An Afternoon Consitutional!
Went to Community Leadership SCAG to see the discussion on the amendments to the constitution. A few quick comments:
a) As stated before, I disagree with a single party Strategy Committee. I am not convinced that all issues will in future be properly covered before decisions are made, especially when there is still no serious pre-decision process apart from the publication of the Forward Plan and it only gets 10 minutes at Scrutiny Co-ord, when instead it should be the main part of that Performance Committee, with the opposition given the opportunity to comment.
b) Delegated Decision Notices. The option to choose where it goes seems sensible. No doubt officers can advise on consequences if there is too long a delay.
c) Requisitions. This is fine.
d) Questions. Peter Geiringer will be disappointed that the Tories missed a trick over getting a second 8.1 Question for each item. The increase to 4-4 in 8.6 questions is about right.
e) The new 4-3 speaking convention makes sence, especially as we now have 1 minute interventions - an idea originally proposed by Mike Cooper, and now seen as essential part of debates.
f) The Chair limitation debate seemed a bit pointless to me. Things have massively changed since the days when Chairs of Committees were also lead Councillors. In many ways SCAGs are more important than Performance Committees, so we should not be too hung up about it. Indeed if a party group does not have enough talent that it can share out such chairs as wide as possible, then that is its own problem. The new "only one chair of performance or an Area Committee" amendment seems sensible enough, but to be honest there are much more important things to concentrate on!
a) As stated before, I disagree with a single party Strategy Committee. I am not convinced that all issues will in future be properly covered before decisions are made, especially when there is still no serious pre-decision process apart from the publication of the Forward Plan and it only gets 10 minutes at Scrutiny Co-ord, when instead it should be the main part of that Performance Committee, with the opposition given the opportunity to comment.
b) Delegated Decision Notices. The option to choose where it goes seems sensible. No doubt officers can advise on consequences if there is too long a delay.
c) Requisitions. This is fine.
d) Questions. Peter Geiringer will be disappointed that the Tories missed a trick over getting a second 8.1 Question for each item. The increase to 4-4 in 8.6 questions is about right.
e) The new 4-3 speaking convention makes sence, especially as we now have 1 minute interventions - an idea originally proposed by Mike Cooper, and now seen as essential part of debates.
f) The Chair limitation debate seemed a bit pointless to me. Things have massively changed since the days when Chairs of Committees were also lead Councillors. In many ways SCAGs are more important than Performance Committees, so we should not be too hung up about it. Indeed if a party group does not have enough talent that it can share out such chairs as wide as possible, then that is its own problem. The new "only one chair of performance or an Area Committee" amendment seems sensible enough, but to be honest there are much more important things to concentrate on!
posted by Charlie Mansell at 5:12 pm
2 Comments:
It was good to see the undercover blogger in the public "gallery" reading the Undercover Economist. You must come along to a DC meeting sometime. I've just returned from sitting on my second meeting. You'll have plenty of material for a whole string of articles. With the balance changing from 5:3 to 5:4 it'll only get more lively.
Thanks for that. The "Undercover Blogger" sounds quite good title and the book is really good too!
Another of your colleagues has also suggested I come along to DC and I will indeed pop along soon.
As you may be aware the Labour Group did have reservations about transferring smaller applications from Areas to DC. It will therefore be interesting to see how the new system is operating and to comment on it here.
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