IAN Barker seems to have some of his facts in a twist on changes to the democratic structure of the council and the David Christley Inquiry.

Firstly, on Christley. At the first of the two personnel meetings which lasted for three hours and got absolutely nowhere much debate was about whether the inquiry could lead to disciplinary procedures or not. This seemed a nonsense to me. What is the point in having an inquiry where you are not allowed to take disciplinary action if the inquiry finds major wrongdoings? It was for this reason that I voted against a Labour motion that had tagged onto the end of it that an inquiry could not lead to disciplinary proceedings.

At the second meeting about Christley, Labour had seemed to have changed its tune (not quite a u-turn but a turn none the less). Here I was able to support, along with Labour, Liberals and Independents, a motion that called for a full inquiry and had nothing tagged onto the end about it not leading to a disciplinary inquiry. The motion simply said that a report would be given. When that report is received, Labour, along with other councillors, will decide what to do. Hopefully, we will find no major disciplinary breaches but, if we do, disciplinary action is obviously an option. As far as the democratic structure of the council concerned I fail to understand why Cllr Barker and his Labour colleagues are intent on rushing through measures before the White Paper has even been read before the House of Commons. The new rules are unlikely to become law before 2001. Why should we be guessing what Tony Blair has in mind for us and rush through measures years before we are required to do so? The fact that other authorities have done so already may be largely because they like the idea of centralised power where a few councillors from the same party decide all the issues.

We've experienced something similar to this in Lancaster with the previous regime. I, for one prefer the way it is now, where all councillors have a say.

Cllr Jon Barry Willow Lane Lancaster

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.