Set our below is my motion for the next Council meeting. The serious point that I'm making is that the Leader of the Council who is also Chair of the Cabinet Resources Committee which oversees the Council's treasury strategy did not know where Barnet's money was invested. When he did finally find out he blamed the officers and when that didn't wash he tried to blame the opposition for not pointing it out to him.
In order to shoulder all this responsibility he gets over £51,000 in allowances and allows his group to stack allowances together. The result: £27.4 million down the drain and not a murmur from his colleagues. I'm also publishing the motion here because the amendments will fly in and the motion that gets passed will no doubt end up somewhat different.
Council: 27 January 2009
Motion 3.1: Councillor Duncan Macdonald
Council notes ”Private Eye’s” 2008 Rotten Borough Awards”; in particular their award to the Leader of this Council for “Banker of the Year”. Council therefore resolves to congratulate the Leader of the Council on his award.
Under Standing Order Part 4, Section 1, 31.5: if my item is not dealt with by the end of the meeting I ask that it be voted upon at the Council meeting.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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6 comments:
OK, did the Opposition have seats on any committee where any of the decisions on where to invest the council's were passed? If "yes", the leader has a point - if the opposition saw what was happening and didn't say a thing then, then they can be held also partially responsible. It is the job of the opposition to dig up and question things like this.
However, I'm thinking of the old days when councils were run by a committee system and every committee had to be politically balanced. It was tough when you were a tiny opposition to a big majority party so you had to become an expert on everything because you were the sole opposition voice on some many committees. But at least you got some idea of what was going on, which gave you a clue as to what stones to lift up to find the nasties.
Now we have the "cabinet" system. Opposition shut out and given some useless "scrutiny" (read officers put them on pointless working party to keep them quiet) committees. Real decisions go through a few hands, and only through politicians of one party. I guess that's what you have here.
I said this was what would happen when the cabinet system was introduced into local government. Poorer decisions and errors going unspotted.
Anon
No because all the decisions on where to invest were taken by Officers, apparently without feedback to any scrutiny committee. Also the committee overseeing the Treasury Management Strategy was the Cabinet Resources committee which has no opposition Councillors on it.
I totally agree with you assessment of the Cabinet system, but it doesn't excuse the lack of oversight in this case.
Dear Anon
Mike Freer says he didn’t know about any of these investments, so how were opposition members supposed to know?
Is it likely that a council officer could borrow £70million in one year and then invest nearly £28m of that sum in Iceland without the leader (who was also Cabinet member for resources) knowing anything about it. It’s just not a credible argument.
Either Freer has not been honest in telling us what he knew and when he knew it, or he was manifestly negligent in not knowing. Either way he should go.
I'm not saying the Cabinet system excuses the lack of oversight, I'm saying it's a cause of it. It leads to officers doing far more without members seeing it than ever used to be the case, and when members do see what they're doing, the members who see it are just the few of one party who form the cabinet.
A major decision like where the council invests its money would surely not have been delegated to officers in the past, it would have had to go through the finance committee. I remember sitting on the committees which dealt with just these things.
The point about many people being involved in decision making is that when a bad thing happens there's more chance of someone picking it up and asking about it. The cabinet system and especially the executive mayor system seems designed to stop this. After it was introduced into the borough where I was a councillor I felt it was useless staying in it that role.
Sorry, I didn't want to be "Anonymous" but for some reason your Commens is not accepting my Google account ID. I'm Matthew Huntbach (former Leader of the Opposition, LB Lewisham)
Matthew
Agreed.
Duncan,
I think you should have proposed that Barnet stage a luxury Buffet to celebrate the award, because at Brian Coleman would have voted for the motion
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