Brent Liberal Democrats are making an attempt to enhance scrutiny in Brent Council with a raft of constitutional amendments to be put to the Annual General General Meeting of the Council on Wednesday.
Their first amendment to Item 7 sets out their case for Opposition chairs of Scrutiny:
Democratic scrutiny is a pillar of healthy and functioning governance. To ensure it is effective there should be a clear separation between Councillors who lead Scrutiny Committees and the governing party in the borough.
Changes made by the current Labour Administration in Brent to the way the two Scrutiny Committees are chaired and Vice-Chairs are appointed have effectively locked Opposition Groups from having a meaningful say in the way scrutiny is led. This includes in the setting of the work programme for each of the Committees.
To ensure renewed confidence in the scrutiny process in the borough it is important that the two Chairs of the Scrutiny Committees in the borough are appointed from the Opposition Groups.
To safeguard the effectiveness and independence of Brent’s Scrutiny Committees we therefore propose the following change to Standing Order 49 relating to the appointment of Chairs for the scrutiny function:
(1) Standing Order 49 (ii) be amended to require that the Chairs of the existing Scrutiny Committees are Opposition Group appointments (in order to emphasise the independence of Scrutiny from the Executive).
(2) That Standing Order 4 in Part 1 of the Constitution be waived in order to enable the above changes to come into immediate effect during the meeting.
If that amendment is not approved they propose that Vice-Chairs are members of the Opposition Groups:
(1) Standing Order 49 (ii) be amended to require that the Vice-Chairs of the existing Scrutiny Committees are Opposition Group appointments (reverting to the previous arrangements for appointments to these positions)
(2) That Standing Order 4 in Part 1 of the Constitution be waived in order to enable the above changes to come into immediate effect during the meeting.
Under Item 11 Review of Call-in Arrangements where the Labour Group want to make any call-in subject to a rule that call-ins must be made by 5 councillors of more than one political group (See LINK for explanation) they submit the motion below:
Review of Call-In Arrangements
The replacement of the Committee System of decision making by Local Councils with a Cabinet/ Executive system was made by the Blair Labour Government.
The then Labour Government recognised that handing decision making power to a small group of councillors had to be balanced by a strong and effective scrutiny function. As part of this there had to be a meaningful ability of any councillor or Political Group to call-in decisions for review.
To ensure effective democratic practices in the London Borough of Brent it is essential to ensure that:
1. The Cabinet can make decisions based on sound information and advice; and
2. That Cabinet and their decisions can be held to account through an effective scrutiny process.
To maintain the objectives of effective democratic scrutiny, as intended by the Labour Government which introduced the current decision making process, we therefore propose, having taken account of the current review of arrangements for call-in:
(1) That any Cabinet decision which has implications for the whole or a large part of the borough can be called in by any three Councillors (for the avoidance of doubt these can be Councillors of one or more than one group).
(2) That any Cabinet decision which has implications for just one ward within the borough can be called in by any one councillor.
(3) That’s subject to the approval of (1) and (2) above the necessary amendments are made to Standing Order 14 (Call In of Cabinet, Cabinet Committees and Officer Decisions) to reflect the change in arrangements.
(4) To confirm, the current arrangements for review by officers of any call-in to ensure that it is relevant and justified will remain in place.
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