LETTER: Labour's gerrymandering demonstrates zero interest in open government

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sat 3rd Jul 2004

I write to you in absolute despair. I am a Hounslow Councillor of some many years experience. During all that time, the dominant Labour Group has listened, in the main, to the noises in their collective heads, rather than engagement in open discussion. Recent months have taken a further disturbing downward spiral.

The latest manifestation of this was demonstrated on Thursday .last (30th June) in the Council Chamber at the Civic Centre. On the 22nd June the Leader of the Council wrote to al.1 Councillors showing the schedule for Budget Strategy Meetings. These meetings were to be private, the public were not to be invited, but all councillors could attend, papers for the meeting would be distributed at the start of each session. The Leaders Memorandum went into the detail of the scheduled dates and times. The meetings were to start at 6-45pm, refreshments served from 6-30pm.

Come the day, or more correctly the evening, I along with my colleagues in the Liberal Democrat Group were meeting in our Group Office, when at 6pm a harassed looking officer knocked, put his head round the door and said the meeting was about to start. I said, "no that cannot be so, the scheduled time was 6-45pm". The officer assured us that, in fact the meeting was about to start. So we trooped into the Council Chamber. There we found Councillor Sharma in the Chair and one other Labour Councillor together with the Chief Executive and other senior officers. I pointed out that the meeting was starting out 45 minutes early! Councillor Sharma dismissed this and said we must have old information. Neither I or my colleagues accepted that somewhat ridiculous response from the Chair. We were given by way of documentation copies of Power Point slides which without the aid of a powerful magnifying glass were unreadable.

So the supposedly important meeting to discuss Budget Strategy started with two Labour, including the Chair, and four Liberal Democrat councillors.

Councillor Sharma launched into his speech which I always enjoy, mainly because I had heard it a number of times going back to the 1980's. The Senior Officers present made professional contributions of a quality that one has a right to expect.

At 6-40pm two Tory councillors turned up in the Chamber, not surprisingly they were not amused to find the meeting, such as it was, had finished. How strange, guess what, they had not been told of any time changes either. During the later part of the pantomime various other officers arrived. Towards the end of the short meeting we were also joined by one Community member of the council.

The questions that have to be posed are:

Out of 37 Labour Councillors why were only 2 in the chamber when the meeting started and only a couple more turned up at the end. Is this the interest in Hounslow's budget by the general run of Labour Councillors? Perhaps they are in serious need of a lesson at the polls!

The second basic question is, does the unacceptable way the meeting was gerrymandered tell the public just how interested Labour is in open local government.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Ray Fincher.