Barnet Lib Dems slam Tory's 'Iceland whitewash'

9.20.20pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 29th Mar 2009

Cllr Duncan Madonald condemned Tory whitewash

Barnet Liberal Democrats have condemned the Resources Scrutiny Committee report into the Icelandic Banks fiasco as a whitewash. An all party working group had produced a draft report looking at how Barnet lost £27.4 million pounds in Icelandic Banks. The working party amongst other things uncovered that Barnet had made these investments against the rules of its own treasury management strategy. In fact 89% of all Barnet investments over several years had broken the rules.

At Wednesday (25th March 2009) night's meeting of the Resources Scrutiny Committee Conservative Councillors hi-jacked the report. They used their majority on the committee to water down the report's critical conclusions and to protect the Council leader and Chair of the Committee responsible for treasury management, Cllr Mike Freer, from responsibility for Barnet's failure to follow its own procedures.

Conservative Councillors on the committee also accepted advice from Treasury officers present whose department was the subject of the critical report to make amendments

Liberal Democrat member of the working party Cllr Duncan Macdonald commented;

"In my view the Tories have thrown away a fair report in order to save the neck of their leader. The public however are not daft. Many voters in Barnet will have thought that they were getting an administration whose values were thrift and good governance. What they have actually got is an administration which refuses to take responsibility and who regard the scrutiny process as a nuisance to be ignored."