MEETING ON COUNCILLORS' ATTENDANCE ALLOWANCES AND STATE BENEFITS: LACK OF MINISTERIAL RESPONSE

EDM number 830 in 1991-92, proposed by Frank Cook on 09/03/1992.

That this House notes with dismay and disappointment that requests made in early September 1991 and repeatedly since, by the honourable Member for Stockton North for a meeting with the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities to discuss the question of councillors attendance allowances and their interaction with state benefits, together with Councillors Jenny Beaumont, Suzanne Fletcher and Ann McCoy representing the three political groupings on Stockton Borough Council has yet to be arranged; notes too that written statements of case from numerous councillors were submitted to the Department before Christmas and that in January the Minster's private office passed the buck to the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State who has yet to agree final arrangements for attending the issue; considers a six month delay in accepting an all-party approach of this nature quite unacceptable; and records the view that failure of the Secretary of State to call his Department to task for the wanton waste of time can only signal a determination to play out time to the election without hearing or heeding the justifiable complaints of local elected representatives penalised unfairly by national government diktat.

This motion has been signed by a total of 16 MPs.