Mary Reid

Well, I'm back into normal mode again, starting with Full Council last night.

It was all rather odd, although it began well with everyone united against the closure of six Post Offices in the Borough.  Lots of people seems to have been collecting petitions and two large ones were presented by Sean Duggan (Editor of the Surrey Comet) and Susan Kramer MP - with getting on for 5000 signatures between them. The debate emphasised all the reasons why Post Offices need to be retained, used and boosted with further services.

Then Cllr Steve Mama claimed that he had a hotline to the Government and that we could expect some concessions - if this is true then it is very welcome, but I'm not holding my breath.

Unfortunately Cllr Mama reverted to his normal way of working by insulting Cllr Sheila Griffin when she indicated that she wished to speak in a later debate.

That debate was on a motion brought by the Conservatives, which was based on a misunderstanding of Brian Paddick's manifesto proposals for London. This is what Brian says about congestion charging:

A Congestion Charge should do what it says it will do: tackle congestion. Keeping traffic moving will reduce congestion. In order to do this Brian proposes:

...

Ask TfL to conduct a feasibility study into introducing a 24/7 £10 Greater London Congestion Charge (GLCC). The Charge will be targeted at long-distance car-driving commuters encouraging them to use public transport instead and getting them to consider the cost of their journey in terms of congestion and pollution. Cars travelling from outside the zone to local shopping centres or those visiting locally will be exempt, together with all cars registered to an address within Greater London and commercial vehicles. Any such Scheme Order will be subject to statutory consultation and in this case including local authority areas bordering the GLA boundary.

There will be wide consultation, with one of two measures implemented to avoid shopping centres on the periphery of Greater London losing trade from people living just outside the boundary, who might be unwilling to pay the GLCC. The first option is a distinct buffer zone outside the Greater London boundary, the residents of which would be exempt from the charge. The second option is moving the boundary of the Greater London Congestion Charge zone so that outlying areas, including the major shopping centres on the periphery of Greater London, are excluded from the fee-paying zone.

The Conservative motion was "This Council rejects the Lib Dem proposal to charge £10 for vehicles entering the London area from the Counties. This charge will have a detrimental effect on businesses in our Town Centre".

Cllr David Cunningham started off the debate and seemed very surprised that we agreed with most of what he said. Cllr Derek Osbourne, the Leader of the Council, then explained that the motion was based on a headline understanding of the policy not on the detail, which, of course, would protect Kingston. In spite of that, one Conservative after another gave their prepared speeches attacking the non-existent proposal!  Oh dear!

Earlier we had seen another inappropriate use of Council time by the Conservatives. 

Question Time at Full Council is the opportunity for councillors to pose questions to senior members of any party. The questions are submitted in advance, so councillors can do some research before the meeting. But the questioner can follow up with a supplementary question - the sting in the tail - which has to be answered off-the-cuff. 

Cllr Derek Osbourne asked this question of Cllr Howard Jones, Leader of the Opposition:

In your Budget speech, you outlined your opposition to borrowing in order to finance capital investment.  How would you have funded the £12 million investment in roads, pavements and street lighting which has taken place across the Borough since 2003?

Howard Jones spoke for 15 minutes about all sorts of things - in fact, I think it was the Budget speech that he realised he should have made back at Budget Council. (You may remember that he did not offer any alternative proposals and appeared to have written his speech before the proposals were published).

The Mayor, and other councillors, repeatedly asked him to answer the question. He kept saying he would, then went on to other topics. I lost focus and don't actually remember him saying what he would have done - I suppose I'll have to trawl through the transcript of his answer when the minutes are published on the Council website. At the end Derek Osbourne had no appetite for asking a supplementary question!

The problem with all this is that only 30 minutes are allowed for Question Time, so Cllr Jones took up half the time making a speech that was mainly irrelevant. Other questions then had to be ditched. Unfortunately, Standing Orders don't put a time limit on answers to questions, but I have never heard one that lasted more than a few minutes before.

There is a wonderful word for this sort of time-wasting: filibuster