“Labour Party spokesman” wrong on Police Authority formula

I’m returning to the issue of Luton’s current lack of representation on Bedfordshire Police Authority in order to correct a misleading statement by the Luton Labour Party.

Last week I was welcoming Luton on Sunday’s belated reporting of how the insistence by the Labour group on Luton Borough Council that the three people who should represent the town on the Police Authority should be Labour councillors, in the face of the understanding by the other two councils in Bedfordshire that they should be 2 Labour and 1 Lib Dem, has left Luton without any representation at all. What I didn’t comment on was the statement included in that news report by an unnamed “Labour party spokesman” that;

“The formula says all three members from Luton should be Labour.”

If this was true what I had written on this blog would have been incorrect and I would have done the Luton Labour Party an injustice, so I wanted to check the facts.

I have managed to get hold of the report that went to the council meeting on the 17 May that started this nonsense which I have made available online.

This report clearly states that the party allocation of the seats on the Authority should be 4 Conservative, 3 Labour and 2 Liberal Democrat. It also clearly shows that the proposal supported by Bedford and Central Beds Councils at the time of the meeting was that this was to be divided up into 2 Lab and 1 Lib Dem from Luton and one each from Bedford.

The report provides no rationale for the alternative arrangement suggested by Luton Labour. It certainly does not include a formula that calculates that three Luton places should be given to that party. It is clear from this that Labour in Luton went ahead with proposing their three Labour councillors with no justification other than their desire to take all the places and in defiance of the understanding of the other councils. A really stupid thing to do.

So the statement in the Luton on Sunday news story by the “Labour party spokesperson” is clearly incorrect. There is no formula that says all three members from Luton should be Labour. Whoever that person is, they are either ignorant of the facts or deliberately setting out to mislead the public. While this person hides behind a cloak of anonymity it is difficult to make a judgement which of those it is.

This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.