... If Council resources cannot be made available and directed towards plugging any perceived “policy vacuum” quickly and accurately, why is the development industry the bad guys? If there was a competition for heads in sand…..
Daily Archives: 6 Apr 2014
When it comes to Standards EDDC CAN mark its own homework but doesn’t keep notes!
David Cameron has claimed here:
that independent members of the Commons standards committee rather than MPs had the “casting vote” on whether to censure Maria Miller over her expenses. Commons rules state that only MPs on the committee have the right to vote on its findings, while “lay members” can only take part in debates and evidence sessions. However, Mr Cameron, who has given Mrs Miller his “warm support”, claimed that MPs are not being allowed to “police themselves”.
He told Sky News: “We have now got a committee that has independent members on and effectively they had the casting vote, and what this committee decided, it is not my decision, it’s the committees decision.”
….. A spokesman for Mr Cameron later said his comments were a “slip of the tongue” and that “lay members do not have a vote”.
However, let no-one be mistaken: in East Devon the “Independent Person” on the Standards Committee does NOT have a vote and, as can be seen in this excerpt from a Standards Committee meeting minute from 29 January 2013, the Monitoring Officer does not even ask for the Independennt Person’s views or comments in writing, preferring to “make notes” about what she says as that is “less bureaucratic”. It is also, of coursr, much less traceable if something goes wrong or there is a difference of opinion about what was said later on ….
See
http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/standards_mins_290113.pdf
Rest assured, – in East Devon, it is possible to mark your own homework!
East Devon Watch 