Earlier in the Week the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, justified the South West having to lockdown because the NHS would be overwhelmed.
Last night on BBC Spotlight Sir Simon Stevens, Head of the NHS, was introduced as having an explanation for why the South West might be on the verge of running out of beds. (about 2mins 30 sec here but link expires 1900).
He said that it was a matter of Geography. Torbay now has more cases than in April and the geography of the South West means that there are quite long distances between, say, Truro and Plymouth and to Bristol. Whereas in a place like Liverpool, if Liverpool hospitals become very, very busy then their cancer patients can be looked after in a cancer specialist hospital just across the road. That’s just not possible across big parts of the South West.
No Sir Simon, the real explanation is that the South West has the lowest number of critical care beds per head of population. There are simply not enough beds anywhere compared to the rest of the country, either just across the road or up in far flung Bristol
The Greater Exeter Strategic Plan was due to be the formal planning framework for development across Exeter, East Devon, Mid Devon and Teignbridge, but following East Devon and then Mid Devon pulling out over the summer, work has ceased.
Teignbridge District Council’s executive on Tuesday (November 3) recommended to full council that they formally withdraw the process as well, but that in principle, support is still given for a joint non-statutory plan, to include joint strategy and infrastructure matters between the four authorities.
Speaking at Tuesday’s meeting, Cllr Gary Taylor, executive member for planning, said that while this ends the ‘lockstep partnership’ between the councils, there were still vital issues that affect the whole area and therefore can be effectively considered in a strategic, cross-boundary manner.
He said that these issues included that the collective authorities comprise a functional economic area and form an extensive housing and travel to work area, and that the wider area also faces common issues such as the need to deliver greater numbers of homes, constraints on infrastructure, the need to respond to the climate emergency, achieve net zero carbon development and increase habitat creation; and the need to improve accessibility for urban and rural areas by widening digital connectivity.
The proposals would provide a co-ordinated response to the area’s strategic economic, climate, housing, environmental and infrastructure issues and help to secure central government investment, but as a non-statutory plan, it would not be subject to statutory consultation or examination and therefore would be faster to prepare and more able to respond to changing circumstances.
Cllr Taylor added that this would still be better than purely acting independently, and that much of the effort and expenditure for the GESP process would still be relevant for the review of Teignbridge’s Local Plan that has begun.
Agreement of details of the scope of the plan, a timetable for its production, the resources required, and governance arrangements, will be agreed at a later date.
Nicholas Matheson does not have the qualifications of Dido Harding. He has never run a large private sector organisation, or sat in the House of Lords. He is merely an expert in virology and immunology.
But as health chiefs attempt to roll out testing in Liverpool, they might learn from his experiences because he has mass tested the 10,000 students and staff of Cambridge University for a month.
In the summer Dr Matheson, the Baroness Harding of Cambridge, came to the same realisation that has informed the pilot test strategy in Liverpool. He argued that regularly testing all students would be the way to get through the winter.
The university agreed. Since the start of term, Cambridge has in effect operated its own parallel test and trace scheme. Like a scienceocracy it has also used the opportunity to experiment with long-mooted solutions.
Unlike the national programme, students are not analysed individually. They have been sending in swabs every fortnight, pooled with members of their bubble. If a bubble tests positive then it is locked down until they can get retested to identify who is infected.
This cuts down on tests but by checking twice it also catches most false positives.
So far, it seems to have worked: unlike other universities, none of which test at this scale, there have been no uncontrolled outbreaks.
The key to this approach, Dr Matheson said, and the reason Liverpool will be an important test case, is that more than half of cases are asymptomatic — people who would not volunteer for a test as they did not realise they had Covid-19.
Unless you can pick them up, preventing spread is extremely difficult. “We had a modest outbreak in one of the colleges,” he said. “The first few cases were picked up via the asymptomatic screening programme.
Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, on mass testing
“We like to think that by recognising the outbreak promptly we could limit the spread.”
While some universities have amplified infections and gone on to seed outbreaks into the community, the reverse seems to have been the case in Cambridge.
Since the second week, when positivity in asymptomatic tests peaked at 0.9 per cent of students, there has been a steady decline in cases. In the latest week, total positivity, including those presenting for tests because they had symptoms, had almost halved.
Dr Matheson acknowledges that making such a system work in a city will bring its own problems. A key lesson from the Cambridge scheme is that it needs support. Eighty per cent of students volunteered to take part, and because they are in college all can easily be followed up.
“We are generally supportive of the Liverpool approach,” he said. “We think asymptomatic screening is a good idea. But the devil is in the details.”
Boris Johnson’s drive to use mass so-called moonshot testing to control the spread of Covid-19 will fail unless stringent quarantine rules are relaxed, senior government advisers have warned.
Ministers have been told that plans to use millions of 15-minute tests to screen large parts of the population for asymptomatic Covid-19 risks being undermined by the existing test and trace system.
In particular they have been told that the “ridiculous” policy requiring the contacts of people known to have infections to self-isolate for two weeks or face a £10,000 fine risks undermining public acceptance of the mass testing initiative.
Instead ministers should use the new capacity to relax the quarantine rules and allow those who have come into contact with a known Covid-19 case to carry on with their daily life while being tested every two days.
“It’s a massive problem,” one senior figure advising the government, said. “The threat of self-isolation has killed the test and trace programme. People just say screw you — I’m not doing it. Compliance is really low.”
They added: “With the new tests they need to say we’ll still do contact tracing but we will ask people to pop in every two days and get another test, and provided they remain negative, then they can go about their business rather than being confined. You test them on day two, day four, day six and then they’re in the clear.
“I really don’t understand why they aren’t changing course.”
Robert West, professor of health psychology at University College London and a member of the government’s SPI-B behavioural advisory group, said that using rapid tests to free contacts from the need to isolate would be “very useful”.
He said: “It is potentially a massive step forward if people could get a test quickly and be confident of getting the result the same day. It would just give everyone so much more confidence that you’re not going to put someone in a really difficult position by naming them as a contact.”
He said that poor compliance on self-isolation was “primarily a matter of financial and practical support”.
“If you look at the demography of people who haven’t isolated they are struggling financially, in insecure jobs and have caring responsibilities. That is really pretty crucial.”
He said fixing test and trace was crucial to avoiding restrictions. “We have to find a way to identify and quarantine people who are infectious and support them to isolate. If we can do that we don’t need mass lockdowns.”
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the new mass testing initiative that will begin trials in Liverpool this week must reduce the number of people needing to self-isolate.
“These need to be seen as tests that promote enablement rather than restrictions,” Sir John told the Today programme on Radio 4. “Although people with a positive test will still need to confine themselves for a period of time.
“What we hope ultimately you’ll be able to do is to avoid the quarantine of contacts that has caused so much trouble.
“People get pretty irritated when they get told they passed someone in the shops and they now need to quarantine for ten or 14 days. With these tests it should be possible to test these people every two days and they can go about their business provided they remain negative.”
Flavio Toxvaerd, a lecturer in the economics of infectious diseases at the University of Cambridge, said: “The incentives to get tested are complicated and may vary from person to person. A civic-minded individual who is asymptomatic but tests positive for Covid-19 may choose to self-isolate. This would be a desirable outcome. But others may take a positive test result as a cue to be less cautious, as they are no longer at risk of infection. They thereby put others at risk and in such cases, testing may backfire.
“For some, not knowing their infection status may be preferable to testing positive as a positive test may bring forced self-isolation and loss of income. Unless the government puts in place the right incentives, plausible deniability may look attractive to some who suspect they are infected but who stand to lose a lot from self-isolation. So a sensible testing policy must go hand in hand with proper support and incentives for those who test positive.”
Ministers have been burnt by over-hyped pledges on testing in the past. But this time there is a belief — among politicians and their scientific advisers — that the UK is on the verge of a game-changing increase in capacity that could allow the country to live with Covid-19 without the need for lockdowns (Oliver Wright and Chris Smyth write).
Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, said that increased testing may come ahead of a vaccine in advances that could help normal life to resume.
The cause for optimism is the validation of four types of new tests that do not require lab processing and can be done at home with results returned in as little as 15 minutes.
While Liverpool will be used in the first instance to test how best to run such a mass screening programme, it is likely to be rolled out nationally at the end of the upcoming lockdown period.
One senior figure involved in the programme said there should be enough of the new devices to potentially test the whole of the UK before Christmas and that this was something ministers were “definitely” thinking about.
But even with the new tests, deploying them at such a scale will be a tall order with a population of about 66 million.
One negative test does not mean you will not become infected, so it is not necessarily a passport for a normal Christmas. People also have to agree to be tested in the first place, and many may be reluctant to risk the prospect of a positive test.
In Liverpool the plan is to offer a test every week. There will also be targeted interventions such as in schools, colleges and healthcare settings. There could also be door-to-door testing in areas with high rates. The idea is to see what is effective, what uptake looks like, and the effect in reducing transmission.
Testing everyone in a one-off programme is not a strategy. But it could be a reset moment on the path towards a more targeted programme of regular testing and allow the end of social distancing.
Ministers are determined that it does not become another eye-catching target that they miss while distracting from the need to find a coherent screening plan.
Jeremy Hunt, the chairman of the health select committee, warned that hospitals could experience similar levels of transmission as during the first coronavirus wave without a rigorous testing regime for health workers.
Calling for more routine testing of NHS staff, he told the Today programme: “My biggest worry, frankly, is that we still have not introduced weekly testing of NHS staff.
“We know that up to 11 per cent of coronavirus patients in hospital died last time, having caught the virus in a hospital, and I think it would be quite unforgivable if we made the same mistake twice and didn’t take that terrible weight off the minds of NHS staff of worrying that they might be giving the infection to their own patients.”
Four types of test
Standard PCR
The original test that is used in NHS laboratories and Test and Trace “lighthouse labs”. It involves amplifying a small sample of the coronavirus’s genetic material through repeated heating and cooling to stimulate key reactions.
The test is extremely reliable but takes several hours to process in a specialist lab. This means that it is hard to turn around tests in under 24 hours. There have been concerns that because it is so sensitive it picks up cases where people have fractions of the virus’s genetic material, or RNA, in them but are not actually infectious.
RT-Lamp
This technique allows test machines to pick up genetic material without the need for the series of temperature changes. This means results come back much quicker — sometimes in 20 minutes.
The equipment needed is much smaller than for PCR tests — about the size of a laptop computer — which means they can be used for localised community checks rather than having to send samples away. The government intends to use these tests for screening in places such as hospitals to ensure that asymptomatic patients and staff do not spread the disease.
Saliva Lamp
These tests use the same RT-Lamp technology but with a sample of saliva rather than a full throat and nasal swab. The advantage of this is that it is much easier to administer and makes it potentially more reliable. Most of the problems with PCR tests have been connected to samples rather than a failure of the testing itself. These tests are also likely to be used in community settings.
Lateral flow
This is pregnancy test-style technology that requires only a sample to be run along the surface of an absorbent pad. Such tests are cheap and can be mass-produced.
They are quicker than other tests — giving results in 15 minutes — and do not require specialist equipment or technicians to administer. This means they can be scaled up very rapidly. They are less accurate than other tests; however, because they detect coronavirus protein rather than RNA, they are better at identifying those most likely to be infectious.
Disclosed in a filing on a European contracts website, the award has prompted concerns about “cronyism” and calls for an independent inquiry into the £12bn spent so far on attempting to control the pandemic through the test-and-trace system.
The UK government has awarded a new £347m Covid-19 testing contract to Randox, the Tory-linked private healthcare company whose testing kits had to be recalled over the summer because of concerns about contamination.
The deal is a six-month extension of an existing contract and was agreed without other companies being invited to bid. It means the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has now approved transfers of nearly half a billion pounds in taxpayer funds to the Northern Ireland-based company since the pandemic began.
Disclosed in a filing on a European contracts website, the award has prompted concerns about “cronyism” and calls for an independent inquiry into the £12bn spent so far on attempting to control the pandemic through the test-and-trace system.
Critics raised further concerns about a separate revelation that the Conservative MP Owen Paterson, who is paid £100,000 a year to act as a consultant for Randox, was party to a call between the company and James Bethell, the health minister responsible for coronavirus testing supplies.
The disclosure raises fresh questions about Paterson’s continuing work for Randox, and the efficacy of the code of conduct for MPs, which is supposed to limit their work as paid lobbyists and regulate access to ministers.
“Legislators must not also be lobbyists,” said a spokesperson for the campaign group Transparency International.
The Green party MP Caroline Lucas said: “We urgently need an independent inquiry into where public money is going as many firms who have benefited seem to have links to the Tory party or individual ministers.
“The lack of transparency around Covid-related contracts is a scandal. At the very least, ministers owe MPs an explanation, and we are still not getting one.”
Randox provides tens of thousands of kits a week to care homes and individuals testing themselves at home, which are then posted back to its laboratories in County Antrim. Concerns were raised in July when spot checks revealed some kits supplied by a Chinese manufacturer and sent out by Randox were not sterile.
The company was ordered to recall 750,000 unused kits. The failure delayed plans to provide regular testing for English care home residents and staff, a promise on which the government has yet to deliver.
In May, the Guardian revealed that Randox was awarded a first government contract on 30 March, worth £133m. It was awarded in a closed process, without being publicly advertised beforehand and without any other companies being asked to bid. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) revealed on Wednesday that the contract was for 2.7m kits – meaning the cost per kit was just over £49.
The new deal was signed on 2 October and was expected to run for six months, until the end of March 2021, a spokesperson said.
The government has been bypassing normal rules on holding open competitions for public sector contracts under emergency powers designed to speed up the process during the pandemic. The latest Randox deal was awarded as an extension to the existing contract, again with no other companies invited to bid.
The call between Randox, Paterson and Lord Bethell took place on 9 April, days after the company had secured its first contract to provide testing services. Bethell, who ran a political lobbying firm before entering the House of Lords, is the minister for innovation in the DHSC. He has led efforts by Boris Johnson’s government to use private sector companies in the pandemic response.
Billions in public funds have been awarded to companies such as Deloitte, which helped set up a network of drive-in test centres, and Serco, which runs the contact-tracing call centre.
The call with Bethell was revealed in the quarterly disclosure of ministerial meetings, gifts and trips, where the reason for the call is listed as “to discuss Covid-19 testing”.
A government source said the conversation with Bethell was a “courtesy call” from the minister to Randox and took place after the initial contract had been signed. Paterson was participating as a paid consultant to Randox on the call, the source said.
Paterson, who is the MP for North Shropshire, has disclosed in parliament’s register of interests that he is paid £8,333 for 16 hours of work a month by Randox.
Paterson and Randox did not respond to a request for comment. Challenged last year about his work as a consultant for a number of private companies, Paterson responded: “My financial interests have been correctly declared according to the rules of the House of Commons.”
The Guardian has previously reported that Hancock toured Randox’s laboratories in Antrim last year to inspect a tool for diagnosing sepsis. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act suggest Paterson also took part in the visit.
Steve Goodrich of Transparency International UK said the government should return to open tenders.
“That hundreds of millions of pounds of procurement can go ahead without even a whiff of competition is bad enough, yet when these deals are awarded to those with political connections it reeks of cronyism,” said Goodrich. “Government really needs to get back into the habit of competitive tendering or risk irreparably damaging confidence in its prudent management of public money.”
“MPs and peers must scrupulously avoid the perception – or reality – that they are working as lobbyists for private interests,” Goodrich added. “When parliamentarians with outside employment meet government concerning their client’s commercial operations, it looks an awful lot like they’re trying to influence ministers in return for payment. Parliament should tighten its rules to make it absolutely clear that legislators must not also be lobbyists.”
A DHSC spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “We are proud to be working with a number of partners on innovative solutions to increase capacity where it is needed and introduce larger-scale testing. This includes an extension of an existing contract with Randox Laboratories, as we continue to increase testing capacity.”
Data from final trials of two Covid vaccines could be available “within weeks” but there will only be four million doses of the Oxford jab by the end of the year, MPs were told today.
Data from final trials of two Covid vaccines could be available “within weeks” but there will only be four million doses of the Oxford jab by the end of the year, MPs were told today.
Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the government’s Vaccine Taskforce, said inoculations from Pfizer and Oxford University had the “possibility of being ready before the end of the year”.
However, she also revealed that only about four million doses of the Oxford vaccine would be manufactured by Christmas.
That falls far short of a statement made by the government in May, which suggested that 30 million doses could be supplied by September.
Greg Clark, the Conservative MP who chairs the science and technology select committee, said that number of doses would not be sufficient to forge ahead with a “mass deployment” that would focus first on frontline health workers, the elderly and others at high risk.
Ms Bingham added that up to ten million doses of the Pfizer vaccine could also be available by January but cautioned that rolling it out would be challenging.
The Pfizer jab contains a type of genetic material known as mRNA which must be stored in ultra-cold conditions of -70C. “They may be relatively straightforward to manufacture initially but the cost of deployment and the complexity of deployment is very high — we have to find better vaccine formats,” she said.
There is no guarantee that any of the six vaccines that Ms Bingham has arranged to buy will work and before any jab could be deployed it would have to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Andrew Pollard, from the Oxford team, said this morning that there was “a small chance” that its vaccine would be ready for distribution before Christmas.
“The first step is to reach the point where we can do an analysis and find out whether or not the vaccine works . . . I’m optimistic that we could reach that point before the end of this year,” he said. He said it was not clear how long regulatory clearance would take.
The deals struck by Ms Bingham could secure some 350 million doses in total for the UK. The aim has been to spread the risk among several groups and technologies in the expectation that several will fail.
“We’re manufacturing now so we will have vaccines ready — so that as soon as we have approval from MHRA, you’ll be able to start deployment,” she told members of the science and technology and health and social care committees this afternoon.
However, when pressed on the number of doses that would be available, she said production of the Oxford vaccine had not been scaled up as quickly as planned.
“The projections that were made in good faith at the time, to get to 30 million doses in September, [assumed] that absolutely everything would work and that there were no hiccups at all,” she said.
The Oxford vaccine relies on a harmless virus, known as adenovirus, which was originally taken from a chimpanzee. This is used to carry a piece of genetic code into a person’s cells, which goes on to produce a protein found on the surface of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. This should prepare the immune system to fend off the real pathogen.
Producing the vaccine calls for the adenovirus to be cultivated inside living cells. Ms Bingham said this technically demanding step had run into obstacles.
“It’s not through lack of care and attention or availability of equipment or anything like that. It’s just that this normally takes a very long time,” she said.
At present, the government has doses of the Oxford vaccine in the “low single millions”, she said. “The third batch of the thousand litre manufacturing is under way now. So that should get us up to about four million doses by the end of the year.”
These doses will not immediately be ready to be sent to clinics, however. They will first have to be transferred from bulk storage into small glass vials. That will not take place until the government is confident they are safe and effective, because once they are decanted the clock starts ticking on their use-by date.
Writing last week in The Lancet, Ms Bingham warned that a vaccine would not allow life to return quickly to normal. “It is important to guard against complacency and over-optimism. The first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection but rather reduce symptoms, and, even then, might not work for everyone or for long,” she said.
Robin Shattock, one of the scientists behind another vaccine developed by Imperial College London, said today that several vaccines may be needed to stop the pandemic. “The first vaccines may reach the bar of preventing severe disease, but they may not necessarily block transmission,” he said.
Ms Bingham also told MPs that she had revealed “nothing confidential” at an online networking event last week. The Sunday Times had revealed that Ms Bingham, who is married to the Conservative Treasury minister Jesse Norman, had spoken to the online conference, which anybody could join for a $200 fee. During her talk she was said to have identified several vaccine projects being monitored by the UK government.
Asked if she disclosed anything that was proprietary and should not have been in the public domain, she replied: “No, and there have been a lot of nonsense reports, and inaccurate, and I’m afraid to say irresponsible, reports suggesting that I did. What I described was the landscape of vaccines.”
She said she had disclosed “nothing commercially sensitive, nothing confidential” but admitted there was an error on a slide, a footnote that suggested it was confidential. She said she had made an error because she was “working too fast”.
She added: “There was nothing confidential and those footers should not have been there.”
•Astrazeneca is planning a so-called “storm chaser” trial of a treatment that could be used to protect vulnerable care home residents who are exposed to the coronavirus.
The trials are expected to involve about 1,100 people in the United States and Britain and will include long-term care home residents. If one person in a home tests positive for Covid-19, those around them would be given a dose of a monoclonal antibody drug.
The hope is that a three-minute infusion of the laboratory-produced antibodies could defend against the coronavirus for between six and 12 months.
Astrazeneca said the trial would “evaluate post-exposure prophylaxis and pre-emptive treatment”. Earlier this week the US government said it would invest about $486 million for the development and supply of up to 100,000 doses of the therapy.
The research has involved evaluating more than 1,500 so-called monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). These mimic the neutralising antibodies created naturally by the immune systems of patients who recover from Covid-19. The mAbs were screened to choose the two most effective against the virus and they have been engineered to have a longer life than natural antibodies.
Astrazeneca has said monoclonal antibodies are unlikely to be an alternative to vaccines for the general population because they are much more expensive.
While walking down the street one day a Corrupt Politician (that may be a redundant description) was tragically hit by a car and died. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we’re not sure what to do with you.”
“No problem, just let me in,” says the Politician. “Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from the higher ups. What we’ll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.” “Really? I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the Politician. “I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him. Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people. They played a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and the finest champagne. Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who is having a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are all having such a good time that before the Politician realizes it, it is time to go. Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises.
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens in heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him, “Now it’s time to visit heaven…
So, 24 hours passed with the Politician joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
“Well, then, you’ve spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.” The Politician reflects for a minute, then he answers: “Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.” So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell…
Now the doors of the elevator open and he’s in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls to the ground. The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulders. “I don’t understand,” stammers the Politician. “Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?”
The devil smiles at him and says, “Yesterday, we were campaigning. Today, you voted.”
The fallout from the resignation of eight members of the Conservative group on Plymouth City Council triggered a political clash at an online public meeting.
Conservatives accused the ruling Labour group of being anti-democratic, but the leadership hit back by accusing the Tories of arrogance and ignoring the law.
At one point the council’s Labour leader Tudor Evans called on Tory leader Nick Kelly to resign over the loss of support shown by the resignations from the Conservative group.
The special meeting of the Labour-controlled council on Monday evening was called to consider how seats on its committees should be shared out following the changes.
A report said that the places of former Tory group members should be filled by Labour councillors.
That was because non-aligned councillors cannot be given a committee seat if they are outside a political group, as set out by the law covering local government.
The report said that of the 57 seats on the council, 30 were held by members of the Labour group, equal to a majority of 52.6 per cent.
There were now 17 members of the Tory group, representing 29.8 per cent of the seats, and 10 Independents making up 10 per cent – the eight Conservatives who resigned plus two former Labour group members, Chaz Singh in the Drake ward, who resigned from the party, and Kevin Neill in Stoke, who has been suspended.
Conservatives claimed the proposal to remove the Independent Conservatives from committees was anti-democratic and would weaken scrutiny of the ruling Labour administration.
They called on the Labour group to give up seats to the Independents.
But after a half-hour debate, the proposals for the new committee membership set out in the report were approved, with the newly-independent Conservatives voting alongside the Labour group in favour.
Conservative councillor Glenn Jordan said the changes meant the places of the former Tory group members would go to Labour, giving the party more seats on the scrutiny panels which monitored the council’s work.
He asked: “How is that holding the executive to account? How is that holding Cabinet to account? It’s not.”
He said if the council wanted open and transparent debate the proposals should be rejected.
Conservative group leader Nick Kelly said he was disappointed that the meeting had been called just to discuss the item, when the time could have been better used to discuss the response to Covid-19.
He said it was “quite disturbing” and a waste of resources, as the decision could have waited until the next scheduled meeting of the full council on November 16.
Cllr Kelly said it was anti-democratic to deny the former Conservative group members a chance to serve on a committee.
Lord Mayor Chris Mavin said the law was clear about how committee seats had to be allocated, and the meeting was taking place because Cllr Kelly had not accepted the proposals set out in the report.
Conservative group deputy leader Patrick Nicholson accused the Lord Mayor of shutting down debate by limiting the number of contributions to the discussion, which Cllr Mavin denied.
The Lord Mayor, who chairs full council meetings, said the process for allocating committee seats was clear under the law and he wanted to make sure the council was not wasting time.
The Labour councillor said: “What I’m not prepared to do is to spend hours sitting here tonight listening to speaker after speaker after speaker saying the same thing, because there’s not much that can be said on this.”
The council’s Labour leader Tudor Evans rejected the suggestion from Cllr Kelly that the meeting could have been spent discussing coronavirus.
He said it was taking place because of the Conservative leader’s “arrogance” and unwillingness to accept the law, which dictated how the committee places had to be allocated.
Cllr Evans said the review of the committee structure had to take place after the resignation of Conservative group members citing an “atmosphere of bullying and intimidation”, a reference to comments by former Tory council leader Ian Bowyer.
The Labour leader said: “The reason we are here is because the council cannot continue to be over-represented on committees by Conservatives.”
He said Cllr Kelly had lost support, was not able to drive the council “from the back seat” or control his group “from a position of weakness” and should resign.
Cllr Nicholson responded to claims about the reason for the Tory resignations, saying he could reassure the council that there was not an atmosphere of bullying in the group, but there had been disagreement about approach.
He said: “We in the Conservative group do very much wish to hold the Labour authority to account to get better services for the people we represent throughout the city of Plymouth.”
The Conservative deputy leader said: “We’re not seeing a democratic city council.”
Cllr Nicholson said the Labour group could give up committee seats so the non-aligned councillors could have a role on committees outside meetings of the full council.
After half an hour of discussion, Labour’s Mary Aspinall proposed moving to a vote on the issue, seconded by Labour’s Sam Davey. That was approved, followed by a second vote which passed the recommendations for the new committee membership by 37 votes to 16.
The meeting held remotely over the internet using Microsoft Teams software was interrupted several times with councillors raising points of order. At one point during the first vote, a loud belch was picked up by a microphone, although the source was unclear.
Eight members of the Conservative group resigned over a week during October, citing concerns over the leadership following the election of Cllr Kelly in March.
The first two to go were former group leader and Eggbuckland councillor Ian Bowyer and Tony Carson, who represents Peverell.
That followed their suspension from the group for comments in a press release calling for a cut in the speed limit on the A38, due to concerns about safety and congestion.
Cllr Kelly denied a claim from Cllr Bowyer that there was a culture of “aggression and intimidation” in the group and said the press release had broken group rules and did not represent policy.
Cllr Bowyer’s Conservative colleagues in Eggbuckland, his wife Lynda and Heath Cook, were the next to leave, saying they had lost confidence in the leadership.
Andrea Johnson and Richard Ball, who represent Compton alongside Cllr Kelly, quit two days later citing “irreconcilable differences”.
Then came the resignations of Kathy Watkin, ward councillor for Plymstock Radford, and Plymstock Dunstone councillor Nigel Churchill.
Cllr Kelly responded to claims about the leadership by saying that he was supported by the majority of the Conservative group which operated in an “open and democratic way”, and he encouraged freedom of speech, wider group participation and the expression of all views.
He said: “Cllr Bowyer has simply not accepted, even six months on, that the majority of the group no longer wanted him as leader and his actions to many sadly reflect this.”
East Devon Watch 