Standards Committee Unnecessary Secrecy

The Standards Committee is meeting on 21 June. They don't appear to be doing very much apart from considering the outcome of Cllr Ahmed's case (see agenda item 9 via the above link) before the Standards Board for England.

Interestingly, you will see from agenda item 8 that they intend to do this in private.

What is the justification for this? The decision is a public document and the matter is closed so what do the committee expect to be saying that's not for our ears?

In related national news the ConDems have announced that the Standards Board for England is to be abolished. This is also something the committee will be discussing and I'm sure that will keep them busy for, ooh at least a couple of minutes.

Now I know that Ahmed's case showed them to be a bunch of hapless stuffed shirts and it's not clear what the implications will be or whether there will be some sort of replacement but it appears that there will be no independent adjudicator for councillors' misdemeanors.

This of course means that council's can continue to pack their Standards Committees with ruling party lackeys which and it will be even more unlikely that any meaningful sanction will be applied to dodgy gits like Hassan Ahmed in the future.