At Thursday’s meeting of Stirling Council, Labour and Liberal councillors took advantage of the absence of Conservative Councillors to elect a Labour leader of the council.Leader of the Conservative group, Cllr Alistair Berrill said, “As predicted, Labour and Liberals have shamefully abused Standing Orders and taken cynical advantage of the absence of councillors. They had deliberately arranged at short notice a series of daytime council meetings in order to maximise the inconvenience for councillors who have jobs. At Thursday’s meeting they saw their opportunity when some Conservative councillors were absent due to unavoidable work and family commitments.”
He went on to say, “Thursday’s meeting had been arranged specifically to make certain statutory appointments, including membership of the Licensing Board. The agenda did not include election of Leader of the Council, but when Labour Provost Margaret Brisley saw that councillors were absent she lost no time in bringing forward the election as ‘urgent business.’ At two previous meetings Labour and Liberal councillors had taken advantage of the provost’s casting vote to refuse to allow a vote for the leader because they did not have a majority of votes for the election. Yet only a week later this election had apparently become very urgent.”
Cllr Berrill says he has not ruled out taking legal advice with a view to seeking a judicial review of Provost Brisley’s decision. He said, “there is no doubt that the Provost is perfectly entitled to bring forward genuinely urgent business at any meeting of the council. However, that does not give her the right to show blatant party political bias, which is what she has done. I shall be looking very carefully at her stated reasons for allowing the election as urgent business.”
Cllr Berrill was particularly disappointed with the part played by Liberal councillors. He said, “I was given a personal assurance on Tuesday that the Liberals believed it to be ‘unethical’ to take advantage of somebody’s absence to sneak through this election. Yet on Thursday the Liberals had no hesitation in voting with Labour. It seems that Liberal ethics don’t last longer than 48 hours.”
