Revealed - Prescott’s town hall madness - where standing up for the voters is a crime.
The crazy world of the modern town hall in which councillors with a mobile phone are banned from debating phone masts and those with cars are unable to vote on parking charges is exposed today (Monday Sept 4) in a new report from the 40-strong socially-conservative group of Cornerstone MPs.
Changes pushed through by John Prescott have effectively gagged local councillors and prevented them from speaking and voting on issues where they have declared an opinion.
Unlike MPs, who are expected to adhere to their party’s manifesto, councillors face disciplinary action, which can land them with huge legal bills, if they persist in representing the views of their voters.
This “town hall madhouse” is the product of Mr Prescott’s decision to make councillors subject to the edicts of his £10 million-a-year Standards Board, set up in 2001 to police local government.
A small army of so-called ethical standards officers, each earning £61,000 a year, backed up by hundreds of local “monitoring officers” appointed by council chiefs, have grabbed power and routinely issue directives to councillors on what they can say or do.
The result, warns the Cornerstone paper, has been the negation of local democracy and the waste of millions of pounds of public money. Hundreds of councillors have resigned in disgust at the insane and unjust regime imposed by the Government.
The report’s authors, Conservative frontbenchers Owen Paterson and Gerald Howarth, say that under Mr Prescott local government has undergone a silent but sinister revolution.Read the full paper …. HERE
