Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meeting minutes a work of fiction?

 Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity

 

Minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting, published with the agenda for the 17 June meeting.

 

In March 2022, Martin published a guest blog from me entitled “Democracy in Brent – are Cabinet Meetings a Charade?”. This is a sequel, based on my own experience from the Cabinet meeting on 28 May 2024, including the incident reported by Martin in a blog later that day.

 

I am not suggesting that Brent Cabinet meetings are fictitious. They happen every month, usually with a similar 40 to 45 minute ritual, presided over by the Council Leader. Nor am I implying that everything in the minutes of those meetings is false. But the minutes of those meetings are meant to be a true and correct record, checked (and, if necessary, corrected) before they are signed by the Chair as the official record of what took place, a summary of what was said and what was decided.

 

“Minutes of the Previous Meeting”, from the minutes of the 28 May Cabinet meeting.

 

This is the official record of the checking and approval of the minutes of the previous meeting at Cabinet on 28 May. What actually happened was that Cllr. Butt said: ‘Can we just go through them for accuracy. Page 1, page 2 ….’ Ten turned pages in as many seconds, then onto the next item with no resolution or agreement that they were a correct record.

 

A similar thing will probably happen at the next Cabinet meeting on 17 June. But the published minutes of the meeting on 28 May are NOT a correct record, and I will explain why.

 

The countdown clock for my petition presentation to Cabinet! (That’s me in the corner)

 

I have no quarrel with the minutes for item 5 on the agenda. That was my presentation of the tile murals petition to the Cabinet meeting. The Governance Officer asked me to let him have a copy of the text for my presentation, which I sent him, so that it is an accurate reflection of what I said, and very similar to the version which Martin published the day before the meeting.

 

Where the minutes do not reflect the reality of what happened is at item 7, when the meeting dealt with the award of the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease. This is the first part of that section of the minutes:

 

The Report which Cllr. Butt introduced did clearly state, at the start, that there were two potential options as a basis for awarding the contract. But the Council Leader did not refer to the option which would have restricted the advertising to the parapets of the bridge. The petition, and my presentation on it, did refer to both options and made a strong case for that option, ending with: ‘I commend Option A to you, and ask you to vote for it.’

 

I have highlighted the wording which states that Cllr Butt “responded” to the points I had raised. He did not. He only made the slightest reference to my presentation, in part of a sentence, ‘how the contribution that Mr Philip Grant spoke about benefits the borough’. He spoke mainly about the benefits of working with developers, the CIL money this brought in, and the £210m in government funding taken away from the borough over the past 14 years. He wanted to assure residents that his Cabinet was on the side of residents, and that it would continue to provide those services that every resident needs and depends upon.

 

This second part of the minutes gets even worse, as far as accuracy is concerned:

 

‘The Cabinet thanked…’? Cllr. Butt said that he would open the item up for comments from Cabinet members. He glanced around for one second, but no Cabinet member had indicated that they wanted to speak before he moved on to ‘the Recommendation’!

 

There was no evidence that the Cabinet had ‘noted the comments made during the presentation of the petition’. Even if they had “noted” them, they had not discussed or considered those points. It was as if the Cabinet members had decided, or been instructed, that they should not interfere with how the Leader wanted to deal with this matter.

 

It was very soon clear how he wanted to deal with it. The minutes again refer to the two options, and set out what they were. They give the false impression that the “Resolution”, or decision, was made how it SHOULD have been made, along the lines which I set out in an open email to Cllr. Butt on 20 May.

 

In order that the decision between the two options was not only fair, but could be seen to be fair by members of the public interested in the Bobby Moore Bridge tile murals, I had written:

 

‘From my previous experience of watching Cabinet meetings, you would usually ask members whether they agree with the recommendation(s) made by Officers in their Report. 

 

In this particular case, I am requesting that you invite individual votes for “those in favour of Option A” and for “those in favour of Option B”. In the event of an equal number of members voting for each option, you would, of course, have the casting vote as Council Leader and Chair of the meeting.’

 

Straight after his very brief invitation for comments from Cabinet members, Cllr. Butt moved on to the recommendation in the Officer Report, saying that this was for Option B, ‘advertising on the parapet walls of the bridge, plus the underpass walls excluding the mural with plaque.’ He then asked, ‘Can I take this in agreement from Cabinet members?’ With hardly a glance, and in virtually the same breath he said ‘Agreed. Thank you very much.’

 

I was watching, as was Martin, and a fellow Wembley History Society colleague of mine who had signed the petition and come to support it. We are all agreed that no Cabinet member raised a hand, or spoke, to show their agreement!

The final part of the published minutes deals with what happened next:

 

I am pleased that the minutes do mention my point of order, but I did not only “seek” to raise it, I DID raise it. Immediately after what I saw as a procedural irregularity over the “agreement”, I went to the public speaker microphone and said “Point of Order”, an action which should have led to the Chair of the meeting asking me to state what my point of order was.

 

But even as I was approaching the microphone, Cllr. Butt put his hand up and said “No!” He continued to speak over me as I made clear what my point was: ‘‘Point of Order. You said it was agreed, but not a single member of the Cabinet put their hand up to agree.’

 

“No!” Cllr. Butt trying to stop me from speaking. (from the webcast recording of the Cabinet meeting)

 

The minutes say that Cllr. Butt ‘advised he was not minded to accept’ my point of order. That is untrue. He did not even acknowledge that I was raising a point of order. The minutes do not include what my point of order was. If they had included it, and if Cllr. Butt had listened to it, then the “reason” given in the minutes (that I’d already had the opportunity to speak, when presenting the petition) is shown to be nonsense. My point was that the “decision” he had just declared as “agreed” had not been agreed by the Cabinet at the meeting. 

 

What Cllr. Butt actually said, speaking over me, was: ‘Mr Grant. Thank you very much. Mr Grant. Thank you for your contribution. There is no further …’ I continued to explain that I was raising a point of order, and what it was. Cllr. Butt then tried to humiliate me, saying: ‘‘Why are you embarrassing yourself like this?’ At this point, Cllr. Nerva tried to intervene:

 

“Chair. On a point of order …’ (From the Council’s webcast recording at 16:00)

 

Cllr. Nerva appeared to be trying to explain to the Council Leader how he should deal with a point of order which had been raised. However, Cllr. Butt ignored him, and continued to direct his words at me: ‘I’m truly disappointed in yourself. It just shows….’ As I had stopped trying to speak, he finished with: ‘Thank you very much. We will move on. Cabinet has agreed the recommendation for Option B. We will move on.’

 

The reality of what happened is very different from the record in the published minutes!

 

Brent’s Chief Executive, who was sitting next to the Council Leader at the meeting, but kept quiet throughout this, clearly realised that I had raised a point of order, what it was, and that Cllr. Butt had failed to deal with it properly. She wrote to me the following day, with what appears to be the response she thought Cllr. Butt should have made (and not the one included in the minutes!).

 

She wrote (and I have underlined the last part, for emphasis): 

 

‘I noted that you spoke again at the Cabinet meeting at the conclusion of the item that you had spoken to at the beginning of the meeting, in relation to there not being a show of hands in relation to the decision. For clarification, Members were not required to vote in this way, …. The Leader asked for confirmation that the other Members were in agreement with the recommendations and the agreement was unanimous through a verbal process, rather than a show of hands.’

 

My reply to her was:

 

‘There was definitely no show of hands, but a 'verbal process' suggests that Cabinet members spoke their agreement. 

 

There was silence. There was no vote. There was no evidence of agreement at the meeting, other than Cllr. Butt claiming that the recommendation had been agreed.’

 

Silence when Cabinet members were invited to discuss the (heavily biased) Report, and my petition presentation which put forward an alternative view to balance that. Silence when Cabinet members were asked for their agreement to the Officers’ recommendation. Paul Simon summed it up in a 1960s song:

 

Sounds of Silence. (Album cover image and lyrics extract from the internet)

 

Although I have shown that parts of the minutes for item 7 of the Cabinet meeting on 28 May are “a work of fiction” (you can confirm this from the webcast recording on the Council’s website, from 11:50 to 16:23), I don’t wish to blame the Council Officers whose task it is to prepare those minutes. They may have been following instructions. They may have prepared correct draft minutes, but been forced to make changes, after the Council Leader or a Senior Officer went ‘through them for accuracy’. I don’t know. All I do know is that these minutes are not a true and correct record!

 

Philip Grant.