Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Head of Legal and Democratic Services and Monitoring Officer which informed the Committee of any developments in relation to the Local Government Association (LGA)’s Debate Not Hate campaign (for copy see file of minutes).

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services and Monitoring Officer spoke on the third recommendation and asked if this could be amended so that a report would be brought to a future meeting of the Standards Committee as it was an important piece of work and she would like to engage with Officers and a wider Member cohort. It was unlikely that this could be completed in time for the next meeting but if it could be, it would be presented then. If not, it will come to a later meeting.

Councillor Tinsley referred to a zero-tolerance approach to abuse and indicated that a lot of abuse was through social media and the authority’s ability to influence this was limited. He stated that he was pleased that this was going to be a substantial piece of work and indicated that the protection of people of office with social media companies needed to be achieved through the LGA.

The Head of Legal and Democratic Services and Monitoring Officer responded that this was linked into the LGA’s first recommendation and indicated that the Council could have a conversation with the LGA on how best they feed in and collate the information, in particular on abuse on social media and advised that this would be picked up as an action.

In response to a question from Councillor Atkinson, the Head of Legal and Democratic Services and Monitoring Officer advised that if Member Support were unable to assist a Member, they would always signpost the Member to where they would receive assistance.

Resolved: (i) That the report be noted.

(ii) That the Head of Legal and Democratic Services outlines a proposal to implement the LGA’s recommendations to a zero-tolerance approach to abuse in relation to debates.

(iii) That a report be brought to a future Standards Committee meeting to consider and agree to adopt that proposal.