Examination of Witnesses (Questions 75-79)
6 DECEMBER 2004
MR TIM
RICKETTS AND
MS GIFTY
EDILA
Q75 Chairman: Good afternoon. I would
be grateful if you could give your names for our record.
Ms Edila: I am Gifty Edila, President
of the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors.
Mr Ricketts: My name is Tim Ricketts.
I am Head of Legal Services at the National Association of Local
Councils.
Q76 Chairman: Would you like to make
a brief statement before we start or are you happy to go straight
to questions?
Ms Edila: Perhaps I may say a
few words. First, I would like to thank the Committee for the
opportunity to submit our views about the Standards Board in writing
and certainly for the further invitation to come here to clarify
some of the issues that we have raised and commented upon. Perhaps
by way of opening I could say that my association certainly does
have a very good partnership with the Standards Board for England
in so far as promoting high standards in public office. Our submission
has clearly indicated that we certainly do not perceive a major
problem amongst councillors in local government. However, we wholeheartedly
endorse the need for a code to highlight and certainly to promote
high standards as required. By and large, from our point of view,
it is working. We have highlighted certain areas of weakness,
in terms of challenges that we have faced around things like declarations
of interest, whistle blowing and a number of other general points
that we have raised, and I would be happy to address the Committee
on any of those issues in which you may be interested
Q77 Mr Betts: It has been argued that
the introduction of a written code of conduct has given an opportunity
for troublemakers to achieve political gain. Do you believe that
the Standards Board for England has worked hard enough to prevent
this happening?
Mr Ricketts: With parish and town
councils it almost goes a bit further than that because generally
they do not tend to be political creatures. You would not see
them as being split between the different parties, as you would
find a principal authority. With parish and town councils there
is certainly an axe to grind, and it tends to be within the community
rather than for political purposes. That does happen, and I am
sure the Standards Board would bear that out. There was an additional
difficulty when the code was introduced in that in the first tier
of our democratic structure, that is parish and town councils,
there is no equivalent of the local government ombudsman, so there
is no route for members of the public to bring cases of mal-administration
to an independent party to adjudicate on. When the code was first
introduced, many members of the community that were represented
by their parish and town council saw this as an opportunity to
bring cases of mal-administration to the notice of the Standards
Board as well as alleged complaints against councillors. There
has been a certain mish-mash of matters brought to the Standards
Board, certainly by people with an axe to grind and people who
think that this is a viable way to bring matters of mal-administration
to the notice of somebody outside of the community, but also of
course there are genuine complaints under the code of conduct.
Q78 Mr Betts: Ought there to be some
sort of penalty for people who bring vexatious complaints and
cause a great deal of aggro and bung the system up so that it
does not work properly? Is there something you can do about it?
Mr Ricketts: I am sure there are
many facets of public life where you would like to be able to
apply that to vexatious people. Again, being a tier that is very
close to the community, our parish and town councils have their
fair share of people who have bees in their bonnets about certain
issues that they want to keep on raising. At this time I would
stay clear of producing a penalty as such because we are trying
to introduce a system where the processes that we are looking
at are transparent. In order for those processes to be transparent,
you have to accept that there will be a certain amount of vexatious
behaviour by some people who will want to bring matters repeatedly
to people's notice. I agree that it can be a problem. I would
fall short of saying we should be penalising people for making
those requests, thereby preventing people from bringing genuine
complaints forward.
Q79 Mr O'Brien: Do you have a view on
the guidance given to standards committees about their establishment
and operation? Do you think it is adequate?
Ms Edila: Certainly the guidance
that has been issued so far we feel has been very helpful. It
comes on a timely basis. The Standards Board tends to engage with
ACSeS in working through the key issues contained within the guidance
to ensure that it is relevant to our local experiences. Clearly,
there will be occasions when we may well take a different view
on some legal interpretations, and we tend to have a healthy useful
dialogue on those.
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