The independence and effectiveness of scrutiny at Brighton and Hove City Council have been questioned because the Labour administration chairs the key committees and has the most members.
Andrea Lewis raised her concerns at a meeting of the full council today (Thursday 1 October) at Hove Town Hall.
She spoke out two days after a special meeting of the council’s People Overview and Scrutiny Committee voted rejected a review of the recent decision to close Wellington House.
She asked whether the Labour members of the committee had been “whipped” – or told to vote in a certain way.
The scrutiny committee vote on Tuesday 29 September was split equally. Four opposition councillors wanted to refer the closure decision to a full council meeting and four Labour councillors did not.
The deciding vote was cast by the Labour councillor Sam Parrott who chairs the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
Dr Lewis said: “If scrutiny is intended to provide an independent check on the cabinet, how can it genuinely hold an all-Labour cabinet to account when Labour also holds a majority of seats on the scrutiny committee?
“The chair is a Labour member and has both a standard vote and the decisive casting vote while members may also be subject to the party whip.”
The Labour deputy leader councillor Tim Rowkins said that the committee was not whipped in line with the council’s constitution.
Councillor Rowkins said: “There is no requirement to vote in a certain way. My experience of scrutiny committees, and I think this is something to celebrate about the scrutiny committees generally, is that the quality of debate and the contributions made by members is by and large very non-party political, very objective, very rational.”
Dr Lewis asked how much about Brighton and Hove’s annual adult social care budget over the last five years, how much was spent on each person and whether the emotional and human cost of closing Wellington House was reflected in the supporting analysis.
For the past five years Councillor Rowkins said that Brighton and Hove City Council has spent approximately £240 million on adults with learning disabilities with complex needs.
The average weekly cost is £1,072 per individual for all forms of support including residential, nursing care, supported living, community support and day services.
On the human cost, Councillor Rowkins said that Councillor Alexander and Councillor Parrott had visited Wellington House along with other members.
He said that every single person who attended Wellington House would have a new placement and it would be reviewed after six weeks.
Councillor Rowkins said: “We’ve gone out of our way to request regular and formal updates on how this is progressing and how these service users are getting on. We don’t want to just make a decision and then turn our gaze elsewhere.”
Sam Parrot, you really need to examine your conscience and contemplate your position both as chair and as an elected representative. This is a disgraceful decision when you call in a few people objecting to be able to park their cars anywhere they like, when lives of the most vulnerable and their families are disrupted and in the long-term, will cost the public purse more than the erroneous “savings! “
Ann, on this I share your concern very deeply.
Whatever one’s view of the decision itself, scrutiny must not merely be independent, it must be capable of convincing the public that it is independent.
An evenly divided committee, chaired by a member of the same political group as the Cabinet whose decision is being scrutinised, with that Chair then exercising a casting vote to prevent further review, may be entirely within the rules. But surely we are entitled to ask whether the rules themselves provide the genuinely independent scrutiny our city deserves.
And when the decision concerns some of our most vulnerable residents, one would hope that the instinct would be towards more scrutiny, not less.
This is far bigger than one councillor or one decision. The Council should look seriously at whether its scrutiny arrangements are fit for purpose.
Yours,
Augusta
Your comment about me that was intended to be nasty and to hurt, “Parrott by name Parrot by nature” – so i looked up the nature of Parrots and guess what
They are intelligent (knew that one) but also
Social
Curious and Playful
Affectionate
Emotionally sensitive
Noisy
Strong willed
So yes will take all of that …. Female politicians are being subjected to online abuse people think it’s ok to insult and say whatever they like.
I really don’t object to people not agreeing with me but comments designed to hurt and insult are different. On this occasion it made me smile and the unintended compliment was great and I’ll take it – but please let’s remember there is a real person on the end of your online comment.
Councillor Parrott, that is a fair challenge.
“Parrott by name, parrot by nature” was intended as wordplay about the decision rather than to cause you personal hurt. But if it landed as nasty or personal, then I am quite happy to acknowledge that and apologise.
One cannot spend quite as much time as I do deploring poor manners below the line and then claim an exemption for oneself when called out.
And you make a serious point about the treatment of women in public life. Disagreement with a politician’s decisions should never become licence for personal abuse simply because that politician happens to be a woman.
Indeed, Augusta has experienced a little of that herself on these very pages. One develops a reasonably thick skin, but that does not make personal unpleasantness any more necessary or acceptable. So on that point, Councillor, we may have rather more common ground than you might imagine.
I do, however, remain considerably less apologetic about the substance of my criticism.
Effective scrutiny is about perception as well as reality. It is not enough for those inside the system to be satisfied that scrutiny is independent and effective. The public must be able to look at the process, particularly when difficult decisions are challenged, and have confidence that it is genuinely capable of holding the executive to account.
When the governing group chairs scrutiny, and a casting vote from that chair prevents a decision of the administration from being reviewed, it is entirely reasonable for people to question whether the present arrangements are achieving that objective. That question does not disappear simply because the correct procedures have been followed, nor because the individual occupying the chair is strong-minded and independently spirited.
Good governance should not depend upon the character of the person occupying the chair. It should be evident from the structure itself.
Transparency and scrutiny exist partly to create confidence in how power is exercised. If the process repeatedly leaves reasonable observers questioning whether meaningful challenge is possible, then I would suggest the process is not achieving everything it is supposed to achieve.
That is the argument I intended to make, and on that I remain rather firmly planted.
And for the record, your defence of the parrot was rather good. Intelligent, curious, playful and strong-willed strikes me as a rather splendid collection of attributes. I may have to look upon parrots rather more fondly from now on.
Thank you for challenging me directly.
Yours,
Augusta
Parrott by name, Parrott by nature? This just eroded my trust in politics. Wanting it or not, Cllr Parrott will be known as the Cllr who buried Willington House. Well Done! I hope you sleep well tonight.
Other majority councils have the good sense to select an Opposition member as a Chair for each committee in the interests of fairness.
BHCC appear to be quite happy to lose a Judicial Review on a technicality and blatantly shameless whipping to force evil though.
Such is the intelligence of the plastic barrister currently running the city’s democracy.
Some of these comments are so ridiculous. Always looking for a conspiracy. Why don’t you make the argument that all the non labour councilors were trying to cause maximum damage to labour as their in power. Oh yeah because you don’t like labour. Shock! You believe what you want and make the argument depending on what your politics are. Get a life and start debating the actual facts not endless conspiracy theories. God!
There is nothing ridiculous about having independent scrutiny & accountability. Not anti-labour but all about honesty & transparency; it’s called the democratic process.
I must applaud your use of irony by mentioning conspiracy & God in the one comment!
A shocking comment on local democracy. There isn’t any. The BHCC Monitoring Officer who is also the Head of Legal Services then closes down all complaints citing ‘lack of evidence’ to investigate further, whatever they happen to be in a closed shop complaint loop. Meanwhile BHCC finds endless £millions for new and shiny projects which no one asked them for, at the expense of the basics the council exists to deliver. FOI needed to find out how much council money was used to fund the 5-day jolly to the Labour party conference in Liverpool – which in reality has nothing do so with the council – so should have been self-funded.