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
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!