http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2070

_Senior Lib Dem Cllr. officially censured for lying about road scheme_

_Constituent's complaint upheld; past public consultations brought into question_

Last Friday, July 22, a sub-committee of the Norfolk County Council Standards Committee met in special session to consider a serious complaint brought against Costessey Lib Dem County Councillor Tim East by one of his constituents, Mr. John Alloway.

The complaint concerned allegations that Cllr. East had misled his constituents and had thereby brought his position into disrepute, through purveying misleading information about the Northern Distributor Road (hereafter NDR) routes, at the time of the original consultation over the NDR and since.

Mr. East claimed publicly on numerous occasions for a period of about 18 months that the 'orange' route was the most environmentally friendly of all the routes, on the basis particularly of erroneous information that he presented to the public about how much of the route went over old gravel pits. Mr. East continued to make his claims publicly after it had been pointed out to him by Mr. Allaway and by Cllr. Rupert Read of the Greens that this claim was groundless, and even after Mr. East had himself privately conceded that his claim was misleading (note:see sections 5.28, 6.18, 6.21, 6.22 of the report, which is available from the Green Party national Press Office)

The Standards Committee decided to uphold the complaint. Norfolk Green Party Councillors believe that this throws the entire validity of the consultation on the NDR into doubt. For Mr. East's public comments may well have influenced many thousands of his constituents and of readers of the press into supporting the NDR; and furthermore his backing of the orange route as allegedly 'environmentally-friendly' may well have contributed to its relative popularity in the more recent 'NDR routes consultation'.

This means the NDR itself may now be in doubt.

Said Green County Councillor Andrew Boswell, "Those who support the NDR are now going to have to stop citing the alleged fact that 78% of the population of Norfolk support it, and to stop claiming that the orange route is a popular route. Both those ideas are now very much in doubt, because the consultations in question have in effect been rendered worthless by this Standards Committee judgement. In the view of Norfolk's Green Party Councillors, this development in fact throws the whole NDR into doubt - for surely, now, plans for the road cannot proceed without an entire new consultation, a consultation which must be unsullied by false or misleading information by the road's backers, and must allow Norfolk people a "No" option."

Added Cllr. Rupert Read, Norwich Green Party Transport Spokesperson, "Cllr. East's key role in backing the NDR has backfired rather: the way he has misled the public now means that we all need to start all over again in assessing whether the NDR actually has public support. I believe that, once people realise that all the western routes such as the orange route are environmental disasters, and not, as Tim East erroneously claimed, environmentally-sound, then they will decisively reject this very expensive, past-its-sell-by-date road-scheme. Instead, I hope the Council will keep both our Council Tax and carbon emissions down by supporting our alternative transport strategy."

ENDS

Important notes to editors:

1) After a special meeting of the Norfolk County Council standards committee last Friday, the document, available from the Green Party Press Office, is now in the public domain. This document, prepared by senior County officers, shows the findings of fact in the case of the investigation of the complaint against Cllr. East (see especially sections 4 and 5). It was then the Committee's task to decide on whether Mr. East had violated the Council's code of conduct, given these findings of fact. The Committee, in its meeting on Friday, disagreed with the suggested judgement in the officer's document on Mr. East: the Committee judged that Mr. East had violated the code of conduct of the County Council.

2) In particular: The sub-committee judged that Cllr. East HAD in fact breached item 4 of the Councillors' code of conduct, and so had brought this office, and by extension the Council, into disrepute. For this, Cllr. East was officially censured. One reason why this is headline news is that there has never previously been a case of a Councillor in any County being found guilty of violating their code of conduct, except in cases involving bribery, etc. etc. . In other words: this is THE FIRST TIME EVER that a Councillor has been found to have brought his office and the Council into disrepute, SIMPLY FOR REPEATEDLY LIEING TO / MISLEADING THE PUBLIC. The case is therefore an important civil/legal PRECEDENT. Norfolk County Council made history last Friday. {Note 6.24 and 6.25 of the document, which make plain the unprecedented nature of a successful outcome to this complaint.}

3. Mr. East's praises for the orange route, over which he has been censured, and which, in other words, have now been officially proven to be groundless and deeply-misleading, go right back to the autumn of 2003, during the very first consultation on the NDR. At that time, East had a number of letters and press releases in the EDP and EN, backing the orange route to the exclusion of various others, as allegedly the environmental choice.

4. John Allaway did not undertake this complaint for party-political reasons, but simply as a concerned local resident, wanting to uphold public standards of decency and honesty in political speech, and wanting to question a road-scheme that was being rail-roaded through on a dubious financial basis. Mr. Allaway has now become a Green sympathiser, having seen that only the Greens are prepared to expose the misrepresentations of this road-scheme that other politicians are engaging in.

5. Since being officially censured by the Standards Committee last Friday, for bringing his office into disrepute, Cllr. East has written to Mr. Allaway, expressing "regret" that he did not "correct the factual inaccuracies in the Focus Newsletter" that was one of the causes of Mr. Allaway's complaint, even after the inaccuracies had been pointed out to Mr. East and he had conceded their existence.

6. Overheard: During a break in the meeting, once Cllr. East's guilt had been established, Michael Cartiss, Conservative County Councillor and former MP, and a member of the Standards Committee, was overheard whispering to a Lib Dem County Councillor in the corridor that "We must keep this quiet. We must achieve cross-party unity to hush this thing up". Presumably, the motivation for doing so is to keep the case for the NDR in one piece - because all 3 of the old parties still back the NDR. This matter therefore does not reflect badly only on the Lib Dems -- the other mainstream Parties too are implicated in this scandal of the deceitful spinning of this road-scheme.