that the complaint
fell outside the Committee’s remit and that is probably correct.