I attended my first full Council meeting barely two weeks after the elections in May. It was also the Annual General Meeting, and as I didn’t know what to expect, I went in eager to see how things worked and all that. What transpired was so unexpected, so inexplicable, so outrageous that it took a while to sink in, and I’m still trying to understand it.
The local council elections that took place on 6th May 2010 resulted in a shift in the political composition of South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC). The Conservative majority was reduced to just 1, with their count of 29 Councillors, compared to the LibDems count of 20 together with 7 Independents and 1 Labour.
There was also a bit of turnover, with a significant number of new Councillors taking their seats – including yours truly!
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Committee Appointments
The business of the day included appointments of the Chairman and Vice-chairman of the Council for the 2010-11 civic year, and the same positions for all the committees. And that is where the drama of the day was found. I’ve never seen anything like it, and hopefully, never will again. Not sure I can explain it simply, but in summary, each committee has a fixed size, an odd number of seats so decisions do not rest on the Chairman’s vote, and the membership of the committee should reflect the proportionality of the political spectrum in the Council. Full details can be found here, Item 13.
So, for most of the afternoon, we went through the motions where the members and substitute members of the various committees were appointed, and Chair and Vice chair elected. Nominations for the committee members had already been sent in before the meeting and so agreement on the allocation was not such a problem and the results can be found here, Item 14.
However, the election of Chair and Vice-chair for the 9 committees and working groups was a charade, if I ever saw one. The results of which are here, Item 19. It went something like this: Meeting of the committee is opened, and requests for nominations for Chair made by the meeting convener. Each party nominates one of its own Members for the position of Chair, both nominees leave the Chamber, and then the Committee members vote for their preferred candidate. The blue brigade nominated someone for every single position. Bearing in mind the composition of the committees, it was inevitable that the position of Chair went to someone in blue, for all but one of the committees, and even that one which went to an Independent, they couldn’t fathom how they lost it!!
The elections for the Vice-chairmen went through the same process. This time, the blue brigade, very generously, left a few of Vice-chair positions for the opposition. Then the meeting would be closed, and the next one opened, and so on and so forth….
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Coup d’etat
The elections for the Scrutiny Committee showed the agenda that the blue brigade had come to achieve. Bearing in mind the function of that committee, it is accepted practice that the Scrutiny Committee is chaired by a member of the opposition, and had been very ably chaired in the previous civic year by a seasoned and experienced LibDem Councillor.
However, for the new civic year, the blue brigade were not having it, and decided to nominate one of theirs for the position, and of course, again got it due to the composition. It just was not right, and no amount of reasoning was going to change the determination to hold on to as much power as could be mustered. The position of Vice-chair was left to the opposition, and we chose a feisty LibDem Councillor to keep the Chair on his toes.
This particular event was a low point for quite a lot of Councillors in the Chambers that day, as it seemed to be a complete contradiction to the spirit of co-operation and coalition that was been shown at the national level.
This agenda was also hammered home by the removal of the very experienced and knowledgeable LibDem who had chaired the Climate Change Working Group in the past civic year. The events of that afternoon were worthy of becoming an episode in the “Yes, Minister” TV program that we all love.
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Hope Never Fades
I hope that the effect of all these shenanigans will not affect the work to which we have been elected to do. I really hope so. At the end of that meeting, as a newbie to all of this, I was mentally exhausted at our very own episode of “Yes, Minister”, and very apprehensive of the future, wondering what the heck I’d let myself in for. But I am a realist, and I know that I will have to work the system, such as it is, to achieve results for the residents of my Ward. That, afterall, is what they’ve asked me to do. In addition to that, I hope that I can contribute something to change the system for the better.
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