Last year, the majority Labour council in Brighton and Hove adopted a cabinet system, ending an era of open and collaborative working by cross-party committees.
With all nine cabinet positions filled by Labour councillors appointed by the Labour leader, out went debate, counterpoint and true scrutiny and in came a self-congratulatory charade of tone-deaf decision making.
While non-cabinet councillors may attend cabinet meetings to ask questions and make representations, questions have to be pre-submitted in writing less than 48 hours after the agenda is published and crammed into no more than 150 words.
Cabinet members then respond with overly lengthy replies that they have had nearly a week to concoct. The questioner is not allowed to ask follow up questions or to challenge the propaganda often spouted.
With just 15 minutes allowed for member questions, the cabinet is always keen to move on to the important business of agreeing with itself.
Travesty seems an inadequate word when you think of the restriction this way of working puts upon the ability of your elected councillors to represent local community concerns.
Even with the cabinet meeting once a month, it is clear that most decisions and discussions that were formerly taken openly by cross-party committees are not now seeing the light of day.
The few matters that are aired at cabinet are usually supported by painfully thin reports, mostly bereft of any meaningful detail, so even with these matters it is nigh impossible to know what is truly at stake.
The remaining decisions appear to have gone underground, presumably now taken off the record by individual cabinet members or their civil servants.
It is simply impossible for us, fellow elected members of the council, to know on what basis many decisions impacting the lives of local people are being made, what evidence is being considered or what public consultation is being taken into account.
The local government cabinet system was cooked up by Tony Blair, that tin-eared strong leader who always knew best.
It is an open question how well the cabinet system suits national government but Parliament at least has the counter-weight of powerful select committees and parliamentary sessions.
Councils don’t legislate, they deliver local services, operating close to the lives of individuals and communities.
There are many voices to be heard and complex and varied viewpoints to be appreciated – and a closed autocratic system of decision-making is as ill-suited to this as it is wrong.
Take a concrete example. The cabinet met this month to discuss a handful of matters including, no less, the plan to sell public property worth £20 million to build an investment fund.
We have no real idea what is to be flogged from the city’s family silver, its worth or the merits of the choices being made.
Apart from four properties named in a public report, which offered no details, all other proposed sales are hidden from public and opposition councillors in a secret report under the guise of “commercial sensitivity”.
Previously, members of a cross-party committee would have been briefed with far more information before any decision was taken, able to cross-examine officers’ recommendations, put forward alternative proposals and – importantly – members of the committee could also challenge the justifications and limits for any necessary confidentiality.
Now, elected councillors from all but the ruling party are simply shut out from even knowing what is being discussed.
And crucially too, in this particular case, we have no idea whether you, the people of Brighton and Hove, the true owners of all these public assets, even approve of Labour’s desire to privatise the city’s assets, the unknown choices they are making of what to flog, as you haven’t been consulted or even been made aware of any of this.
Do I sound angry? Yes, I am, as this is not democracy.
In the nearly 30 years since I was first elected to the city council, I have never witnessed a more secretive and power-hogging regime as Labour are today.
And we wonder why Reform, who are adept at sowing suspicion that established parties are aloof, self-serving and insincere, is booming in the polls.
Labour promised to listen and to bring change. I can’t say that their interpretation of what this means is going down too well with people so far.
We need an inclusive, open and accountable system of local government that is humble enough to listen and involve people who don’t always agree so that we take well informed and respectful decisions, building public trust, understanding and engagement.
We don’t need power hoarders that think they know what is best for us all.
Open up Labour, you are putting democracy in peril.
Councillor Pete West is a Green member of Brighton and Hove City Council and chairs the Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee.
If the council publishes the list of properties, it is more like to receive commercially competitive bids. This will be better for taxpayers. No one who was honest and sincere about selling their house would try to do it in secret. The information in this case is not remotely commercially or financially sensitive. To pretend that it is and to keep it secret is not just duplicitous, but an act of financial self-harm. Labour says it is open, transparent and accountable, but it’s actions tell a different story.
Once the cabinet has passed a decision to sell something, it will then go on the open market. It is commercially sensitive information.
I wonder how much less would have to be sold, if the Greens very bad financial management wasn’t costing the Brighton & Hove City Council 2 million a year on the i360 yearly loan repayments. Also, didn’t the Greens overspend 3 million pounds a couple of years ago from the annual budget and that 3mil had to come out of the Council’s reserves? It is surprising that a Green councillor, who was around when the Greens were in charge and made such painfully bad management decisions, has the nerve to have this piece in the press. Perhaps he has a mega short memory? In an ideal world, i’m sure the council would keep all it’s assets but with a council having to run a city on such a tight budget and having to pay back 2 million pounds plus because of previous bad management by the Green council, i for one am pleased that we have a council now that it much more financially savvy and knows how to manage it’s yearly budget and recognises that in order to be able to pay back the Green loans and keep the city running and not go bankrupt, it recognises that it has to sell a few bits and bobs.
‘having to pay back 2 million pounds plus per year’
The thing is – with the i360 – all the info is available and open. You can look at what happened and make your own mind up about what went wrong and which party, event or person you want to blame.
If that had happened under the current regime, you wouldn’t have a chance – it would have been decided in secret with the outcome covered up – a bit like the £20 milllion gamble labour are planning now.
You distrust individual members or parties? The best way to hold them to account is scrutiny borne of transparency, not the paranoid power grab we have seen, which was in no way part of the Labour manifesto. They did this once before, going against the express will of the city to form a cabinet, and the Greens were the ones to roll it back. Hoping they get the chance to do this again.
It’s clear you’re either a Labour activist or even a Labour councillor from the comments you always make North Brighton Sunshine. However you try and square things, it’s not OK for your Labour council to flog off public assets in the way they are trying to. If you’re suggesting that this type of flogging off of public assets shouldn’t be scrutinised and instead you are trying to deflect away from this basic point by pointing fingers and making accusations about prev decisions made by a previous council, it’s pretty low imo.
Deflection is a poor argument. Public scrutiny is a good thing.
The local council cabinet system is opaque and undemocratic.
Decisions are made internally within the cabinet and then post rationalised through sham consultations and announced in rushed local media interviews where journalists don’t have the resources or time to fully scrutinise decision making.
This is not Democracy which ever Political Party you support.
Should a Report be prepared by those Councillors excluded from the Labour Committee and submitted to the local Authority Ombudsman?
What else did we expect other than complete abuse of a cabinet system in this council? Which I would frankly question the lawfulness of.
Better or worse than the contempt shown by the greens in respect of public consultations when it came to road management ?
Still two wrongs don’t make a right, and it is a shame that they can do this with such a majority. You get the government you voted for.
While Part 2 reports are frustrating, they are used by councils of all colours, including those under Cllr West’s party, for legal or commercial reasons. The implication that Labour invented confidentiality is misleading. What matters is whether the threshold for Part 2 use is being applied more often or less justifiably than before, and that point is not evidenced.