Special Council Meeting

Following on from the a blog post last week, in a special meeting of the council the following resolution was passed:

"That the Council grants an indemnity to, and support to the Chief Executive and/or officers, to take legal action in her/their own name(s) for defamation by Councillors Gale, Richardson and Wainwright of the Rutland Group of the United Kingdom Independence Party."

This gives the green light to individual members of the council to take legal action for defamation against the members of the former Rutland anti-corruption party members who recently joined the United Kingdom Independence Party. The ruling Conservative council claim that the group of three have made defamatory statements on a website and harassed staff in a series of emails. While the group of three maintained they have done nothing wrong, insisting they need to ask difficult questions to carry out their jobs.

This cleaver move avoids Minister for Justice, Lord McNally, comments that "it would be contrary to the public interest for organs of government to be able to sue in defamation, and that it would be an undesirable fetter on freedom of speech.” By allowing individual councilors members to sue for deformation Secretary of State would be unable to stop the legal challenge as would be the case if the council as a whole were to sue the councilors.

The cost legal action against the three councilors is estimated to be around £150,000  which could be covered public money, which, as we know, is in short supply in these times of cuts grants to local government by central government. The leader of Rutland County council, Conservative, Roger Begy is reported as saying that "I don't know how much this is going to cost, nobody will at this particular stage." but went on to say "This is not a blank cheque for the lawyers."

The leader of the council Roger Begy has demanded that the group of tree councilors apologise or produce evidence to prove there accusations. The later being a tough call when the council won't give them the information they require to prove of disprove their concerns about the dealings of the council, the thing that started this all off. If one good thing came out of the legal action it would be the answers to the original information requests that the three councilors asked in order to prove their case one way or another. It could be the only way the people of Rutland find out what is the truth.

Councillors Gale, Richardson and Wainwright have asked for more time to consider the demand by Rutland County Council to "refrain from further defamatory statements and allegations and provide a full and unequivocal retraction and apology". As yet no statement has appeared on the groups website as to what they are going to do, although a number of posts have been removed. In the end it could just come down to money and if they have enough resources to fight the individual councilors who have the financial backing of the council.

If it is a good use of public money remains to be seen when it could be spent on essential services rather than a silly playground fight designed to shut up three councilors who just want openness in local government. I know what I think and many others think about the council taking this action, but I will keep that to myself. 

FOOTNOTE: Currently the total cost to the local council tax payers is around £42,000 according to local reports in the press.

UPDATE (1st August 2013): A full, well written and factual report can be found on the Rutland Times Website that even the BBC would be proud to have on their website.