Barnet Borough Liberal Democrats

The Mayor gets the needle

Tuesday's Full Council meeting (the last incidentally at its temporary home in Barnet House) produced the usual menu of confusion, the bizarre and general rancour.

The Mayor provided his customary warm welcome to the members of the public (keep quiet or you will be thrown out). The Mayor's Chaplain offered prayers, followed by moving tributes to the late former Councillor Tiplady from all sides of the Council chamber. The Deputy Mayor proposed a motion congratulating the Mayor on his year of office. This motion is always proposed by the Deputy Mayor at the final meeting of Municipal year. The wording never changes and it is presented written on vellum to the outgoing Mayor at the annual meeting of Council.

The motion is obviously always carried without dissent (we can still behave properly on the Council). Oddly this year the Mayor thanked the Council before the motion had actually been voted on. The Mayor then moved on to the next item of business. At this point a Conservative Councillor intervened to complain that the Chaplain had not said prayers! So much for the power of prayer.

The next item was questions to Cabinet members, over fifty questions in total. My Liberal Democrat colleague Wayne Casey had tabled a raft of questions about Copthall Stadium and its environs. Wayne told me that he was asking on behalf of local residents who had given up waiting for answers from the Council. The Cabinet Member duly responded to each question in turn intoning that the Council was going to do something. In reply to Cllr Casey's supplementary questions of "when" back came the reply "very shortly".

The Council then moved on to a number of debates. A motion intended to reverse the cuts to the sheltered housing warden service was heated. The Conservatives accused the opposition of scaremongering and whipping up the residents of sheltered housing. There were good speeches from opposition members.

Unfortunately some Conservative Councillors took this as a signal to laugh and joke amongst themselves. My Ward colleague Councillor Susette Palmer, (who listens intently to these things aided I suspect by her skillful practice of knitting during the debates) was outraged by their behaviour. Susette complained to the Mayor. As usual the Mayor was unsympathetic dismissing Susette's protestations with a tetchy instruction to "get back to your knitting".

The motion to restore the cuts was voted down by the Conservative majority. Two debates took place on the Icelandic Banks situation. With Council Members still none the wiser whether we will ever get back the lost £27 million, it was another opportunity to try to find out exactly what is going on.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Duncan MacDonald gave two excellent speeches, the first was one of the very best demolition jobs on the Conservative Administration heard in many a long year. Mind you the Conservatives tried to gag him. Just before he rose to speak the Leader of the Council had moved the "motion now be put", a means of curtailing any further debate. For once the Mayor would not allow this, backed by the legal officer he ruled that the Council's Constitution did not permit this. The Conservatives were not a happy bunch. They should read the rules, they were even less happy after listening to Cllr Macdonald's contribution.

More egg on face followed when the Council considered the Scrutiny Committee's report into the way the Council had gone about depositing cash in the Banks. The Conservatives had tried to water down the report but even they could not conceal the main finding. This revealed "The Council should not have invested in Icelandic Banks". From my vantage point the Conservatives were on the run. They blamed the officers, they blamed the opposition, and they resurrected a "sex scandal" from eight years ago.

The Leader of the Council then proposed the setting up of a special scrutiny committee to appoint an external panel to further investigate. The Leader had asked the Director of the relevant Department to prepare the terms of reference. These were read out. It was a long list which was very hard to follow. I and others suspected that this may be a ruse to kick the whole thing into the long grass. Important aspects appeared not be covered, but most important there was no time limit. Shades of the land at Underhill enquiry, which took nearly seven years to complete at a cost of over one and a half million pounds came to mind.

Then all of a sudden the leader withdrew it all. He promised to raise it again at the next meeting of Council. Did he mean the Annual Council or the next proper meeting? He could not say. Watch this space.

Easter and Passover greetings to you all