May 31 2012

Trouble at th' mill

Old Grumpy hears that the Independent Group Plus (IGP) is not a happy ship.
Certain loyal elder statesmen are miffed that their talents have been ignored while what they consider to be arrivistes have been given seats at the top table.
I suppose that is bound to be a problem with a party based on patronage rather than a shared ideology.
As I said previously, changes in the system mean that there is not quite enough gravy to go round.
First we had the decision of the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales that vice-chairmanships of committees should not attract a Special Responsibility Allowance (SRA).
That left five fewer trumps in the Leader's hand.
If that wasn't enough of a blow, along comes the Local Government Measure (LGM) and removes the monopoly of scrutiny committee chairs from the hands of the ruling group - they now hold only two out of five.
And to cap it all, their reduced majority - down to 32 of the 60 seats, from 39 - means the Leader has one fewer National Park billet at his disposal.
This is leading to serious disgruntlement in the ranks and my moles tell me that talk of a breakaway is again in the air.
Far be it from me to intrude into private grief, but having spent some time studying the political balance rules and the LGM, it strikes me that if a group of as few as three could be assembled it would be entitled to the scrutiny committee SRA currently held by the two-member Tories group.
And, if they could get their number up to six, they would supplant Plaid as the biggest non-executive opposition group - another eight-and-a-half grand.
Such a group wouldn't even have to struggle to find a name.
If they called it Independent Political Group (IPG), they could even claim that it was the others who had jumped ship by joining the Independent Group Plus.
A political manoeuvre which, borrowing from high-board diving, we could refer to as a "reverse Simon Hancock with double-somersault and twist". Degree of difficulty (DD) 4.1

Tory tantrums

The Tories are in high dudgeon over the failure of Cllr Owen James (Scleddau), who ran under the party's colours at the recent election, to sign up for the council's Conservative Group.
Having already received a drubbing from the electorate, the party has now been reduced from five members to two.
Conservative AM Paul Davies is calling for Cllr James to resign and precipitate a bye-election so that the voters of Scleddau can have the opportunity to vote for a loyal Tory.
I have some sympathy for the Tories in this because there must be a reasonable expectation that a candidate who seeks the party's endorsement at an election will, if successful, join the party's group.
And as for the electorate, they voted in a Tory and they must have a reasonable expectation that he will support the party of their choice.
However, these things are never as simple as they look, and, if we had a bye-election every time a candidate misled the electorate, there would be chaos.
For instance, should we have a bye-election in Neyland where Labour's Simon Hancock, who was returned unopposed, has now jumped ship and joined the conveniently rebranded Independent Group Plus (Cllr Hancock being the Plus)?
And what about all those members who told the voters they would be "truly independent", but have now signed up for the IGP?
Clearly, it would never do if the electorate could demand either that their elected representative carried out their promises, or resigned.
And the Tories in particular are on rather shaky ground on this issue because this is not the first time that the group has been decimated by defections.
Old Grumpy remembers the occasion when three of the four-member Tory group abandoned the party and joined what was then known as the Independent Political Group.
My reports on these events can be found at (Tory turncoats) and (Back-door Tories).
I don't recall any of the Tory top brass calling for bye-elections on that occasion, but that is not surprising because it was they who engineered the whole shabby business.
And nobody can deny that it was a smart move by the members concerned, particularly Cllr David Wildman who has been a cabinet member these past eight years and, to a lesser extent, Cllr Mark Edwards, who had a brief spell in the Cabinet before resigning to spend more time with snooker hall.
None of this would have been possible had they remained loyal to the Tories.
Nor, if he was still in the Tory group, would Cllr Wildman be picking up £10-15,000 a year as your local authority rep on Hywel Dda Health Trust (see Gravy galore).
As the American criminal Willie Sutton replied, when asked why he robbed banks: "Because that's where the money is".
To Cllr James' credit he has not joined any group, so whatever it was that motivated him to abandon the Conservative ship it was certainly not the pursuit of preferment.

Unnatural justice

As I've already had a letter on the subject published in the WT, I will not dwell on Cllr Shiela la Croix's ill-judged criticisms of the High Court judgment in the case of Calver v Adjudication Panel for Wales, except to say that Cllr la Croix was, until recently, the community council's representative on the county council's standards committee.
I must say I have grave reservations about local councillors serving on this committee and I did put down a Notice of Motion some years ago calling for it to be comprised entirely of independent members i.e. people with no connection with local government.
Needless to say, this attempt to import the basic principle of Natural Justice: that a man should not be a judge in his own cause, into the proceedings was torpedoed by the IPG block vote.
I must declare a personal interest in this matter because, for the best part of 18 months, I have been under threat of putting in an appearance before this committee to answer charges similar to those faced by Cllr Calver.
One such complaint was that this website showed contempt for members of the IPG.
Fortunately, the Ombudsman found in my favour thus removing the possibility that the case might be tried by a standards committee containing two members of the IPG.
Recent changes to the membership of the standards committee have improved the situation somewhat, but it is still some way from the bastion of impartial justice that it ought to be.
Cllr la Croix has been replaced as community council representative by Cllr George Allingham who is a solicitor and can, therefore, be relied on to give full weight to the legal precedents governing these freedom of expression cases, and the two county council places have been taken up by Cllr Tom Richards (IGP) and Stan Hudson (Conservative), thus ending the ruling group's monopoly of these positions.
I know both these two members quite well and have no doubt as to their fair-mindedness, but if they were magistrates, and a fellow member of the council appeared before them on a careless driving charge, they have to stand down from the case.
I am unable to see why the same principle shouldn't apply in the far more serious matter of a fellow councillor's conduct.
One aspect of Cllr la Croix's letter to the WT that I didn't address in my reply was her claim that Cllr Calver ". . .chose to report their [MCC members] several minor breaches of the Code of Conduct to the Ombudsman . . ."
The two separate complaints that Cllr Calver made concerned the failure of the chairman of Manorbier Community Council (MCC) Cllr Ray Hughes to withdraw from meetings where matters in which he had a prejudicial interest were discussed.
The Ombudsman upheld both complaints and referred them to Pembrokeshire County Council's standards committee.
The first of these concerned three meetings of MCC staffing committee, called to appoint a new Clerk, where Cllr Hughes participated in the discussions despite the fact that one of the candidates was someone with whom he had a close personal relationship.
The second was in respect of a meeting of the National Park when he failed to declare his prejudicial interest and withdraw when land which he owned was considered for inclusion in the development plan. For those unfamiliar with the system inclusion in the development plan gives rise to a strong presumption that planning permission will be granted if a future application is submitted.
To call these "minor breaches of the Code" is breathtaking.
But that, apparently is what the standards committee concluded, because, while it upheld the Ombudsman's findings, it decided that no further action was required.
In Cllr Calver's case the standards committee endorsed the Ombudsman's conclusions (wrongly as it turned out) and ordered that he be reprimanded and required to undertake further training in the Code.
Finally, the truth of what Cllr Calver posted on his website was never disputed, and as Mr Justice Beaston said :"It suffices to say that restrictions on publication of both matters which are factual in nature and are demonstrated to be true, and of value judgments are generally difficult to justify under Article 10(2)."

Matter of choice

Interestingly, following publication of my letter in the WT, I received an email from Mr Arthur Jarvis of Pembroke who had written a letter to the newspaper in the same week that Cllr Sheila la Croix's letter appeared.
Due to lack of space, no doubt, the letter didn't make it into print.
In the interests of balance, it is published below.

As a former resident in the Manorbier and St Florence ward, I read with great interest, your report in the Western Telegraph on the 9th May, of the High Court decision in favour of Councillor Calver which set aside the findings of the Standards Committee of the Pembrokeshire County Council, and those of the subsequent appeal to the Adjudication Panel for Wales.
This judgment will have ramifications for the freedom of speech throughout England and Wales for years to come. I attended both the initial hearing before the Standards Committee, and the appeal hearing, which was held at the Lamphey Court Hotel.
I was struck by the fact that at both those hearings, no one was able, or even attempted, to disprove any of the facts that Councillor Calver had printed on his website. Even more importantly, Councillor Calver produced documentary evidence that a questionnaire that had been circulated to residents of the community covered by Manorbier Community Council, had been photo copied and many times duplicated. This was corroborated by a report from the police and yet no action was taken by the police, nor were the standards committee minded to investigate these allegations.
Indeed the Standards Committee, and the Barrister for the Ombudsman appeared to be more interested in the tone of what was printed, than the facts.
Furthermore, in a court of law the person charged has the opportunity to object to any of the jurors. Should not a councillor who is charged to appear before the Standards Committee have the right to object to certain members of the panel, especially if he has had many previous clashes with them in council? I believe that reform is long overdue for the investigation and charging of councillors who are alleged to have breached the Code of Conduct.
I repeat that I believe that this judgment will be used as a benchmark case history in freedom of speech cases for many years to come.

Yours sincerely
Arthur Jarvis

Out of order

Last week, I referred to a scheme to increase the number of scrutiny committees from four to five.(see Stop press pm Wed 23 May).
I understand that the IGP discussed this plan at its private meeting on the day before the AGM, but the feeling was that the constitution didn't allow such a proposal to be brought up at the AGM.
That, I assume, is because the Constitution puts strict limits on what can be decided at the AGM.
These include the election of chairman, vice-chairman, leader and the chairmen and vice-chairmen of committees.
Outside these formal functions the Constitution allows the AGM to only "consider any other business specified in the summons to the meeting."
As the summons to the meeting made no mention of any proposal to increase the number of scrutiny committees, it seemed to me that any such proposal was off-limits.
But it never pays to underestimate the inventiveness of the IGP machine, and when members came to debate an item on the agenda which recommended the increase in the number of members on each of the four existing scrutiny committees from 12 to15, up jumped the Leader to propose an amendment to increase the number of scrutiny committees from four to five.
Now, if he had been proposing some other number of members on the committees, say 14 or 23, that would have been an amendment to the original motion and I would have had no problem, but to create an entirely new scrutiny committee on the back of a motion about the number of members on the four existing scrutiny committees seemed to be stretching the Constitution past breaking point.
So I rose on a point of order and pointed out that this amendment was not relevant to the motion before the council.
Indeed it would be absurd to suggest that a proposal to increase the number of members on scrutiny committees could apply to a scrutiny committee that didn't even exist.
And to bring in such a profound change on the back of such an amendment to a motion which had nothing to do with the number of scrutiny committees was unconstitutional.
This argument didn't cut any ice with the chairman, Cllr Peter Morgan, who declared that his Leader's proposal was a valid amendment.
At least the Constitution is perfectly clear on this because it says with regard to points of order that: "The ruling of the Chairman shall be final".
What it doesn't say is that the ruling of the Chairman shall be right.

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