Another week, another leak, and another telling off for Labour councillors in Liverpool
Another week, another leak. I'm pleased to report that Dale Street Associates is becoming the website of choice for leaks from Liverpool Labour councillors.
Following on from Pam Thomas' 'clean your act up ladies' email, her boss and chief whip Alan Dean has now become the latest victim of a leak.
In his email leaked onto DSA he reads councillors the riot act for debating council shortcomings in public.
You can read the email yourselves below, but it does beg the question exactly what does scrutiny mean at Liverpool council. If you need the mayor's permission is it scrutiny?
Cllr Dean just told me: "It was an internal Labour group document that's the way it should have stayed, I am disappointed that it has not."
The Labour group meets tonight for its usual pre-full council meeting. Something tells me it's going to be fun.
Here is Deano's email:
Colleagues,
Re: Neighbourhoods Select Committee, 26th June 2012.
As a direct result of what happened at the above meeting, the Mayor wrote to all members of the Labour Group to clarify the process for establishing Scrutiny Panels that members of the Labour Group must follow.
Can I remind you that the Chair of every Select Committee was appointed by the Mayor and endorsed by the Cabinet and subsequently by the Labour Group? As such each Select Committee Chair carries the full authority to act on behalf of the Mayor at both pre and committee meetings of their Select Committee. That means that when they say an issue should not be pursued in open committee or a particular course of action should not be pursued at a meeting of the select committee they are speaking for and on behalf of the Mayor.
At the pre-meeting that was held prior to the above meeting Councillor Thomas made it clear that the item on re-cycling was not something that her Select Committee should be pursuing as it clearly fell under the remit of another Select Committee.
However, when the item was deal with members asked for a scrutiny panel to be established to look at the implications of the report. Again the Chair advised members that it was inappropriate for her committee to deal with this issue.
Despite this a proposition was moved by Councillor Hanson, seconded by Councillor Robertson-Collins that a scrutiny panel should be established. That proposition was agreed and carried.
I have to remind you that we are the controlling group on the Council - and not the opposition. The issues the report raised are well know to the Mayor, the Cabinet member and senior officers of the council and work has been on-going to resolve the issues identified in the report. Any shortcomings that may exist in this or any other service area of the council are not issues that we should be discussing / debating in an open, public forum until we have a clear way forward that we believe is deliverable.
Therefore I have to advise you that this Scrutiny Panel WILL NO BE ESTABLISHED. At the next meeting of the Select Committee Councillors Hanson and Robertson-Collins will withdraw their motion.
Finally, you should be aware that this e-mail has been shared with, and cleared by, Mayor Anderson prior to it being sent out to you.
Councillor Alan Dean
Labour Group Chief Whip.
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David Bartlett
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Select Committee Chairs given full authority to scrutinise scandal
Not much of a leak - Chief Whip in "only the relevant committee can scrutinise decisions" scandal.....
I never knew following the rules could be so controversial....
Or, "how very dare you scrutinise the failings of the Council!"
What a liberty. Why do these supine Labour councillors let this Bully get away with this? Meak and pathetic.
their FIRST duty is to their constituents not some power crazy whip.
Disgraceful.
I would also question the legality of what alan dean proposes. The Mayor cannot by definition legally be in charge of everything and all appoitnments. LEGALLY Alan,and any amount of hectoring emails from you cannot change that.
Im amazed he has commited what is actually at the very least improper and quite possiblly illegal practices to an email.
Yes, Hold the front page, the Chairs of the Select Committees should look at this, i.e. the Overview & Scrutiny Committee, which is what they are, as a group. But if anyone looks at this it will be the Mayoral Scrutiny Committee. This was supposed to be a renamed and beefed up Overview & Scrutiny Committee, of course, but this logical idea was scuppered by Councillor Dean with a last minute amendment at the last Council meeting, as I explained in a comment to the post about the ExUrbe report last week (Joe Anderson and Peter Kilfoyle at war…….) that attempted to explain how the scrutiny process had been castrated. This is where this Dean email was originally leaked.
I hadn’t realized Councillor Dean was the Chief Whip – a job he clearly takes a lot more seriously than his legal duties as a director of LDL, representing the Council on its board, more's the pity.
And I still cannot get my head around the statement in the email that “shortcomings that may exist in this or any other service area of the council are not issues that we should be discussing / debating in an open, public forum until we have a clear way forward that we believe is deliverable”. So much for transparency and accountability.
Followed by the order not to establish the panel, and the order to the two councilors involved to withdraw their motion. Because he didn’t say they had agreed not to, were going to, or anything else. He just ordered it. Shouted orders in emails?? Is this kind of bullying normal??
We’re clearly getting the new “Liverpool Way”, and it’s anything but transparent – it’s not even democratic. Unless you think voting for a one-man dictatorship is democratic.
So no more Scrutiny Panels – we’ll have Mayoral Commissions – like the Fairness Commission. Well-meaning, high-sounding window dressing. They won’t be allowed to have the real details, or to propose real solutions. They'll just be fobbed off.
The irony is that the Labour group actually made this happen, by voting to go straight for an elected mayor - this now appears to have been the equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas. What is the point of any of them now? What powers are they left with? Casework for their constituents is the only thing they appear to be allowed to do.
Cllr Alan Dean: "Can I remind you that the Chair of every Select Committee was appointed by the Mayor"
I'm more used to the way that Labour behave on Sefton Council, but this takes the biscuit.
Aren't Liverpool City Council's Select Committees meant to scrutinise what the Mayor does?
What's the best way to ensure that these Select Committees do an effective job? Why, have the Mayor hand pick the Chairs!
You really couldn't make this up.
Cllr Alan Dean: "Can I remind you that the Chair of every Select Committee was appointed by the Mayor"
I'm more used to the way that Labour behave on Sefton Council, but this takes the biscuit.
Aren't Liverpool City Council's Select Committees meant to scrutinise what the Mayor does?
What's the best way to ensure that these Select Committees do an effective job? Why, have the Mayor hand pick the Chairs!
You really couldn't make this up.
I really wish whoever leaked the Dean email would also leak the one he referred to in the first paragraph:
"Re: Neighbourhoods Select Committee, 26th June 2012.
As a direct result of what happened at the above meeting, the Mayor wrote to all members of the Labour Group to clarify the process for establishing Scrutiny Panels that members of the Labour Group must follow".
Just so we all know where we are... and what we've got for the next five years.
Hi Nathan, thanks for the compliment.
I actually did this at the Finance & Resources Select Committee meeting just before Christmas. Stressful, but interesting - have a look at the minutes on the council website.
I haven't been to anything since, as I've (thankfully) been busy with work, and also because I was waiting to see what we ended up with after the election.
Given what we seem to be getting, I think it is now even more important that more people get involved, understand and use the procedure, ask questions, challenge things a bit. Normal people, not politicians. We may not get very far, but it's worth it just to get stuff on the record, in the minutes.
I know I can sound obsessive, but we all really need to remind the council (the whole thing - politicians and officers) that it works for us, is paid by us, and must account for what it does to us. Publicly, with proper evidence to back up the statements they make.
If they are all doing their jobs properly, they shouldn't be afraid of proper scrutiny, should they?
This sentence gives me the most cause for concern: "As such each Select Committee Chair carries the full authority to act on behalf of the Mayor at both pre and committee meetings of their Select Committee"
No it doesn't. Select committee chairs should not be beholden to any one individual. Select committees are not there to rubber stamp the mayor's proposals. Select committee chairs in parliament do not act on behalf of the prime minister. Same principle should apply here.
On a lighter note, I'd enjoy a select committee hearing with katie54 being part of the committee scrutinising proposals. That would be worth watching!
Just to clarify things. I'm not clairvoyant. My response to Nathan was written and posted after I had read his comment, not before.
If you impose a centralist regime, denying councillors the right to speak out you shouldn't be surprised when you get leaks. It's a sort of guerilla warfare. And what else have all those Labour councillors got to do,with everything under UncleJoe's control?
Is this the same Cllr Alan Dean who claims that Co-op party councillors are traitors to the Labour Party and have no right to stand under the Co-op mantle?
So your actual councillors have no power or influence. There is some power with the chairs but these were appointed solely by the mayor and if any should dare to question the mayor, then they would, I imagine, rapidly become ex-heads.
The arguement used when deciding whether there ought to be a mayor was that there would be greater accountability. Someone will have to run that one by me again.
And as for Alan Deans position on the board of the highly controversial LDL, the chances of getting any information about LDL from him are about as likely as Joe Anderson going into a labour group meeting and saying 'hey lads what do you think we should do'.
why not say it as it is, a coup d'etat