It has taken me a bit of time to calm down from the Annual Council Meeting.  

On the Tuesday before the meeting, the Overview & Scrutiny committee received a report on how the council had come to have £5 million invested in Icelandic Banks, the last tranche of which went in on 1st September 2007.    The report was written by a panel of Conservative councillors, plus one Liberal Democrat, and you can read it by picking up the agenda of the Overview & Scrutiny Management Committee meeting of 13th May 2009 at  http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/council-meetings-democracy/minutes-agendas/agenda-and-minutes/2009-meetings/ . 

It is clear from that report that the Exec member (Con councillor Anthony Pollock) had not exactly covered himself in glory.   I suggested he might like to resign from the Exec. Not because he had made mistakes, but because the culture he had presided over was one in which rate of return appeared to have priority over the security of investments, AND because from the report he had not asked any questions about what was being done with the money.

The Tories were a bit cross (that’s understatement by the way) that I had had the temerity to suggest one of them might be held accountable for something.  Resign from the Executive indeed!  From the Leader of the Council’s reaction you might have thought I was suggesting he be paraded naked down Broad Street for a ritual disembowelment outside the Council offices. 

At the Annual Council meeting the Tories decided to attack the Liberal Democrats in general and me in particular.  They used the slots at the end of the meeting which were supposed to be for Deputy Executive members to add a brief verbal update to their written reports on the past municipal year.  One after the other they stood up and read out prepared speeches which were not about the municipal year at all, but instead were about such things as how I had to learn that my place on a steering group had to be earned because I had behaved so appallingly on it – naturally they didn’t say what appalling thing I had done, other than to say I had been quoted in the press.  Oh dear!  And another one talked about the need to keep the Liberal Democrats’ “grubby little hands” off council money.  Charming.  After the fourth one started, and after protesting to no avail to the Mayor, we walked out.

It was reminiscent of the worst days of the previous Leader of the Council.  It’s not that we can’t handle being attacked – in some ways it’s great because it means we have hit them where it hurts – but we do object to abusive attacks being made in a meeting where we have no opportunity to speak to rebut what’s being said.    But if you read the Leader’s comments in the Evening Post, apparently it is we who behaved badly!  According to that article, Anthony Pollock was the one being denied the chance to defend himself by some “local government rules” – preposterous.  He had two days to speak up, and he can talk to the press or anyone else.    There are no rules preventing that! 

Walking out is not something we are likely to do again.  We haven’t done it before.   We just did not see why, we needed to sit there and listen to abuse, when we had been denied the opportunity to speak, especially as it was the end of the meeting and there was no other business.

And what did the Tories achieve?  Nothing except a further erosion in the relationship between us and them.  We still think Anthony Pollock should resign.  And we will keep on saying so.  

We don’t expect that we will see eye to eye with the Tories.  It is our job to hold them to account for running the council.  If their reaction to criticism is to heap abuse on us, then they need to get over themselves. 

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