Many people may not realise it but the Council has a number of Scrutiny Committees that look at aspects of the council’s activities and allow members to question officers and lead councillors, holding them to account for their actions. Scrutiny Committees are public meetings so anyone can go along, and indeed speak at these meetings.

For many years under the previous Labour Administration the chairs of the Scrutiny Committees were handed to fellow Labour councillors who then proceeded to ensure that the committees did not upset the Administration in any way. It was not a fair or open way to conduct these meetings and as a result they were never very effective in holding the Administration to account.

In 2008 Labour lost their majority on the council and one of the changes that happened was that the Tory and Lib Dem groups wrested the chairmanships of the scrutiny panels away from Labour. I have been Chair of the Environment Scrutiny Panel for the last two years during which we have had some frank but helpful discussions on the Administration’s policies on waste collection, waste disposal and climate change strategy to mention but a few topics. I remember attending a course on scrutiny along with Daisy Benson (Lib Dem Chair of Housing & Health Scrutiny) and Mark Ralph (Tory Chair of Education Scrutiny) and learning that having opposition members chair these panels was the best way of holding the Administration to account.

However, everything has changed with the advent of a new Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition Administration. In the Coalition Agreementthe Lib Dems have accepted the Tory proposal for Chairs of scrutiny panels to be elected by panel members at the first meeting of the year. This could appear to be an invitation to Administration members to select their own scrutiny panel chairs and leave the Labour opposition out in the cold. This would do to Labour what they had done to us for many years but is not, in my book, a good way to conduct scrutiny.

It is worth pointing out that the Coalition Agreement also calls for a rethink of Scrutiny and how it is best achieved and, whilst not wanting to prejudge what might come out of this, I am of the opinion that Scrutiny Panels must be seen to be independent of the Administration and so I, for one will not be voting for any councillor from the Administration Groups to chair a panel on which I am a member.

Just because Labour had a stranglehold on power in the Civic Centre for many years is not a justification for  weakening scrutiny panels now under the new Coalition Administration.