The working party looking at the Council’s investments in Icelandic banks has until this evening been an example of good scrutiny. This evening the draft report was being considered by the full scrutiny committee and Tory councillors were clearly under orders to water the report down, push the blame entirely onto the officers for the failure to follow the treasury management strategy and absolve the leader and chair of the Cabinet Resources Committee from any blame what so ever. They also tried to implicate the audit committee who in fact were constitutionally unable to have been involved in the whole affair.
The meeting was a farce. The treasury officers present were actually proposing amendments to the report which the Tory members were quite happy to incorporate without any discussion or thought. This is what led to problems in the first place, the blind trust in officers without any critical analysis of what they were proposing or any questioning. The draft report was a cross party effort and although it wasn’t perfect it was a good report.
I couldn’t support the final report and I firmly believe that it is unconstitutional. The Tories threw away a good piece of work in order to save the neck of their leader. The public how ever are not daft. Many Tories in Barnet will have thought that they were getting an administration whose values were thrift and good governance. What they have actually got is a group that puts their own financial welfare ahead of welfare rights and care of the elderly. Who refuse to take responsibility and who regard the scrutiny process as a nuisance to be ignored.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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1 comments:
Duncan
Your comments are deeply worrying. All these promises of investigations are nothing more than hot air if councillors and officers are interfering in the work of a scrutiny committee before any investigation has even got underway.
Mike Freer says he was misled by officers. That is a very serious charge to make, so why hasn’t he called in the police as Rog T suggested? We are talking about £27.4 million being invested without authorisation. If that doesn’t warrant police investigation, what does?
Whilst it is no longer denied that the rules were broken, could it be that the actions of the officers would have been spotted sooner if the Cabinet Resources Committee had done its job properly and read its papers?
It would appear that the council is adopting its fall back position whenever there is a scandal - blame it all on a middle ranking officer and sweep everything under the carpet.
It will be interesting to compare the “approved” report with the draft version to see what changes have been made.
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