Like this:

Well the last few days have been ‘interesting’ – interesting enough even to bring me out of my blogging hibernation. 

The report in the Daily Telegraph regarding Cornwall Council’s spending on payment cards has certainly brought out the worst in both the press and media and sadly some of my fellow councillors. 

Now I don’t want to regurgitate all that has been said in the past week. But we now know the facts – Cornwall Council does not have any credit cards – the cards used are payment cards, similar to a debit card; No interest has been incurred as a result of using these cards; using these cards saves the council thousands of pounds a year in bank charges and processing costs; no evidence whatsoever has been found of the cards being used inappropriately or dishonestly. Every transaction that has been looked into has had a very reasonable and justifiable explanation. 

Yesterday there was a special meeting at County Hall to enable councillors to question senior officers about this matter. At this meeting I stated that for me the sadness thing about this whole episode has been the demonstration of the complete lack of trust some of my fellow councillors have shown in our council staff. There were far too many of them  jumping to conclusions last weekend, choosing to believe the very worse, that council staff had been abusing public money, without any evidence to support that judgement. 

I was saying for several days that we had to get more details before drawing any conclusions and that I was sure we would find that the vast majority of payments were completely in order. In fact I was wrong – so far every payment has been proved to be in order. 

One councillor went on BBC Radio Cornwall yesterday saying that this episode had damaged the Council’s reputation – when actually this was the councillor who had done as much as anyone to perpetuate the myth the council was misusing public funds and personally responsible for much of any damage caused. 

The usual leading Lib Dem councillors were all too happy to run to their blogs as well as the press and media to sling the mud. Surely they should get all the facts straight before using words such as ‘scandal’ and ‘astounding’. Even at yesterday’s meeting they were trying to find any way possible of getting some mud to stick. Cllr Folkes, the Lib Dem Deputy Leader, even suggested that the officers should now look into every payment made on the cards (all those under £500 as well as over) – I dread to think how much that would cost the Cornish Taxpayer in officer time. When it became clear that was not going to be supported he then aimed his attacks at the Communications Department.

There are a number of lessons that need to be learnt from this saga, especially in the way that Freedom of Information Requests are handled by the council and making sure the information provided is accurate. A review will now be carried out and as the Chairman of the Council’s Transparency and Communications Working Group I will be involved in that review and will ensure all the lessons that need to be learnt are. 

But I suggest the most important lesson that needs to be learnt is by certain councillors. They need to learn to get the facts before jumping to conclusions. They were all too quick to say that the council’s finances were out of control and that money was being spent inappropriately – both of which have been shown to be completely unfounded and untrue. I understand the urge they feel to jump to criticise the administration at every possible opportunity. But the way that our council staff have been treated over this issue is totally unacceptable and I feel some of them are now due an apology. I’m not holding my breathe!

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