Following Wednesday’s full council meeting, that ended before the business has been completed (more to come on VB shortly about this), we’ve received the following from Independent Councillor for Bembridge, St Helens and Brading, Jonathan Bacon. In his own words. Ed
At the meeting of the Isle of Wight Council on Wednesday 15th June a vote had to be taken at 9pm to decide whether the meeting should be extended to allow the usual questions to Cabinet Members to be dealt with.
This was due to the fact that, contrary to the usual situation in recent meetings, there were a number of matters of important business to deal with which necessitated debate and questioning, as should be the case at such gatherings.
Majority voted to close meeting
The vote to extend the meeting was lost as most (although not all) Conservative Members voted that they would prefer to close the meeting and go home.
This had the effect of preventing any elected members from publicly asking questions of the Leader of the Council and Cabinet Members. A number of members had important points they wished to raise and they were consequently denied this opportunity.
Fixed period of time at each meeting for questions
Councillor Bacon believes that steps should be taken for a fixed period of time to be retained at each meeting of the Full Council to allow such questions to be put and this should not be subject to a vote by members which can be seen as anti-democratic and preventing scrutiny and inquiry.
Councillor Bacon said, “As the majority of decisions in the Council at the moment are made by Cabinet Members, often in private, the ability to question Cabinet Members in public is of fundamental importance. The fact that the ability to ask questions can be blocked by members of the ruling group is wrong. Steps should be taken to allow all members to be able to put the concerns of the residents of their wards to the decision makers in the Council and receive answers publicly. Anything less is undemocratic and can only be damaging for the Council and local democracy”.
