The art of opposition

The leader of the four strong Conservative Group on Swansea Council is in a hurry. He wants to be running things and making decisions. His view is that Scrutiny and other Committees are a waste of time and that his energies are best directed towards holding the executive to account.

He believes, as do many more of us, that the best model for a local Council was the former Committee system, whereby multi-party meetings actually made decisions. Unfortunately, that system was abolished by an Act of Parliament in 2000.

There is an alternative model, involving a multi-party board that has been adopted by a few councils in Wales, but Swansea opted for Cabinet government many years ago and Assembly Government regulations make it all but impossible to change mid-stream. Besides the level of acrimony and petty back-biting on Swansea Council leads one to think that the idea of cross party co-operation in such a system is just a pipe-dream. Nobody in their right mind would consider even proposing it whilst Councillors continue to bite chunks out of each other in the way they are doing in Swansea.

Councillor Kinzett of course, has other reasons for standing down from Council Committees. He has to work for a living and has a full-time job based in London. That is his business and that of his electors. Other Councillors need to work away from time to time as well. What is important is not that they need to absent themselves from Swansea, but that they continue to do their job of representing their electorate. Nobody has suggested that Councillor Kinzett or any other Councillor is falling down in that regard.

However, the purpose of this post is not to highlight the various disputes that dominate Council life in Swansea, it is challenge the assertion by the Conservative Group leader in today's South Wales Evening Post that the committees he has resigned from are not important.

Councillor Kinzett says: "The vast majority of these committee meetings are a complete waste of time. They are unproductive and nothing ever gets done. I plan to stay on the ones that are of use but the others are little more than just talking shops." He attacked his colleagues as a group of "past-it" over-60s who have never left Swansea. For the record the other three members of the Conservative Group are over-60, whilst the vast majority of the Council's cabinet are still of working age.

The Committees that Councillor Kinzett has resigned from include the Appointments Committee, which is responsible for employing the officers that the Tory leader often criticises publicly, the Disciplinary Committee, which he says is 'useless' even though it is a key part of the personnel function exercised by Councillors and actually makes decisions, and the Environment Scrutiny Board. He has also quit the Finance Overview board, which makes recommendations on Council finances and efficiencies and the member support group, which helps to determine what level of support members get to do their job.

The point is that under the Cabinet system that has been imposed on Councils by Westminster, the role of scrutiny is absolutely crucial to check the power of the Executive. If Councillors opt out from that then they are failing in their role to hold the Cabinet to account in the sort of detailed way that is not possible at full Council meetings.

Opposition and backbench Councillors may not take decisions for the most part but they do have a huge influence on the way those decisions are taken and can contribute enormously to the efficiency and effectiveness of the local authority by their participation in this process. This is part of their wider duty to the whole local authority area and is the basis of their public service.

To dismiss that role so easily as the Tory Group Leader has done is to undermine the interests of his voters and that of the wider public good. By all means come off the committees if you do not have the time to do the job justice but do not expect us to believe that you are doing so on the grounds of fake altruism when your public duty is clearly to work within an imperfect system and make it better.