Argyll First’s second motion to full council: bin the Executive Committee

Whatever they’re on, the rest of Argyll should start the same diet at once.

Argyll First, the newly-formed political group in Argyll and Bute Council is motoring at speed.

It now has a second motion to present to the full meeting of Council on the 19th of August 2010.

The first one is a proposal that Councillors should take a voluntary 10% reduction in salary in the current financial crisis.

Argyll First is mindful of the need for elected representatives to make common cause with their electorate, suffering from the job losses and business reductions that are part of the cuts being made to try and pay down some of the UK’s deficit – said by The Independent now to be £4 trillion.

The groups second motion is:

‘The Council agrees that with effect from 1st October 2010 the Executive Committee be abolished

‘Thereafter all Council business formally considered by the Executive Committee will be referred to the full Council for deliberation on a monthly basis’.

Proposed: Councillor Douglas Philand, Argyll First
Seconded: Councillor John McAlpine, Argyll First

If adopted, this motion would effectively mean that matters currently decided by the 16 councillors on the Executive Committee would be presented to the full council for its consideration.

This would allow all 36 members an equal say in the affairs of the Council and allow motions to be presented and debated before the full Council.

Argyll First believes that this democratic procedure is more in tune with what the electorate expect – the opportunity for all elected members to discuss and decide major issues affecting the residents of Argyll and Bute.

This second motion highlights a standard democratic deficit arising from the long established gambit of disguising the seduction of cabinet government as an efficiency gain.

It does – as was the case at national level under the Blair ‘sofa’ cabal and the Brown bunkerites – degrade the role of the body of elected representatives to a very obvious puppet show. This is not democracy.

There is considerable merit in this motion but expect cries of cost to be loudly heard. This is a standard defence of closet power structures and need not be the case. There are,ini this time of unrecognisably easy remote communication, all sorts of ways that such meetings could be managed.

There is also the Council’s highly privileged and exclusive use of the Pathfinder North superfast broadband system, access to which remains denied to businesses and residents in Argyll, despite assurances that such access was to be offered.

We have a suggestion to make which would impact on the cost of the meetings proposed. This will be published shortly in an article providing background information on the way Councillors are paid.