I attended the Scrutiny Committee on Thursday evening. I wonder sometimes whether I should expend my energies more productively elsewhere.........
As is now intergral, the majority of the committee were silent Tories, who wouldn't know how to scrutinise decison-making even if they were in opposition - as a few of them will be in 14 months time. It was subsequently observed to me that if it wasn't for the two lay co-optees and myself there would not be a meeting.
When I initiated a line of questioning into the Council's failure to spend its £760,000 capital programme monies on road surface treatments, with the consequent effects on insurance claims, and on a day when senior officers were in London seeking Roads PFI monies, the Tory silence was deafening as the relevant Cabinet Member floundered quite embarrassingly. If there had been more than the co-optees and I to pursue him on this I suspect his position would have become untenable. Which of course is why the Tories gutted Scrutiny last May.....
We are repeatedly told how committed to scrutiny the leader of the Council and the Chief Exec are. So committed indeed that the CX hasn't attended a meeting since Sept 2006, and the leader was just along the corridor, no doubt plotting his next deft (daft?) move in the education debacle.
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