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by Ian Shires on 1 November, 2014
The meeting on Wednesday of Walsall’s new Labour Cabinet must be some sort of a record.
It began at 6 pm and was done and dusted by 6.40 pm. Twenty items on the Agenda. That’s two minutes per item on average and that includes a 187 page report on the Council’s Draft Budget for 2015/16 to 2018/19.
To be fair, it took 10 minutes in total for the eight Labour Councillors on the Cabinet to read through their prepared statements on the draft budget proposals.
There was little or no debate, though there was plenty of rhetoric from the new Labour Leader about it not being Labour’s fault that the people of Walsall were facing a cut of £86 million over a four year period.
According to him it was all the fault of the Coalition Government. No mention of the part played by the Last Labour Government in getting us in the mess we are in in the first place.
Having slagged off the Government he rounded on the previous Tory/Lib Dem Coalition on Walsall Council. Funny thing is that having done that his Labour colleagues made various references during the meeting to building on the good work done by the previous administrationover in 10 minutes
2 Comments
You make a valid point here. The same meeting, last year, took an average of four minutes per item and the meeting in Decembert saw 26 items discussed in 45 minutes – somewhat less than two minutes per item. This is hardly considered decision making and does make one wonder why people actually turn up to such meetings. The cynic would say ‘allowances’. There was one cabinet in the last municipal year that ran at a rate of two items per hour. You were one of only two members who attended all meetings. Well done for that and less well done for forgetting the speed of them.
My point was really that there was no debate as all members were from the same Party. I personally am opposed to the Cabinet/ Scrutiny model imposed on Local Councils through the Local Government Act 2000.
An all Party committee structure would allow all members could be involved in debate. Members of the public would also have better access through deputaions, petitions etc. The current system is a sham where decisions are made by the few behind closed doors. And before you say that I didn’t change it let me say that there appears to be no political will for it. We tried but neither of the other two Parties were interested.