By Charlotte Webster-
A Lewisham councillor whose identity has not been released, lunged at a worker but escaped punishment because of flawed parliamentary codes of conduct which allows badly behaved Mps feel untouchable when their actions occur outside of the capacity of their post.
The shameful incident which occurred in 2019 was highlighted during a meeting last week in which the review parliamentary codes of conduct were being discussed, the Eye Of Media.Com has heard.
The incident provides further examples of some of the unacceptable conduct of government officials that has gone without action because of codes designed to completely separate the private affairs of government officials from actions that occur in the course of their parliamentary duties or office.
In another unacceptable incident discussed at the meeting, a councillor used very offensive and abusive language when speaking about sensitive. transgender issues
This organisation has called for the distinction made between the private and public lives of Mps in relation to disciplinary actions to be made more narrow rather than left wide, in order to maintain trust in the professionalism of government representatives.
It follows several cases over a number of years in which government representatives, particularly Mps, have behaved in as poor a manner that would normally warrant serious punishment, but yet got away untouched because the incident(s) occurred in their private life.
DEMOCRATICALLY
Councillors are democratically elected representatives of the government whose primary role is to represent their wards and divisions. The written complaint about the incident read:
“On the June 12, 2019, the monitoring officer received a complaint brought by a Union official on behalf of one of their members, alleging that at a constituency Labour Party meeting a councillor had lunged at the union member in an aggressive and violent manner and had to be restrained by colleagues.
“The Union member is also an employee and was fearful of coming into further contact with the councillor while on council premises,” the report read.
Monitoring officer Kath Nicholson, said: “They weren’t on council business so again it went beyond my reach for an investigation.”One councillor was accused of “deliberately” forwarding parliamentary casework from a resident which included people’s names and addresses to others in an email.
Under the current codes of conduct, councils has no power to sanction councillors over comments and behaviour committed when they are not “acting in their capacity as councillor or holding themselves out as doing so”.
The flexibility that allows councillors to behave as they wish when acting out of their capacity appears to allow those bound by the code to be able to behave as they wish when out of office.
A voluntary model for all local authorities to follow were discussed by the standards committee last week. The suggestions include holding councillors to account for their behaviour in public, regardless of whether they are acting in an official capacity or not.