The importance of scrutiny in a council with a massive one party majority was the subject of two debates at Brent Council Annual General Meeting last week.
In the first debate a bid to have at least the deputy chairs of Scrutiny Committees from opposition parties was defeated by the Labour majority with the Brent Council Labour leader, Cllr Muhammed Butt, arguing that their election mandate gave Labour the right to hold all the positions.
The second debate was over a Labour move to curtail the right of the opposition groups, and its own backbenchers, to refer Cabinet decisions or Key Decisions to Scrutiny Committee for further decisions.
There had been a Labour move earlier this year to increase the number of councillors required to sign a call-in from five to 10.(There are 8 Opposition councillors in all) This was dropped and replaced by a more subtle change that requires the five councillors to be from more than one political party.
As you will see from the video above Cllr Muhammed Butt made no attempt to justify the change, either in his moving the motion or responding to the Liberal Dem amendment. It sas more a case of 'we are doing it, because we can.'
So what was behind the change?
It is well known that Cllr Butt is not all that keen on criticism but what infuriated him and his colleagues was a Conservative call-in opposing the siting of a children's home in a conservation area. LINK They claimed this showed a 'lack of respect' for a conservation area. The move was not supported by the Liberal Democrats but with five councillors the Conservatives were able to do it on their own.
Under the new proposals they would need support from the Lib Dems or Labour backbenches for such a call-in.
That one unpleasant episode should not be the basis for a significant constitutional change but the officers' paper quoted Centre for Scrutiny and Governance advice that was not cited by Cllr Butt in the debate:
Guidance was issued by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) in March 2023 which comments, in respect of requirements in call-in thresholds that the councillors involved should represent different parties, that “This can help to ensure that call-in’s reflect matters on which there is crossparty
concern”.
However, the CfGS had said that a call-in review should happen after an election and change of political control:
The guidance from CfGS is that requirements on numbers/types of members, bodies or persons requesting call- in’s should be clearly justified and reviewed following each election and after a change in political control to ensure their ongoing fairness and applicability as endorsed by the authority.
The proposal was not made after an election and there has been no change of political control for a very long time. There has been a change of Chief Executive.
The paper concludes:
Arrangements across London are very varied, especially once the effect of political balance is taken into account. A significant number have arrangements that mean more than one party group must be in support of the call-in request.
The possible introduction of this requirement in Brent was discussed at a recent meeting of the Constitutional Working Group (CWG) but a consensus was not reached. Full council is therefore requested to make a decision on this issue.
So the whipped Labour majority was used to defeat the Liberal Democrat amendment which had stipulated:
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.
In answer to criticism that this would substantially increase the number of call-ins it is argued that there are are already guidelines in place that would ensure call-ins were legitimate. A call-in in the past has been refused on that basis. LINK
As Cllr Kasangra pointed out. the new rule requiring more that one party submit a compliant call-in request, also means that Labour backbenchers, however many may support a call-in would not be able to do so with Opposition councillor support.
There was such a call-in previously over plans for the Granville Centre in Kilburn LINK:
The call-in of the proposal to build housing on the Granville-Carlton site on the South Kilburn estate will be heard by the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday. The Cabinet's decision was called in by required 5 non-executive councillors in this case Cllrs Abdi, Chan, Hector, Pavey and Hassan.
An example of a Liberal Democrat - Conservative call-in was Altamira in 2022 which was not well-received by Cllr Butt. LINK
The change effectively means that any call-in must now be supported by both Opposition groups and, given their widely differing political perspectives. can we expect fewer call-ins in the future?
Is this good for democracy?
