Government childcare announcement: More Conservative chaos hurting families
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by Ian Shires on 11 May, 2011
Getting some really useful feedback from the very public debate taking place on a way forward for Walsall Council given that no one party has an overall majority. Both the Labour and Tory groups on the council have had their AGMs to decide who will be leader and deputy etc, the Lib Dem group meets tonight.
This does not mean that the debate will end there, far from it, the future “direction of travel” for Walsall Council will have a direct bearing on the future for its residents. But it’s very difficult given the current cabinet/scrutiny system. Whoever takes control will take all the cabinet places. The cabinet is the executive and under the constitution of the council takes absolute power.
Cabinet is not accountable to Council, it is supposed to be held to account through the scrutiny process which is woefully under resourced. There is a strict process for calling in decisions made by the cabinet and even if scrutiny reject actions taken by the cabinet the cabinet can ignore its findings and do what they like anyway. How democratic is that!!
3 Comments
But surely if council is not “in the pocket” of cabinet then you could a) improve the facilites to scrutiny or if cabinet really rides roughshod over its findings look to pass a motion of no-confidence / censure in the leader/cabinet?
Such potential action would curb much of the negative excesses that many fear is likely with a further Bird lead Tory administration. Because no group could dare get voted out for being so blatently disregarding the democratic process?
Or am I just being an ill-informed, ignorant and niave plebian?
or naive even!
The cabinet system in English local government is completely undemocratic.
In that sense it is very like the Labour Party cabinet when under the Great Dictator Mr Tony Blair (not that the present bunch are much different, just more uncaring for the lives of real people in the nation).
Under Mike Bird’s “leadership” the cabinet system has led to the almost complete disenfrachisement of the Walsall electorate.
Walsall should return to the old committee system and trim the leader’s wings – whether be be a Bird or otherwise!