Brent Labour backbenchers vote to reduce their own powers and Tories split

 

It was a sad day for democracy at the Brent Council AGM yesterday when not one of the 56 Labour councillors questioned the constitutional changes that will see the level of scrutiny in the Council reduced and limitations on questioning of Cabinet members by backbenchers and the opposition.

At the same time the opposition was weakened by a split in the Conservatives which saw them form an Official Group of three councillors and the 'Brondesbury Park Group' of three.

Cllr John Warren (Brondesbury Park Conservative) opposed the constitutional changes urging Labour backbenchers to 'look at your rights and how they are being lost' pointing to reduced scrutiny, restrictions on questions, removal of 'Key issues' debates, removal of rights to requisition meetings and the guillotine on Council meetings reducing them by 30 minutes.

Dr Helen Carr, (Liberal Democrat, Mapesbury) in her first intervention as a lone Liberal Democrat, said that she did not doubt Muhammed Butt's integrity, but had concerns about the constitutional changes and potential corruption. She appeared to nod in agreement when he reassured her that all was well and all councillors adhered to the highest of standards.

Butt's defence of the changes appeared to be based on their election mandate: 'The people of Brent have spoken'. He argued that the changes would increase participation pointing to the new right of individuals and community organisations to address meetings of the Council. He said that headteachers and doctors would be involved in the new Scrutiny Committee but failed to make a case for the reduction in the overall number of scrutiny committees and restrictions on questions.

All the Labour councillors voted for the changes, Brondesbury Park Conservatives voted against, and the Official Conservatives abstained.

London and Brent European voting figures

The main party results for the European elections in London and Brent were:

(Brent in brackets)

Labour 806,959 (34,451)
Conservative 495,639 (13,277)
UKIP 371,133 (6,414)
Greens 196,419 (5,123)
Liberal Democrats 148,013 (7,333)

Full results for each London borough LINK

Independent performs well as Labour vote strengthens in early Brent results

The first results of the Brent Council elections only began to emerge as dawn broke over Wembley Stadium.  The first result in Kensal Green surprised many with a Labour win but the Greens beating the Lib Dems and Tories.  The Labour vote was generally strong but Brondesbury Park bucked the trend returing three Conservative councillors where only one had existed before. The one iscolourful Carol Shaw who is recognised as being extremely strong on casework.

In the eagerly awaited Willesden Green contest Labour won all three seats but Alex Colas, the Independent Make Willesden Green candidate gained 846 votes, more than the Greens, Lib Dems and Tories.  The Greens beat all the Tories and two of the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dem vote appeared to be crumbling but some of their stronger wards had yet to declare at the time of writing.

How has your Brent Councillor done this year?

The end of the year is a good time to review our councillors' performance. The table below gives an overview of attendance at committees between July 8th and today. Some councillors have many more committees to attend than others and opposition councillors often complain that the present system gives them very little voice (and thus motivation to attend?) when decisions are rubber-stamped by the Labour only  Executive and committees with in-built Labour majorities.

The Green Party has policy on this:

The Green Party believes that local authorities run by single party cabinets, or by directly elected mayors, are not in the best interests of local democracy. They take decision making powers away from councils as a whole and place them in the hands of a few individuals, leading to the disenfranchisement of those councillors who are not in the ruling party and the citizens they represent. We would therefore reintroduce the committee system across local government at all levels, which provides for direct member involvement in decision making.

The Greens also have a policy of recall if 40% or more registered electors request it.

The columns below in order list: Name, Party, Number of Required Attendances, Actual Attendances, Percentage Attendance and Additional Attendances at meetings where their attendance is not required. The latter are often meetings where a councillor represents the interests of his/her ward to the committee. Barry Cheese has the best record on that count.

Councillor Abdi Aden	Lab	12	9	75%	2
Councillor Michael Adeyeye	Lab	2	2	100%	0
Councillor Emad Al-Ebadi	Lab	9	7	78%	1
Councillor James Allie	Lab	5	3	60%	0
Councillor Mary Arnold	Lab	12	12	100%	0
Councillor Javaid Ashraf	LD	6	5	83%	0
Councillor Joyce Bacchus	Lab	5	4	80%	0
Councillor Eddie Baker	Con	10	5	50%	0
Councillor Jack Beck	LD	3	2	67%	0
Councillor Lincoln Beswick MBE	Lab	2	1	50%	0
Councillor Daniel Brown	LD	15	8	53%	1
Councillor Muhammed Butt	Lab	14	13	93%	2
Councillor Barry Cheese	LD	6	6	100%	10
Councillor Bhagwanji Chohan	Lab	9	8	89%	8
Councillor Shafique Choudhary	Lab	9	8	89%	6
Councillor M Aslam Choudry	Lab	11	9	82%	2
David Clues	Ex LD	5	0	0%	0
Councillor Reg Colwill	Con	9	7	78%	0
Councillor George Crane	Lab	15	13	87%	0
Councillor Mark Cummins	LD	11	11	100%	1
Councillor Mary Daly	Lab	6	5	83%	3
Councillor James Denselow	Lab	16	11	69%	0
Councillor Helga Gladbaum	Lab	10	10	100%	1
Councillor Simon Green	LD	5	2	40%	0
Councillor Patricia Harrison	Lab	19	16	84%	2
Councillor Sami Hashmi	LD	12	11	92%	6
Councillor Claudia Hector	Lab	10	10	100%	1
Councillor Krupesh Hirani	Lab	15	11	73%	1
Councillor Alison Hopkins	LD	12	11	92%	0
Councillor Jean Hossain	Lab	12	11	92%	0
Councillor Ann Hunter	LD	10	8	73%	0
Councillor Ann John OBE	Lab	9	5	56%	0
Councillor Lesley Jones	Lab	11	9	82%	0
Councillor Sandra Kabir	Lab	10	8	80%	0
Councillor Suresh Kansagra	Con	6	5	83%	0
Councillor Dhiraj Kataria	LD*	16	13	81%	0
Councillor Chris Leaman	LD	5	3	60%	0
Councillor Janice Long	Lab	10	10	100%	0
Councillor Paul Lorber	LD	9	7	78%	6
Councillor Roxanne Mashari	Lab	17	12	71%	1
Councillor Hayley Matthews	LD	6	2	33%	0
Councillor Margaret McLennan	Lab	12	12	100%	0
Councillor Jim Moher	Lab	14	12	86%	1
Councillor Ruth Moher	Lab	21	20	95%	1
Councillor Colum Moloney	Lab	3	3	100%	0
Councillor Wilhelmina Mitchell Murray	Lab	9	6	67%	0
Councillor Kana Naheerathan	Lab	2	1	50%	0
Councillor Benjamin Ogunro	Lab	4	4	100%	0
Councillor Tayo Oladapo	Lab	3	3	100%	1
Councillor Bhiku Patel	Con	4	4	100%	0
Councillor Chandubhai J Patel	LD	12	3	25%	1
Councillor Harshadbhai Patel	Con	14	11	79%	4
Councillor Harihar Patel	Con	7	6	86%	0
Councillor Ramesh Patel	Lab	11	8	73%	1
Councillor Michael Pavey	Lab	17	15	88%	1
Councillor James Powney	Lab	12	9	75%	0
Councillor Carol Shaw	Con**	2	2	100%	1
Councillor Ketan Sheth	Lab	18	12	67%	0
Councillor Krupa Sheth	Lab	6	5	83%	0
Councillor Harbhajan Singh	Lab	9	7	78%	0
Councillor Gavin Sneddon	LD	3	1	33%	0
Councillor Bobby Thomas	Mayor	2	2	100%	0
Councillor Zaffar Van Kalwala	Lab	11	8	73%	1

* Defected from Labour to Liberal Democrat

** Defected from Liberal Democrats back to Conservative

Clearly committee attendance is only one measure and the amount of casework and how much of it is successful is important as well as the degree of visibility and engagement of each individual councillor with their residents.

Please note some of these non-attendances may include illness. Apologies for absence are included on the Council website - click on councillor's name.

Angie Bray MP supports Brent's concern over Harlesden Incinerator pollution

Angie Bray, Conservative MP for Ealing Central and Acton has spoken out against the proposed 'Harlesden Incinerator' LINK

Following the deferral of the item which was due to be discussed in about an hour at Ealing Planning Committee she publishes the speech she had prepared to deliver:

I have been keeping a concerned eye on some of the pollution issues affecting the different parts of Acton for some time. These include the pollution generated by the Horn Lane site, the problems emanating from the Powerday site and the natural concerns that local residents have around the fact that five sites have been identified for waste disposal around Park Royal.  Clean Power's application comes on top of all of this.

My first concern was immediately created at the meeting I had with Clean Power in Parliament, when they came to brief me on their proposals. I asked whether their application was to run one of the five waste sites whose location had been identified by the Council around Park Royal, as part of the Mayor's London Waste Plan. Imagine my surprise when they clearly had no idea what I was talking about. Later it transpired that they were actually proposing to establish potentially a sixth waste site in this corner of my constituency. Obviously, no one expects that the five sites identified by the Council will all be used, but this addition to those that may be would still add substantially to the problems that would be faced by the community - not least: pollution, odours, transport congestion and noise.

My next concern, following on from what I've just said, is that the residents' community in North Acton, who are living alongside Powerday, would, were this application to succeed, find themselves literally wedged between two major waste disposal sites. I don't think any of us would disagree that Powerday is the source of continual problems for local residents, however much the management say otherwise and indeed work to ameliorate the odours and general pollution. There have been times in particularly hot weather where residents are unable to open their windows - such is the stink caused by the site. And then of course there are rats and do I need I go on...

So is it reasonable to expect residents to have to live with yet another waste disposal site - anaerobic digestive or otherwise - just to the other side of them?

Obviously too there will be the nature of the waste traffic. Residents have had to get used to the traffic generated by Powerday's and the Freightliner site's existing operations, but is the Council really going to expect them now to tolerate even more waste lorry traffic that will inevitably arrive as a result of the operations by Clean Power? How much more heavy traffic is this part of North Acton able to sustain without an intolerable impact on the lives of the local residents?

What has been striking to many of us, which I list as my third concern, is the lack of evidence that Clean Power is able to produce to demonstrate how well their operations work on other sites. Clearly, if we had been able to see happy residents close by to a Clean Power site, then that might have helped to allay fears.  But when I go on their website, all I see is a list of would-be sites, which they hope to develop in the future.  Surely the Council will require better evidence than that?

My fifth and final question is about the choice of the site itself. As I understand it, this site is currently safeguarded for HS2.  Now I recognise that there has been much debate about HS2 - and there may have been some who thought that the cross-party support for the project was breaking down - however, last week in Parliament all parties lined up with very few dissenting members, to support the HS2 project going forward. It strikes me that this site will remain HS2's as the project is unrolled. 

So why is Ealing Council even taking time to consider this proposal when we all know that the safeguarding by HS2 remains firmly in place, as does the project itself? As things stand, there is no site for Clean Power to develop, so can we just recognise reality and put a stop to any further blight of this kind on local residents? I notice Brent is focusing very hard on the pollution aspects of this proposal, and both Brent and Ealing pollution experts are calling for rejection of the plan.  I would like to add my voice to theirs.”

Barry Gardiner faces Wembley protest over Modi invitation

Guest blog from South Asia Solidarity Group

Stop mass murderer Narendra Modi from visiting the UK!

Barry Gardiner: Withdraw your invitation to the 'butcher of Gujarat'! 

Protest:­­­  Monday 9 September 2013, 11:30 AM - 1 PM, at Barry Gardiner’s MP’s surgery, Brent Civic Centre, Engineers Way, Wembley HA9 0FJ

Nearest Tube Station: Wembley Park (see map)

·         Narendra Modi is the Chief Minister of Gujarat, the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and an avowed admirer of Hitler and his policies.

·         In 2002, Modi presided over the genocidal attacks in which over 2,000 men, women and children from Gujarat’s Muslim minority community were systematically killed.

·         This is the man whom Labour MP for Brent North Barry Gardiner has invited to come and address the House of Commons on the subject of 'The Future of Modern India'.

What happened in Gujarat in 2002 has been amply documented and there is clear evidence (1)(2)(3) that the violence was orchestrated and sponsored by the state. The police had been instructed not to intervene while Hindu supremacist mobs linked to the BJP murdered and raped, selectively  targeting the addresses occupied by Muslim families . According to a leaked report by the British High Commission in India the violence 'had all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and that reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims is impossible while the chief minister [Narendra Modi] remains in power’ and that 'far from being spontaneous' it was 'planned, possibly months in advance, carried out by an extremist Hindu organisation with the support of the state government.'(4) 

Modi is currently making a bid to become India's next Prime Minister and has launched a campaign using openly fascistic and anti-minority rhetoric. At the same time he is claiming that he has been absolved of wrong doing in connection with the massacres of 2002 by the Supreme Court of India. This is untrue, see for example (6). 

While in the wake of the 2002 genocide and the clear evidence and documentation of  Modi’s role in coordinating and sponsoring it, the UK, EU and US were compelled to distance themselves from Modi, more recently the British government is  rehabilitating him. At a recent meeting with Modi in Ahmedabad,  the Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Hugo Swire made it clear that this was in 'the UK's national interests', meaning the interests of British big business (7) (8).

Now Barry Gardiner on behalf of the 'Labour Friends of India' has invited Modi to come and address the House of Commons on the subject of 'The Future of Modern India'. The Conservative Friends of India have supported this invitation. This is purely an attempt to help British corporates sell their products and services in Gujarat in the interests of larger profits.  It makes a mockery of human rights  and ignores the three British citizens who were murdered  during the genocide and whose families are yet to receive justice.

Modi's past visits to the UK have been used to raise extensive funds and support for communal violence. A visit at this time is particularly dangerous and must be stopped. 

We condemn this collusion in Modi’s attempts to deny his role as a mass murderer.

We demand that the invitation to Modi is withdrawn.

Notes

(1) See Human Rights Watch: ' “We Have No Orders To Save You”

State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat’,  April 30, 2002

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/04/30/we-have-no-orders-save-you

(2) Amnesty International: ‘India: Justice -- the victim in Gujarat’ [Full Report] 27 January 2005 http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/reports/2005/ai.27jan2005.gujarat.pdf

(3)‘Threatened Existence: A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat’ Report by the International Initiative for Justice (IIJ) December 2003

http://www.gujaratfiles.net/files/iij.dec2003.report.pdf

(4)bbc.co.uk: UK report censures Gujarat rulers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1951471.stm

(5)Amnesty International: ‘A decade on from the Gujarat riots, an overwhelming majority of victims await justice in India’ 29 February 2012

http://www.coalitionagainstgenocide.org/reports/2012/Amnesty-International-A-decade-on-from-the-Gujarat%20riots.pdf

(6) Sahmat – Citizens for Justice and Peace: ‘Press Release- Supreme Court clean chit to Narendra Modi ?’  http://www.kractivist.org/press-release-supreme-court-clean-chit-to-narendra-modi/ which explains in detail how the Supreme Court has NOT in fact absolved Modi of responsibility for the 2002 genocide as he has falsely claimed.

(7) See The Hindu ‘Embracing the Darkness’ October 23, 2012, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/embracing-the-darkness/article4023194.ece

(8) bbc.co.uk: UK India envoy to visit Gujarat for first time since riots http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19907453

Organised by South Asia Solidarity Group.

Supported by:

Council of Indian Muslims

Foil Vedanta

Islamic Human Rights Commission

Southall Black Sisters

IWA, Birmingham

South Asian Alliance

Asian Rationalist Society

Freedom Without Fear Platform

https://www.facebook.com/events/627193123981006/627481417285510/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity