Brent Council And Freedom Of The Press (No. 2)

EDM number 240 in 1993-94, proposed by Ken Livingstone on 13/12/1993.

That this House notes that the Chief Executive of Tory-controlled Brent Council has confirmed, in a letter to the leader of the Labour opposition group, that he alone was responsible for both the letter to the Willesden and Brent Chronicle and Kilburn Times complaining that their stories 'are not factually correct' and the circular to all directors and business managers asking them to consider 'whether you really feel you are getting value for money by' placing advertisements 'amid a sea of hostility' and that he acted because he was not prepared to 'sit back when the organisation I am paid to lead is misrepresented in the local press'; further notes that this official intolerance towards local papers reached a new low on 3rd December when a Brent Council housing official assaulted Damien Horan, a photographer working for these papers, as he attempted to photograph council staff and sheriff's officers as they handed out information concerning evictions from Rutland Park Mansions; recognises that such actions are an inevitable consequence of the witch-hunting atmosphere created by the Chief Executive of Brent against these local papers; furthermore reminds Mr Wood that the 'organisation he is paid to lead' is responsible for 25 per cent of all complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman for South East England, and was found by an independent business survey to be 'simply the worst Council' in the entire country in its handling of the council tax; hopes he will accept these facts, desist from shooting the messenger, and remember that it is the Leader of the Council who leads whilst the Chief Executive is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Council; and hopes he will in future spend his time sorting out a council whose day-to-day administration has become both as national laughing stock and reached an all-time low for local council incompetence and corruption.

This motion has been signed by a total of 29 MPs.